The contested 'Constitution' of the EU and the quest for ever-democratic constitutionalism

AutorPablo José Castillo Ortiz
CargoLecturer in Law at the University of Sheffield
Páginas19-30
P A N Ó P T I C A
PANÓPTICA/STALS INTERNATIONAL BOOK SYMPOSIUM
In: DELLEDONNE, Giacomo; SIQUEIRA, Julio Pinheiro Faro Homem de (ed.). “The tangled complexity of the
EU constitutional process. A Symposium”. Panóptica, vol. 10, n. 1, pp. 19-30, Jan./ Jun. 2015.
19
The contested ‘Constitution’ of the EU and the quest for ever-
democratic constitutionalism
Pablo José Castillo Ortiz
1
1. Introduction
When Giuseppe Martinico published his piece ‘The Tangled Complexity of the EU
Constitutional Process’ (Martinico, 2012), the Spanish Revista de Estudios Políticos honoured
me asking me to write a short review of the book. In my review (Castillo, 2013), I called the
book by the prolific Martinico an excellent piece of research. No doubt, it is so. However, at
the end of the review I ventured some critical comments, and among them I suggested the idea
that maybe European Union law scholars including Martinico - had gone too far in taking for
granted that the European Union has a ‘Constitution’. When Prof. Martinico read my review,
instead of complaining about my comment, he thanked me for my words and, in particular, he
enthusiastically asked me to develop my critique in further detail. Soon after this I received an
invitation by the journal Panóptica and STALS to write an article using Martinico’s work as a
starting point.
Given the nature of this invited contribution, the political character of the ideas I am to
develop, and the limitations of space, I think that the most reasonable option is to slightly
deviate from the usual style of academic writing. Instead of aiming at the drafting of neutralistic,
positivist paper, I shall defend in the following pages an academic stance which is admittedly
political, in the sense that is both politically and normatively motivated. This article starts with
one premise and then develops two basic claims. The premise is that the word ‘Constitution’
should be defined in normative terms and with reference to core democratic values. The first
claim of this article is that the European Union is at some point in its unfinished process of
constitutionalization. The second claim is that, paradoxically, some critiques to the European
integration process have boosted a deeper and more democratic constitutionalism for the Union.
To develop my argument, this article is structured as follows. Following this introduction
(1), in the second section I will summarize Martinico’s concept of ‘EU constitutionalism’ (2).
1
Lecturer in Law at the University of Sheffield. I want to thank Paul Cardwell for his u seful comments on an
earlier version of this manuscript. All omissions and mistakes are of the sole responsibility of the a uthor.

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