The Idea of Discursive Constituent Power

The question addressed by this article is whether a form of constituent power exists at the EU level. It is argued that European integration has not suppressed the idea of people as constituent power. Instead, the idea of ‘people’ has been constructed through the discourses of security and rights. Ever since the early stages of European integration, the security and rights discourses have consisted in the articulation of a meta-constitutional rationale, which is here called the ‘security of the European project’, i.e. a form of political morality that is pursued by the EU as a polity over time and aims at its own survival. Security and rights discourses have contributed to constructing two ideas of ‘people-as-constituent-power’. The first idea is that of ‘mobile people’, i.e. people exercising EU free movement rights. The second idea is that of ‘peoples’ in the plural, conceived as States and citizens at the same time. Nevertheless, these discourses are characterised by a certain degree of ambiguity and have been unrolling as if the development of the EU polity was a mere technical, neutral matter. This state of affairs cannot continue: the European project has always been a political project, and, as integration reaches its more advanced stages, the time has come to disclose its political nature and address conflict openly.