Abstract

Is the European Union undergoing a process of «legal deconstruction» as a consequence of a political crisis of the European project and, if so, how should this legal deconstruction be assessed? In order to answer these questions, the essay highlights three remarkable features of the European governance and its constitutional law: 1) The complex relation between core and periphery of European legal scholarship, which depends on the pluralistic nature of EU law; 2) The strict constraints on what democratic politics can achieve within the EU constitutional framework; 3) The lack of the distinction between government and opposition, which has serious consequences on the democratic quality of the political process both at European and national level. Seen from the perspective of these three features, the legal deconstruction of Europe may well be an opportunity as much as an existential risk for the EU