Is Constitutional Politics Like Politics ‘at Home’? The Case of the EU Constitution
| Published date | 01 December 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00697.x |
| Date | 01 December 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Is Constitutional Politics like Politics ‘At
Home’? The Case of the EU Constitution
Paul Pennings Christine Arnold
VU University Amsterdam Universiteit Maastricht
A large number of delegates from different institutional levels within the EU have achieved a remarkable
consensus on a draft constitution. Has this consensus been made possible because the nationally pre-
dominant left–right divide was only weakly present during the deliberations of the delegates? Left–right
differences have been analysed by means of a content analysis on submitted documents during the
European Convention. The data analysis confirms our assumption that the left–right distinction was
relevant, although not very dominant. The draft constitution did not take a mean position on left and
right issues, but in fact puts more emphasis on substantial goals related to both left and right, giving an
equal weight to both anti-poles. However, if we exclude the Charter of Human Rights, the draft
constitution appears to be strongly tilted to the right. The analysis also shows that party family differences
did affect the process of coalition building during the Convention,since more than half of all documents
have been submitted together with at least one member of the same party family and/or with one family
member close by.Our analysis also indicates that the process of consensus building was enhanced by the
absence of many extremist and new parties during the Convention. This may have enhanced agreement
on the Constitution, but later it became problematic for the domestic democratic process and for the
acceptance of the Constitution in some countries, such as France and the Netherlands, especially since
some of the excluded parties have actively and successfully mobilised voters to vote against the
Constitution.
Since 2002 a large number of national and supranational actors have been
involved in the constitution-building process of the European Convention on the
future of Europe and the subsequent Intergovernmental Conference (IGC).
Representatives of political parties from both national parliaments and the Euro-
pean Parliament (EP) were among the central players during the Convention.
The main task of the Convention was to draw up a draft treaty establishing a
European Constitution – an endeavour clearly constituting a landmark in the
process of European integration (König and Hug, 2006).
A study of the European Convention may help us to understand the position of
Europeanised political parties within an enlarged European Union (EU).While
most theories on party behaviour and preferences focus on domestic political
parties within national arenas, it is important to add a European component to
that since parties are being increasingly Europeanised.Nowadays most established
parties are players in a two-level game. The Convention offers an experimental
European arena which affects the preferences and behaviour of participating
political parties, which are weakly explained by factors that play an important role
at home, in particular the divide between left and right. Our central research
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00697.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2008 VOL 56, 789–806
© 2008The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
question is to what degree actual preferences of the actors can be explained by the
traditional left–right cleavage in a situation where national parties are moved up
to a European level,with respective repercussions on their policy preferences due
to the institutional context in which they negotiate.
This study analyses the political positions and alignments during the Convention.
This angle is special because EU constitution building is mostly discussed in legal
and technical terms and is consequently presented as an apolitical process. By
introducing an ideological dimension (left vs. right and par ty family differences)
one can better understand why the Constitution came into being rather
smoothly, while at the same time its acceptance by member states turned out to
be cumbersome (at least in some cases, such as a‘no’ vote resulting from referenda
in France and the Netherlands). At the supranational level consensus has been
reached, but among member states this consensus is not that easily accomplished.
The analysis confirms our hypothesis that left–right differences are less important
during the Convention than they normally are at the domestic level. But it also
shows that these differences are relevant enough to include them in any analysis
of cleavages that divide representatives while deciding on constitutional reforms.
The Set-Up of the European Convention
The Convention included all main actors that are involved in decision making in
the EU: the fifteen member states and the former accession countries each with
one representative of the heads of state or government, the Commission with two
representatives, the European Parliament with sixteen delegates and the national
parliaments each with two representatives. The accession countries did not have
a voting right on the Convention’s draft proposal.From all delegates and observ-
ers only 66 had the right to vote, namely one governmental and two parliamen-
tary representatives from each member state (König et al., 2006).
The purpose of the European Convention was to find solutions for institutional
arrangements of a widening and deepening EU. The Laeken Declaration specifies
57 questions regarding policy instruments,democracy, transparency and efficiency
in the EU. A Praesidium, consisting of the Convention Chairman (Giscard
d’Estaing) andVice-Chairmen (Giuliano Amato and Jean-Luc Dehaene) and nine
members drawn from the Convention, had specific roles in preparing draft
agendas for plenary sessions and in overseeing the activities and organisation of
the Forum. The two-level policy formation process from the draft proposal of the
European Convention started in February 2002 and led to a document in June
2003 that was finally adopted by the IGC in October 2004. The Convention
draft consolidated all previous treaties into a single agreement with four parts: the
division of competences, the institutional structure, procedures and voting rules
(Part 1), the Charter of Fundamental Rights (Part 2), EU policies (Part 3) and
general provisions (Part 4).
The Constitution has been approved by both the Convention and the IGC, but
has not yet been ratified by all member states.Although the Constitution has been
790 PAUL PENNINGS AND CHRISTINE ARNOLD
© 2008The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2008, 56(4)
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