ABSTRACT

The normative vision of the CIDEL project is a rights-based post-national Union, in which the ideas of democracy, fundamental rights and the rule of law are reconstructed at the European level. This vision is compelling for all those who see themselves in a Kantian tradition of thinking about law, democracy and society. But the peoples of the Member States of the European Union (EU) are not – as we can guess not only from the failure of the Constitutional Treaty for Europe, but also from how the rejected Treaty was subsequently handled by Europe’s political leaders – willing to endorse this vision of supranational law and democracy. As to the reasons, the underlying hypothesis of this chapter is that, to put it bluntly, socio-economics has a role to play in the analyses. And the relevant socio-economic structure is, first and foremost, the hierarchy between the Member States, which are competitors in an integrated market, with their national governments serving as their executives.