È ancora possibile riconciliare costituzionalismo democratico-sociale e integrazione europea?

Abstract

Abstract: Can Democratic and Social Constitutionalism be still reconciled with European integration? – Contrary to opinions regarding national sovereignty and the EU as antithetic, the article examines the potential for their complementary relationship by drawing from the seminal analysis by Alan Milward. It restates that originally the process of European integration was instrumental to the pursuit of the foundational commitments inspiring national democratic and social constitutional self-government and that only with the crisis of the social state in mid 1970s was European integration re-oriented to transform in neoliberal terms democratic and social constitutionalism. As in the most recent evolutionary phase this trend is maintained and radicalized, Milward’s idea of conceiving European integration with a view to rescue national constitutional self-government may inspire attempts at redressing the contents and structures of EU law.