Editorial: Ratification, The EU Constitution, and EU Legal Scholarship

• Date: 01 May 2005
• Author: Francis Snyder
• Published date: 01 May 2005
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0386.2005.00259.x

Editorial: Ratif‌ication, The EU

Constitution, and EU Legal Scholarship

Francis Snyder

Where are we with ratif‌ication of the EU Constitutional Treaty? What does this mean

for EU legal scholarship? Spain has just approved the Constitution, but with a disap-

pointing turnout. According to early reports, about 42% of eligible voters participated

in the referendum, even less than the 45% who voted in the June 2004 European

Parliament elections. More than 75% of participants voted ‘yes’, about 17% voted ‘no’,

and 6% abstained. Partisans of a ‘yes’ will be relieved that the Constitution has made

it past this important hurdle, even though, given the importance of Spain as the f‌irst

large country to hold a referendum, they had hoped for a considerably larger turnout

that could show the way for other Member States. They are understandably dismayed

by the fact that the Constitution was approved by only slightly more than 30% of eli-

gible Spanish voters. But all Europeans should welcome the use of the democratic

process of a referendum to put the Constitutional Treaty to European citizens. Taking

all EU Member States together, according to Le Monde (19 February 2005, p. 3), about

half of European citizens say they favour the Treaty, while 16% are opposed, and more

than one-third are undecided, a category which includes ‘f‌loating’ voters, those simply

not expressing a preference, and the uninterested. By the time this issue of the

European Law Journal is published, these f‌igures will be more concrete, as other

Member States will have completed or be on the eve of referenda, including France,

The Netherlands, and Luxembourg, while Germany, Latvia, and Malta will have

decided by parliamentary procedures.

What does this—and the general context of the process of deliberating on the EU

constitution—mean for EU legal scholarship? This issue of the European Law Journal

is an instructive example. It suggests that the political conf‌lict about the EU constitu-

tion may be especially propitious for innovative scholarship. We can characterise the

articles in this issue as ref‌lections on certain key themes in the debate on the EU Con-

stitution. We can also say that they try to contribute to the constitutional debate by

proposing new ways of thinking about several classic issues, and by developing a the-

oretical understanding of them. Is it going too far to say that long-standing questions

about the views of ordinary people about European integration and the conundrum of

popular participation in referenda have stimulated legal scholars to try to conceive of

new approaches to old questions? We can certainly say that new approaches to old

questions often have the merit of raising new questions and contributing to the

development of innovative theoretical frameworks, which lay the foundations for future

European Law Journal, Vol.11, No. 3, May 2005, pp. 259–261.

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