A Project that Makes Sense, but Can It Work?

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The author agrees entirely with the premises adhered to by the drafters of the European Constitution project outlined by Frank Vibert. The Treaty of Maastricht has to be revised according to a pattern of explicit constitutional principles, known and taken up by public opinion in the various countries of Europe. After all, the project clearly sets out to be not a «rationalisation» or possible offshoot of the European institutional and constitutional model pursued since the Treaty of Rome, but rather a deliberate «breakaway» from it. The proposal is undoubtedly an attractive one. It also happens to make sense. Numerous doubts still linger, however, as to its feasibility. It is hard to understand, for example, why legitimisation through member states should allow the Union to remain forever and for always, positively (setting limits) and negatively (setting itself limits), within the desired limits. One wonders whether the Europe designed here can win the consensus needed for the text to be approved; and, if it were to be approved, whether it can achieve a consensus of prevailing European public opinion such as to be applied in the way its promoters intend.