Openness, Purposiveness, and the Realignment of the EU and the Democratic and Social Constitutional State

Abstract Contrary to predominant European constitutional narratives assuming the alignment between the European Union legal framework and national constitutional orders, this Article points at the current misalignment between the prevailingly purposive European Union institutional order and the prevailingly open character of the Democratic and Social Constitutional State. The evolutionary trajectories leading to the current status quo are examined by distinguishing an age of openness, in which the institutional frameworks of both the European Economic Communities and the Democratic and Social Constitutional State lent themselves to a range of competing legislative renderings, from an age of purposiveness opened by the Treaty of Maastricht, in which a neoliberal policy agenda was gradually entrenched in the Treaties, with the result of undermining the adaptability and inclusiveness of European public law structures. To counter this development, this Article identifies in a drastic deconstitutionalization of the Economic and Monetary Union the key move to favor the realignment of the European Union and the Democratic and Social Constitutional State.