ABSTRACT
The final text of ‘The Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe’, approved by the heads of state and government (18 June 2004) and formally signed in Rome (29 October 2004), is now under discussion in the member states. It promotes a European Union based on the will of both citizens and states to build a rather particular polity, to which competences are conferred on the base of common interests and which shall remain open to all those European states sharing and promoting – though respectfully of different national identities – some general values, among which are economic, social and territorial cohesion. The act of fixing through a constitutional chart what is still an ongoing process has produced more than a few fearful comments. These comments have been not only among EU citizens, but also among scholars, many of whom remark the risk of a step reducing to some extent that ‘opacity’ (Follesdal, 2004) which has, until now, characterized EU, thus closing prematurely a process of institutional imagination still searching its objectives and meanings. The identification of competences to be constitutionally exercised by member states or by the EU institutions, and those to be shared as well as the definition of roles, territories, objectives, structure of such a particular polity seem a contradiction in terms to that flexibility and complexity which has produced the EU as we all know it.
