Joachim Jens Hesse - Böcker

During recent years, constitutional issues have claimed increasing attention in many European countries. The social and political transformations in Central and Eastern Europe have thrust constitutional debates to the fore. This book looks at the needs and claims of constitutional adaption and reconstruction in contemporary Europe. The range and complexity of the constitutional challenge in Europe, which differs markedly form one country to another, is fully explored. The contributions to this book illustrate certain aspects of this challenge as it is perceived in various European countries and of the different responses to it. The problems discussed are approached from the constitutional legal aspects, in others from those of political science.The different tasks facing Western, and East and Central Europe are considered in some detail. In Western Europe, constitutional debate has assumed greater prominence on account of closer economic and political integration within the European Community and internal changes within particular countries. In the East, far-reaching constitutional reconstruction has been an imperative, a task which has had to be tackled in the difficult and uncertain conditions of radical, social and economic transformation.The book also address some of the issues of political theory presented by the notion of liberal constitutionalism itself and throws light on the direction of future change.

This constitutional and institutional development of the European Community, and federalism in particular, are widely and intensely debated. The issue of federalism has proved to be divisive and misunderstood. This book provides a critical reappraisal of the political, economic, and socio-cultural potential of current federal political-institutional arrangements. It includes both an analysis of their necessary preconditions as well as evaluation of their advantages and disadvantages compared with other forms of state organisation.The authors examine the issue at the level of the Community, the member states, and the states of Central and Eastern Europe reflecting the increasing interdependence and interplay of these three levels; nation states in all parts of Europe influencing only one another and the Community, and being influenced by it. The book concludes with an overall assessment of the federalizing processes at work in Europe, both at the Community and nation state level, and pints out the problems, paradoxes and likely outcomes of these processes.

In July 2003, the President of the Constitutional Convention, the former French President Giscard d'Estaing, presented to the Heads of State and Government the draft of a "Constitution for Europe". This volume documents the unusual process of constitution-giving in a meticulous analysis: from the establishment of the Convention via the Intergovernmental Conference to the current attempts at ratifying the Treaty. This includes a close look at the negative outcome of the referenda in France and the Netherlands, and leads to an attempt at coping with the current crisis by reviewing the logic of the integration process and the ways and means to move ahead.As a result of an all-encompassing monitoring, the approach, the process and the results of the Convention's work as well as of the following attempts at consensus-building are scrutinized in great detail. The book provides, therefore, one of the most profound analyses of this crucial step in European integration