Original scientific paper
The Causes of Failure of the European Constitution From the Perspective of the Constitution-Making Process
Robert Podolnjak
; Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The basic argument of the article is that the main causes of failure of the European Constitution stem from an inadequate preparation and implementation of a complex procedure of constitution-making for a federation of countries on a continental scale. This process includes the issues of temporal aspects of constitutionmaking, the subject of constitution-making, the text of the constitution, the strategy of constitutional ratifi cation and the constitution-makers themselves. The principal causes of failure of the European Constitution will be presented in the form of certain preliminary assumptions, which will then be examined in the light of certain comparative experiences of constitution-making in two federal systems – the American and the Swiss system. The primary mistakes of the European constitution-making are refl ected in the lack of an appropriate moment for making the constitution, in the vagueness of the document in terms of its constitutional or contractual quality, in the creation of a text of the Constitution which is completely incomprehensible to the average citizen, in the making of the Constitution without a vision or ambition, in the complete lack of any strategy of ratifi cation of the Constitution, in the insistence on the direct participation of the people in the adoption of the Constitution, which is legally and politically considered primarily an international treaty, and in badly managed media presentation and defence of the Constitution before the European public. The most important mistakes, crucial to the failure of the Constitution, are the ambivalent approach of the European constitutionmakers to the mode of ratifi cation of the Constitution, and their disregard of the constitution-making experience of other federal countries.
Keywords
European Constitution; comparative constitution-making; European constitution-making; American constitution-making; Swiss constitution-making
Hrčak ID:
38269
URI
Publication date:
15.5.2007.
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