'Lost in Translation' or, How Political Preferences Regarding the Future of Europe Are 'Translated' into Constitutional Arrangements

Abstract

The 'Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe' (henceforth 'European Constitutional Treaty' or ECT) was signed at the Intergovernmental Conference in Rome on October 29th, 2004, validated (till April 2007) by 18 out of 27 Member States and rejected in the referendums held in France and Holland in May 2005.

In order to evaluate the ECT, however, one needs to know where the EU is and should be. It can hardly be denied however that often the estimation of what the European Union is and should be is inextricably interrelated with what the evaluator wants it to be. Hence, the question 'what is the European Union?' is often answered not on the basis of sound empirical observation, but of political and normative preferences. Moreover, on the level of its linguistic expression the transition from 'Sein' to 'Sollen' and vice-versa reveals the inevitable subjectivity involved in the fact that each interpreter 'reads' the phenomena 'out there' and 'translates' them into empirical or normative terms. Corresponding to her being in favor of one or another EU vision, one ‘sees’ in the EU what she wishes to see and confirms her preferences. Thus she often 'translates' her political choice into a normative judgment, covered under the cloak of empirical observation.

Taken all the above seriously would mean that every evaluation is conditional on the point of view of the evaluator and is situated in a specific intellectual context. Our present attempt to evaluate the ECT is situated within the democratic paradigm, that is, we will focus on institutional arrangements of the Treaty, not being confined in a neo-functional mode of legitimization.

Keywords: European Constitutional Treaty, European Constitution, EU Institutions