The Role and Future of National Constitutions in European and Global Governance

Αντικείμενο: The project revisits the role of national constitutions at a time when decision-making has increasingly shifted to the transnational level. The project has three objectives. First, it aims to carry out a comparative analysis on how constitutions reflect the transfer of powers from domestic to European and global institutions, and thus to what extent they provide legitimacy, and remain socially relevant, to the shift of the exercise of power to the transnational level. Secondly, while the discourse has come to associate national constitutions primarily with the protection of sovereignty, the project will revisit constitutional values that have a continued importance in the contemporary globalising and pluralist legal setting, such as the protection of constitutional rights, the rule of law, legitimacy and democratic checks and balances. The project will explore constitutional courts’ judgments tackling the protection of these rights and values in transnational judicial dialogues, e.g. in the field of data retention, arrest warrants and the ESM Treaty. The project will also assess the responsiveness of the European Court of Justice with regard to the above rights and values, along with the standard of protection at supranational level. The third objective is to explore the challenges increasingly highlighted in the context of global governance in relation to legitimacy, democratic control, accountability and the rule of law.