The future beyond a sentence

A further obstacle on the difficult and arduous road to the entry into force of the Reform Treaty of Lisbon has been removed in Germany. The Constitutional Court, called to rule on some appeals, alleging the “unconstitutionality” of the Treaty, in fact decided that these appeals were unfounded. It did so in its sentence of 30 June, arguing that, in spite of all the reforms planned by the Treaty, the character of the European Union as an “association of states”, whose existence and development is founded on the disposition of member states, remains unvaried. In this way the German Constitutional Court ruled that the threshold of the formation of a European federal state, which would imply the renunciation of national sovereignty, has not been crossed. Germany, like every other European country, remains a sovereign state and retains her own responsibility for the main tasks that derive from her sovereignty. In this sentence there is at the same time a political message by which the German Constitutional Court raises considerable obstacles for the future development of the policy of the Union: it affirms in fact that the German Basic Law – its constitution in short – does not authorize entry into a European federal state, since any such entry would imply the renunciation of Germany’s sovereignty and with it the right to self-determination of the German people. The Court gave the green light to the Lisbon Treaty, but made it clear that Germany, while it is possible for her to go so far as this, ought not to go beyond it.This is curious. It is also worrying. For nowhere is it written that, on the basis of Germany’s Basic Law, the entry of the Federal Republic into a (European) federal state, with its corresponding transfer of sovereignty, should be prohibited. No foundation for any such principle is to be found in the German Constitution. As the presupposition for any development, the German Constitution only requests that: “with a view to establishing a united Europe, the Federal Republic of Germany shall participate in the development of the European Union that is committed to democratic, social and federal principles, to the rule of law, and to the principle of subsidiarity, and that guarantees a level of protection of basic rights essentially comparable to that afforded by this Basic Law” (art. 23). This suggests more a federal state than an association of states, all the more so since in the preamble it is affirmed that Germany shall be “an equal partner in a united Europe”.Nor is it easy to see why – as the German Constitutional Court maintains – Germany, in any federalist evolution of the European Union, should lose her own “characteristic of sovereign constitutionality”, her own “constitutional identity” and her own “autonomous political and social capacity to organize living conditions”.An examination of the situation and status of the German Länder shows that it is possible for the member states of a federal state to preserve these attributes both in principle and in practice. It is precisely this that represents the appeal of any federalist system of government: namely, the fact that each level of sovereignty and responsibility is endowed with its own dignity and freedom to organize itself. Sovereignty, like freedom, now means especially that the State, its organs and its citizens must have the certainty of being able to count on partners that participate in the political process. Integration, subsidiarity and interdependence are decisive today for a sovereign, conscious and free action of states both at the political level for which they are responsible, and for the international or transnational contexts for which they are co-responsible. It is to be hoped that the German constitutional judges will review their own position.It would be absurd if the movement of European unification which provides the foundation and assurance of the peace, freedom and prosperity of Europeans were to be blocked in future by other similar sentences.