EU crises governance and ‘evolutionary constitutionalism’ in a multipolar world of ‘permacrises’

Abstract

Europe’s multilevel democratic, republican and cosmopolitan constitutionalism links (e.g. in Arts 3, 21 TEU) internal and external EU governance responses to the ‘polycrises’ and geopolitical rivalries among democracies and authoritarian power monopolies (e.g. in China, Iran and Russia). The realities of climate change and power politics entail ‘permacrises’ weakening European competitiveness vis-à-vis ‘under-regulated’, neoliberal competitors and subsidized state enterprises. Both neoliberal US deregulation prioritizing libertarian ‘negative freedoms’ for business-driven market regulation, and authoritarian aggression and state-capitalism risk undermining the EU ‘homogeneity commitments’ to a ‘competitive social market economy’, ‘sustainable development’ and protection of human rights in a rules-based ‘European society’ (Article 2 TEU). EU law and its ‘ordoliberal DNA’ require limiting market failures, governance failures and ‘constitutional failures’; they justify interpreting EU regulatory powers (e.g. in Arts 114, 352 TFEU) and emergency powers (e.g. in Article 122 TFEU) as enabling ‘ordoliberal EU policy responses’ to financial, health, competitiveness, energy, environmental, social and security crises. The financial agreements complementing the limited budgetary powers of the EU for the Next Generation EU pandemic recovery program, like the EU financial and military assistance for Ukraine against Russian aggression, offer precedents for future EU emergency governance. EU treaty amendments facilitating common EU financing of public goods (like ‘de-risking’ of supply chains avoiding their ‘weaponization’ by authoritarian governments, enhancing European security, responding to climate change and the ‘ICT revolution’ by greening and digitalizing the European economy) remain democratically preferable; but their lengthy procedures and uncertain outcomes must not impede existential crises governance inside and beyond the EU.