The new constitution as european ‘demoi‐cracy’?

Abstract

How should we assess the project for a Constitution presented by the Convention on the Future of Europe? This paper argues that in order to succeed, an EU Constitution would need to present a positive vision of what democracy in Europe is about. While the draft Constitution fails in finding the right language in this regard, it does nevertheless contain an all too implicit manifesto: that ours is a European ‘demoi‐cracy’ founded on the recognition of the persistent plurality of its component peoples but not reducible to a set of complex bargains between sovereign states. The paper analyses the main feature of the project against this benchmark and argues that it is closer to the spirit of demoi‐cracy when dealing with the vertical relationship between the Union and its member‐states than when dealing with the horizontal relationship among the member‐states themselves.

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