Constitutional change in light of European Union membership: trends and trajectories in the new member states

Abstract

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, all states in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) amended their old constitutions or adopted new ones. The shared experience of forced subordination to the Soviet Union provided a compelling incentive for these countries to put a strong emphasis on sovereignty as they drafted their new constitutions. In the Estonian Constitution, for example, according to Article 1, the "independence and sovereignty of Estonia are timeless and inalienable". Similar formulations typically appear in many of the constitutions of these countries.Not long after their newly gained independence and the adoption of their new constitutions, the states in CEE started to realise that the prospect of membership in the European Union (EU) seemed a very distinct possibility. In 1994, only a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Hungary and Poland formally applied for membership in the EU and more countries would soon follow suit. As a consequence, all of these countries needed to start a process of adapting their constitutions for EU membership. The need for constitutional change stemmed from the fact that most constitutions of these countries, due to their "souverainist" character (Albi 2005b, 25), simply did not allow for membership in a supranational organisation like the EU. However, a number of other important issues, besides the grounds for membership, needed to be addressed, including provisions on: the transfer of powers to the EU; the relationship between EU law and national law; and the selection of representatives to EU institutions.

The Politics of Constitutional Meltdown

“…These states met the Copenhagen criteria for accession, which include compliance with democratic precepts. The desire for EU membership spurred democratization (Bochsler and Juon 2020;Karlsson and Galic 2016). The problems occurred thereafter, and the governments sought power over the judiciary for reasons that transcended anything to do with EU membership, and this is so notwithstanding the fact that the result would be that the non-independent courts would be less likely to apply EU rulings which the governing parties disliked.…”