EUROGOV
No. N-07-03
Christian Joerges
Integration through de-legislation? An irritated heckler
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Published: July 17, 2007
Abstract
This paper is about the difficult relationship between law
and governance in the European Union. The turn to governance
which the Prodi Commission has forcefully propagated is a
continuation of much older developments. By means of these
developments the European Community (now Union) has sought
to compensate for the inadequacies found within its institutional
design (in particular, within the Community Method); a design
which has had constantly to be adapted to the ever more intense
and complex regulatory needs of the integration project. These
constant institutional innovations were functional necessities
and the turn to governance seems to be irresistible and irreversible.
Such innovation, however, is not easily reconcilable with
the Union’s commitment to the rule of law, or with the
very idea of law-mediated, politically accountable rule. These
tensions are addressed in two steps. The first concerns the
national level and is a mainly methodological reminder: many
of the governing techniques that are today defined as governance
can also be found within national systems and were, furthermore,
the subject of intensive debate in the 80s within discussion
on proceduralizing and reflexive methodologies which sought
to capture the specifics of a – then so perceived –
post-interventionist law. The second step concerns the European
Union. Here, a methodological approach is insufficient. It
must instead be accompanied by a re-conceptualisation of European
law as a new type of supranational conflict of laws. This
law seeks to realize what the Constitutional Treaty had called
the “motto of the Union”, namely a reconciliation
of “unity and diversity”. It is submitted that
a re-conceptualisation of European law in terms of conflict-of-laws
would not only help to rescue the rule of law but would also
increase our capacity to cope with the unresolved substantive
tensions within the European polity.
Keywords:
comitology, Europeanization, governance, multilevel governance,
open coordination, private international law, rule of law
Christian Joerges
– European University Institute
e-mail: joerges@eui.eu
© 2007 Christian Joerges
Citing this EUROGOV
paper:
Joerges, Christian. 2007. Integration through de-legislation?
An irritated heckler. European Governance Papers (EUROGOV)
No. N-07-03,
http://www.connex-network.org/eurogov/pdf/egp-newgov-N-07-03.pdf.
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