Part IX Trends, Ch.57 The European Union’s Unresolved Constitution

In the summer of 2007 the European Council announced its decision to ‘abandon’ the ‘constitutional concept’ it had endorsed so optimistically only four years previously on receiving a draft of a first Constitutional Treaty for the European Union from the Convention on the Future of Europe.1 After the ‘no’ votes to the 2005 French and Dutch referenda on the (duly promulgated) Constitutional Treaty, and in recognition of the document’s dubious popularity and unratified status in various other member states, Europe’s leaders eventually opted to jettison the brave new...