The Euro Crisis and the Constitutional Disorder of the European Union

The Lisbon Treaty is the outcome of several constitutional compromises: between different political (supranational and intergovernmental) views of the Union; between member states engaged in building a European Monetary Union (EMU) and those allowed to opt-out; and within the euro-area itself, between a centralized approach to monetary policy and decentralized economic, fiscal and budgetary policies, constrained, however, by formalized rules of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). The euro crisis has dramatically called into question these multiple constitutional compromises. The balance between supranational and intergovernmental views has been upset in favor of the former; the approval of new intergovernmental treaties has made crystal clear the separation of interests between the EMU and the opt-out member states; and the inefficacy voluntary coordination between national governments in dealing with the euro crisis has led to a further judicialization of the governance of the common currency. The conditionality attached to financial help has created an unprecedented cleavage between creditor and debtor member states. The European Union has thus arrived at the point of constitutional collapse. A paradigm shift is required to deal with this disorder: recognition of the end of the unitary project of integration, of the need to give the euro-area autonomous resources and political authority, and of the need to structure the latter in line with the asymmetrical nature of the union.