Italian Constitution and European Constitution

Testo disponibile solo in lingua inglese.
The first part of the essay examines the issues raised by the overlapping of the Italian and the European constitutions. The European system asserts the general principles of competition and the prohibition of state aid to enterprises (as well as specific obligations in monetary and budget matters). It thus tends to dismantle – and always will do – the social democratic mould of the Italian system. This is to be regarded as perfectly constitutional in so far as the Constitution itself allows for a neoliberal version of the welfare state. The question of the so-called «counterlimits» to «limitations» of sovereignty which article 11 of the Constitution authorises Italy to acknowledge to a supranational organisation such as the European Union holds no practical weight in this respect. In view of the world political and economic situation on the threshold of the twenty-first century, we have to champion the Union at all costs. In the future, in fact, international competition will be increasingly between large continental blocs. The second part of the essay analyses the consequence of this argument in terms both of the Treaty of Maastricht as it stands, and of the modifications proposed by the European Constitutional Group, from the theoretical point of view and with regard to their practical applicability.