Conclusions: The adhesion of new member states to the European Union and the European constitution

Abstract

In dealing with the problem of the adhesion of new member States to the European Union and with the question of the Constitution of the Union at the same time, we have to adopt two different points of view, looking, on one side, at the legal order, and, on the other side, taking into account the internal system of law of the interested States. Moreover, all three major items have to be considered which are respectively studied in the three parts of this book: democratic institutions, constitutionalism and rule of law. The topic of the European Constitution and that of the accession of new Member States to the Union, as far as they are connected, are at the center of a knot of different strands of research relating to some of the main questions of the constitutional studies: for instance, sovereignty, alternative models of direct or deliberative and parliamentary democracy, coexistence of parliamentary and judicial making of law, national and supra-national protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, judicial review of legislation and its justification in the frame of a democratic order, and so on. Therefore the task of drawing the conclusions of the debate raised by the papers collected in the book is extremely complex and engaging. Complying with it in a satisfactory way would require more space and more time than the editors are ready to allow the author of these notes. I shall limitmy attention to a few key issues and I hope that such a summary presentation will offer an idea of the conclusions reached during the workshop while promoting new research which could be started on the basis of these conclusions. As a matter of fact, some of the hypotheses concerning the mutual interference between the adhesion of the new member States to the European Union and the adoption of the Treaty establishing the Constitution of the Union have to be tested in the framework of the future developments which we might be able to envisage, but certainly not in the position of describing with exactitude. © 2006 Springer.