¿Un soberano europeo? Una Europa de identidades múltiples

Abstract

Abstract The basic motivation for this investigation has been the juridical-political crisis of the European Union, which manifests itself in the rise of populist and nationalist movements after the sovereign debt crisis. Nevertheless, this investigation goes beyond these recent phenomena starting from the premise, that the underlying problem is a normative question closely linked to the legitimacy of a post-national political order. The actual European Union does not have a normative fundament capable to situate the Member States onto a general interest, where the insufficiencies of the nation-state in respect to its democratic legitimacy could be avoided. In this sense, the following investigation revises the theoretical fundament of the nation-state as it is found in the political thought of modernity. The concept of the nation-state is based on the sovereignty of the modern state, which was first understood by the theorists as a pure matter of political power. But the sovereign nation-state as a guarantee of the public order can only be constituted if its institutions emanate from a moral fundament of the political community. Although Jean-Jacques Rousseau managed to resolve the paradoxes of a sovereign defined as mere accumulation of power by introducing his concept of the general will, he was not able to define a state fundament going beyond the mere sum of different particular wills. As a consequence, the national democracies are based on an insufficient theoretical fundament not capable to represent in institutions the general will of its citizens. By observing this insufficiency in the model of Rousseau, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel reasoned his state model from a universal interest. This Hegelian approach permits the reasoning a political community beyond the nation state, that is to say, the rule of law of a constitutional state legitimizing itself by the positive recognition of private and public liberties of the individuals. Starting from this point, we can think the democracy in a different way than the nation-state and develop a state model, which established its institutions on a concept of universal society. In this way, it is possible to reason of a democratic model for the European Union, which does have its fundament in the general interest of the European citizens, but at the same time counts from the beginning with the particular differences between the European peoples. The second part of the investigation reconsiders the successes and failures of the nation-state, this time understood as a historical phenomenon, to represent a social order established on the principles of liberty and equality of the citizens. Based on the reasoning of Jürgen Habermas, it explains the phenomenon of the European integration as a direct consequence of these insufficiencies of the nation-state. Nevertheless, it is also shown that the process of the European integration is still incomplete because of its incapacity to represent a post-national social order. This insufficiency is demonstrated in two concrete issues identified in the theoretical part as the crucial elements of democracy, individual rights and political representation. In this line, the conclusion develops a model of a democratic European state contrasting the actual proposals for reformation with the findings of this investigation.