Regional cosmopolitanism: the EU in search of its legitimation
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Regional cosmopolitanism: the EU in search of its legitimation Erik O. Eriksen
Received: 18 November 2014 / Accepted: 21 November 2014 / Published online: 4 December 2014 # The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract What could be the legitimation basis of the European Union (EU)? This article questions the idea of two constitution-making subjects in the EU and claim there is and can only be one constituting subject even in a multilevel configuration like the EU. The EU can thus not be seen as a federation of nation states. Rather it must be seen as a quasifederation of states and citizens united under a common legal framework with a universalistic underpinning. The EU’s commitment to basic human principles means that it has a communal vocation that is broader and more universal than that of a multinational federation. Keywords Cosmopolitanism . Democracy . The EU . Constitution . Sovereignty Let us remember that the unity movement in Europe was precisely an attempt at creating a regional entity, and that its origins and its springs resembled, on the reduced scale of a half-continent, the process dreamed up by Kant in his Idea of Universal History. [14: 863] Through establishing autonomous, powerful institutions, the states of the conflict-ridden European continent have domesticated international relations among themselves.1 However, juridification and executive dominance prevails and the lingering question is whether the ensuing order can 1
This article draws on [7].
This article is part of the Topical Collection on The Future of Europe, guest-edited by Markus Pausch. E. O. Eriksen (*) ARENA – Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1143, Blindern 0318, Oslo, Norway e-mail: [email protected]
be legitimate. The EU is not a nation, nor is it a state. Nevertheless, the institutional complex of the Union, the competences, and the procedures it now harbours for participation, contestation, and representation testify to the fact that the EU has moved in the direction of a rights-based quasi-federation with democratic credentials. Even though it does not possess sovereign control in a clearly delimited territory, it claims to possess a legitimate authority based on entrenched principles of law as well as a set of representative political institutions for collective will formation. The multilevel constellation that makes up the Union does not possess the organisational powers of a state and is deficient in democratic terms. The citizens are not fully able to govern themselves through a selfappointed and accountable government. This deficiency is exacerbated by establishing intergovernmental treaties outside of the ordinary Lisbon procedure in order to deal with the Eurozone crisis.2 I cannot deal with the potentially disastrous effect on EU’s ‘constitution’ here, but see [7], chapter 1 and 6. There is an unfinished agenda with regard to institutional reforms as well as with regard to what kind of competencies and functions shou
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