Theoretical Perspectives on EU Constitutional Law

Abstract: This chapter, which will appear in the forthcoming Research Handbook on EU Constitutional Law (edited by Leonard Besselink, Nicola Lupo and Mattias Wendel), provides an overview of the development of EU constitutional theory - the field of scholarly inquiry concerned with the broader and deeper questions of the basic concepts of EU constitutional law, in particular the nature of the EU, its legal order and its various elements. It argues that while claims about the constitutional nature of the European integration project have been made since its early beginnings, a truly original constitutional theory of the EU emerged much later, coinciding with the establishment of the European University Institute and its first major project, Integration through Law, in the late 1970s. The chapter concludes with an overview of the main constitutional theories of the EU today, based on earlier research conducted as part of IMAGINE.

Keywords: EU constitutional theory, intellectual history of EU constitutionalism, integration through law