Unamendable Constitutional Provisions and the European Common Constitutional Heritage: A Comparison Among Three Waves of Constitutionalism

Abstract

When debating which constitutional values are shared among European countries, scholars increasingly refer to the European Common Constitutional Heritage, which is a common set of values defined through their constitutional evolution and thanks to the role played by supranational regional organizations, such as the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Union (EU). This essay discusses the interplay between said common heritage and the unamendable provisions in constitutions approved in Italy and Germany after World War II and in Romania and Czech Republic after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Given that European values crossed continental borders thanks to regional forms of cooperation, this essay also analyzes the Constitutions of Morocco and Tunisia in order to understand whether the unamendable constitutional provisions of each country, introduced after the so-called Arab Spring, have been influenced by and are consistent with the European Common Constitutional Heritage.