June 23, 2003
The Economist doesn't like the new EU constitution.
The
Economist reviews the proposed constitution, and finds it rather wanting.
There was always a risk that the convention would not design a particularly good constitution. What was harder to imagine was that the convention would produce a text which would worsen the very problems it had been instructed to address. This is what it has somehow contrived to do. In many ways the draft constitution, more than 200 pages long, makes the Union's constitutional architecture harder to understand than it was before. That is an incredible feat. Worse, it weaves perpetual constitutional revolution more securely into the Union's legal fabric. The draft, admittedly, gets one or two things right: it is not entirely devoid of sense (see article). But for the most part the text is sound on points that are relatively unimportant. Everything that is crucial it gets wrong.
I kinda thought this would happen. For one thing, the people making up the constitution weren't democratically selected. Same as the US Constitution, for that matter, and a major reason it's got so many problems today. Second, the manner in which it was jammed through before the new 10 nations got on board is highly suspicious. Seems like they could have waited a few years until the changes were done, and then done it democratically, with input from everyone.
One of the good things about the US constitution, and the reason it's lasted so long, is that it's rather short and simple. Only a few pages actually. The EU one is over 200 pages, which is way too complex.
