DANIELA PIANA

Il Leviathano sul letto di Procuste. Una lettura critica del trattato costituzionale dell'Unione Europea

N. 205

Summary - A great has been developed about the constitutionalism and the building process of the European Union. This debate - which has touched in these last years the crucial issue of the European Constitution - seems to put forwards the idea of a "new constitutionalism" for the EU. In this paper we try to frame the debate in the field of social sciences, exploring the Draft Treaty for the European Constitution through the theoretical lens of the institutionalism. The aim of the inquiry is to assess the adequacy of the Treaty to solve some of the problems of the EU. Three issues are touched: the allocation of power; the use of the subsidiarity principle; the definition of the common finalities at the European level. The article claims that the Draft does not solve the problems derived from the mechanisms that are embedded in the European institutions and, therefore, that it would be possible deal with the European constitution from a general point of view. It consists in the demand of a sustainable and legitimate solution to the capacity of a political order to answer to the demand of justice of free and rational individuals.