The Eurozone Crisis: A Constitutional Analysis

• Author: Anna Sting
• Position: PhD Candidate, Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam (the Netherlands)
• Pages: 97-99

Anna Sting, ‘The Eurozone Crisis: A Constitutional Analysis’ (2015)

31(81) Utrecht Journal of International and European Law 97, DOI:

http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/ujiel.dc

BOOK REVIEW

The Eurozone Crisis: A Constitutional Analysis

The Eurozone Crisis: A Constitutional Analysis

, Tuori, K. and Tuori, K.,

Cambridge University Press, pp. vvi–286, Hardcover £55, Paperback £19.99,

2014, ISBN: 9781107056558

Anna Sting*

Keywords: Eurocrisis; Economic governance; EU public law; European Union; Constitutional law

“Every power comes through crisis” has long been a motif of European integration. The financial and sover-

eign debt crises, which have shaken the European Union (EU) in recent years, are at first glance no different.

Treaty reforms, intergovernmental treaties such as the Fiscal Compact and the Treaty Establishing a Euro-

pean Stability Mechanism (ESM Treaty) have significantly altered the constitutional landscape of the EU and

its Member States. The crisis has also inspired many European legal scholars to critically analyse the EU’s

system of economic governance, as have other events throughout the history of the European Union, from

the Empty Chair Crisis to the referenda in the aftermath of the Treaty of Maastricht and the failure of the

Constitution for the European Union. What does seem to be different is the way in which scholars approach

the issue of the Eurozone crisis. Instead of a purely legal perspective on economic governance, European

legal scholars have realised that in order to understand and analyse the euro crisis, interdisciplinarity is the

word of the moment.

The authors of “The Eurozone Crisis: A Constitutional Analysis” are no exception. Their monograph is

based on the authors’ assumption that constitutional law and economics are closely interrelated and there-

fore need to be treated as such. Therefore, their concept of constitutionalism in the EU also varies from the

common notion of a purely legal document creating rights for citizens and obligations for the state. It rather

focusses on an understanding of a constitution as a representation of a legal culture and a hidden social

theory that develops through constitutional speech acts by courts and a constitutional legislator. This rather

loose concept of a constitution also allows the authors to identify the European Treaties as a constitution.

However, their introduction also puts forward the idea that in fact, the EU does not have a unified constitu-

tion, but is rather built upon a set of different constitutions:

1) An economic constitution (microeconomic and macroeconomic constitution)

2) A juridical constitution

3) A political constitution

4) A security constitution

5) A social constitution

In application, the introduction to the book reads a bit like European integration theory. The authors argue

that the five constitutions they discern can also be assigned to certain periods in European integration, what

they call “pacemaker” constitutions, which have driven integration across the continent. On that accord, the

Treaties of Rome and the European Economic Community were characterised by a microeconomic constitu-

tion, creating free movement rights for individuals on the one hand, and competition law aiming at creating

a level playing field for business on the other, while the Treaty of Maastricht was a result of a ubiquity of the

political constitution (creation of the EU), the Treaty of Amsterdam a sign of a preponderance of a security con-

stitution (Common Foreign and Security Policy), while the euro crisis has brought the economic constitution

in its macroeconomic form back to the foreground. Based on this notion of constitutionalism the authors enter

* PhD Candidate, Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam (the Netherlands).

UTRECHT JOURN

AL OF

INTERNATIONAL AND EUROPEAN LAW