The EU Constitution: Unity, Division and Reform — Paul Craig

11. 9. 2024

This episode of The IR thinker revisits the making and unmaking of the 2004 EU Constitutional Treaty with Professor Paul Craig, tracing the work of the Convention on the Future of Europe, the politics of drafting and ratification, and the reasons why the project ultimately failed. The discussion also addresses whether the European Union needs a constitution at all, what form such a document might take, and how the constitutional question continues to shape debates on European integration today.

Paul Craig

Paul Craig is a British legal scholar specialising in administrative and European Union law. He served as Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford from 1998 to 2019, is now Emeritus Professor, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1998.

Publications:

EU Membership: Formal and Substantive Dimensions

The Evolution of EU Law (3rd edn)

EU Law: Text, Cases, and Materials (8th edn)

Content

00:00 - Introduction
02:32 - The Role of the Convention on the Future of Europe
13:46 - The Emergence of the 2004 Constitutional Treaty
27:34 - Reaching Consensus on the EU Constitution
30:41 - Influence of External Actors on the Convention
33:28 - Reasons Behind the Failure of the EU Constitutional Treaty
51:09 - Was the EU Constitution Intended to Supersede National Constitutions?
57:56 - Does the EU Need a Constitution?
01:04:22 - Areas for Further Research on the EU Constitutional Question