The European Union (EU) faces a dilemma trading off communal desire for self-rule against functional demands for integration. The public constraining dissensus towards further integration that has emerged as a consequence of ever more authority transfers to the EU inhibits swift institutional adaptation to functional problems of self-reinforcing interdependence. This is bound to lead to systemic crises of functionality, such as the euro crisis, in which European decision-making elites either resort to emergency measures to circumvent the democratic dissent or face institutional breakdown. Given the prohibitive costs of inaction, institutional reform is asserted by way of exceptionalist practice which may solve immediate functional problems but at the same time dramatically decreases democratic input and throughput legitimacy. This, in turn, spurs even more Euroscepticism and feeds populist denunciation.
The paper argues that none of the main currently available reform proposals (disintegration, federalization, differentiation) is able to effectively do away with this self-reinforcing and self-undermining cycle. Disintegration and federalization only see one side of the dilemma, potentially reinforcing the problems on other dimension, respectively. Differentiation, by contrast, is unfeasible in areas of extreme interdependence (and thus high externalities). These however, are precisely the areas in which the dilemma is most critical. Accepting the need for speedy integrative adjustments that defy regular democratic procedures does not mean that the resulting emergency regime has to operate outside the law or possess unconstrained authority, however. Drawing on constitutional theory of emergency powers, the paper proposes to design an ‘emergency constitution’ that reduces the negative effects of crisis governance on democratic self-rule to a minimum.
