This paper is about a counterfactual empirical assumption: If the Laeken convention had been elected, we would have had a more democratic as well as a more legitimate process of European constitution making. Electing conventioneers and re-opening the convention is probably a successful way to...

While in political debates identity is often considered as given, scholars of social sciences concentrate on the formation of new and particularly transnational identities. Insights from nationalism reveal mechanisms of identity formation but European integration has taken its own way. We...

Due to collective action problems, the Eurozone is stuck in a sub-optimal macro-policy mix of too expansionary fiscal policy and too restrictive monetary policy. Although the Lisbon Strategy pays lip service to macro-economic policy coordination, no mechanisms, institutions or effective rules...

The EU’s foreign and security policy is often criticised for being undemocratic. The article addresses this contention from the perspective of deliberative democracy. The focus is on the procedural qualities of the second pillar decision-making processes as it is not only the quality of the...

Contributions in the normative debate on the legitimacy of the EU are frequently based on two premises: The first premise is that the principles of the democratic constitutional state represent the normative ideal of political rule in the nation-state, but cannot justify the legitimacy of the...

In this article, I outline an analytical framework allowing for an assessment of the democratic legitimacy of the decision-making system of the EU’s second pillar with reference to five criteria. The criteria are developed on the basis of a discourse-theoretical reading of a deliberative...

The December judgments of the ECJ in Viking and Laval on the compatibility of national collective labour law with European prerogatives have caused a quite heated critical debate. This paper seeks to put this debate in constitutional perspectives. In its first part it reconstructs in legal...

In this paper we suggest a research agenda beyond the legitimation strategies of the CIDEL project (i.e. legitimation through outcomes, values and rights). The European Union has developed beyond that of international organisation and derivative democratic construct. But the step from negative...

This paper proposes to assess the representative quality of European Union decision-making by way of a micro-approach which traces the effectiveness of the mechanisms of representation that connect the European peoples to the decision-making process. In particular, it proposes to distinguish...

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate about the role of norms in EU foreign policy by looking at EU policies in the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the making of a Consolidated Maritime Labour Convention (ILOMLC). Given the economic importance of shipping for many EU members,...