THE FAILURE OF EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION

The debate about the failure of the European Constitution has tended to polarize many scholars regarding the reasons why the European Constitution failed. However, having looked backwards into history in order to receive a more general overview a remaining puzzle is still there. In constitutional scholarship many efforts have been spent in trying to detach the concept of constitution from the nation-state framework and put it into a transnational concept even though in legal and political rhetoric the constitution appears to be linked with the nation-state only. The process in establishing a constitution for Europe encountered a debacle when the Netherlands and France refused the proposal. Scholars have debated this issue more than enough but still many questions remain unanswered regarding the failure of the European Constitution. From the documents and articles consulted no single narrative fully explains the failure of the constitutional project that’s why the paper is striving to bridge this gap and give another perspective in this direction, even though there is an arsenal of reasons that explains the failure.