Administrative Constitutionalism and the Political Union

Abstract

Between the relics of a nation state past and the promises of a transnational future, the normative evolution of the European Union has rightly been described as “an international legal experiment.” Europeanization, in that sense, has been construed as an experimental legal mode for the integration of national economic diversity through harmonized regulation. Even though the European Union's operating code has remained decisively economic, the normative matrix itself has transcended the historical objective of economic homogeneity. European integration therefore experienced a normative turn after the completion of the single market; the European Union progressively captured the social space of the continent, evolving into a societal experiment of normative imagination and cultural plurality, taking it beyond economic integration, market freedoms, and monetary stability.