The Common European Constitutional Culture

Its Sources, Limits and Identity

The authors focus on the interrelations between the sense of individual identity and the sense of national identity. Their aim is to find a common European legal culture. The processes of Europeanization have been proceeding on the legal level, wherein the CJEU took a prominent role, and on the level of intergovernmental decision-making. In the aftermath, the EU may be comprehended in terms of the rights-based union and problem-solving entity although the emergence of the values-based community has been stymied and the transnational public spheres are rather thin. This caused a democratic deficit and provoked debates about the EU as a post-democratic polity. There are disputes whether this oddity of the EU indicates its nobility or perversion. But the fact remains that the Eurocitizens in their post-sovereign states became lost in the Hegelian extreme terms of the universal-formal rights. Their individual interests made them especially exposed to the shocks of the economic crisis. This makes it necessary to address the issue of the common European constitutional culture.