Fixing the Euro Within the National Constitutional Guardrails

Fixing the Euro within the National Constitutional Guardrails is a groundbreaking book furnishing a structured, comparative overview and outlook on how the available national constitutional space can be adapted to the political aspirations aiming at implementing EU fiscal integration steps while, at the same time, effectively protecting the national constitutional values at stake. EU fiscal integration is indispensable to establishing a stable single currency in the long run. However, this integration is proving ever more difficult in light of increasing national constitutional opposition. The author of this innovative book shows that this dilemma between EU fiscal integration and national constitutional limits can be refuted.

Based on a broad comparative assessment of Finland and Germany – two countries which have comprehensively dealt with Eurocrisis issues in largely contrasting constitutional ways – and a detailed comparative assessment of the specific French, German, Polish, and Spanish constitutional (identity) limits, this book tests EU fiscal integration steps against the charted national constitutional space to determine their attainability. The resulting overview enumerates best practices that can be employed to locate constitutional space for EU fiscal integration while enhancing the protection of core constitutional principles. The analysis tackles the following specific areas:

• constitutional red-line limits versus flexible or mutable constitutional approaches to EU fiscal integration;
• strict constitutional identity limits that formulate obstacles to the attainment of EU fiscal integration;
• how national constitutional authorities perceive and portray the EU in their respective approaches;
• integration measures as an increase in the impact of sovereign powers versus loss of autonomous decision-making;
• application of national constitutional frameworks during the Eurocrisis;
• ex ante constitutional review and ex post judicial scrutiny in representative Member States;
• national budgetary responsibility and fiscal autonomy;
• emergency budgetary instruments; and
• funding options for fiscal integration.

From start to finish, the analysis elucidates the vital role EU integration plays in stabilizing core national constitutional values in light of such complex challenges as the COVID-19 pandemic, the current Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the required common defence strategies but also climate change and digitalisation.