Euro Crisis Management Measures and EU Constitutionalism: An Appraisal

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Bibliographic Information

Other Title
  • ユーロ危機対応とEU立憲主義

Abstract

The paper discusses basic constitutional problems that remain in the series of EU and non-EU measures for managing the Euro Crisis adopted by the EU and its Member States. The measures discussed in the paper include the amendment of Article 136 TFEU, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) Treaty, the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance (TSCG), and the so-called 6 Pack and 2 Pack measures. The present paper classifies these measures according to their aims, contents and their legal forms (whether they are adopted within the EU legal system or not) in order to analyse their legal coherence to the existing EU legal system.<br/> Based on the classification and the analysis of the coherence, the paper argues that the ESM Treaty, above all, creates an anomaly to the basic principle of ensuring the effective democratic control and oversight over EU policy making: the ESM is created because it is indispensable to the stabilisation of the EU’s monetary policy (Euro) and yet the ESM is created outside of the EU legal system, and as a result, it is left effectively unaccountable to the EU institutions (especially to the European Parliament and to the European Commission). The anomaly is problematic in light of democratic development of the EU and its Member States: the ESM Council would impose strict conditions on a particular Euro Member State in assisting its budgetary crisis, and the conditions imposed would effectively restrict the Member State’s budgetary autonomy, while it would do so without any democratic accountability, neither at national nor European level.<br/> Although the fact that the Euro Member States managed to agree to establish the ESM itself may be taken as a sign of “solidarity” between the states, the paper argues that the ESM would not promote the sense of “solidarity” between the peoples of Europe; it would rather promote distrust among the peoples of Europe to the ESM and the Euro systems because the ESM institution is free from democratic control at national as well as at European level and yet the conditions it imposes would directly affect the lives of the peoples in the assisted and assisting states. Those who try to make an analogy of the ESM institution with that of the IMF to justify the technical rationality of the ESM are overlooking the political context of European integration in which the ESM and the Euro system are created and maintained. The system is not just for the economic stability but also for the promotion of peoples’ identity as living in a European public space. The paper stresses the anomaly in the ESM in order to indicate the constitutionally sound direction of reform for the EU in the near future.

Journal

  • EU Studies in Japan

    EU Studies in Japan 2014 (34), 128-154, 2014

    The European Union Studies Association-Japan

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