Introduction
“Die Wirtschaft ist das Schicksal” (the economy is our destiny). Walter Rathenau, for a very short period serving as Reichsaußenminister in the first German Republic, was aware of the exploitation of economic and social crises by radical political movements. His famous pronouncement1 captures well what the recent crises have taught us again: “the economic” and “the political” cannot be neatly separated and treated as two different worlds which operate according to a logic of their own in distinct spheres. “The economic” and “the political” are intertwined. I conclude that “the economic” is – socially and politically – too multifaceted and too important to be left to the expertise of economists.
This thesis is based upon Dani Rodrik’s analysis and critique of the “rule of economics”2 in present debates, including the current difficulties with the European project.3 It is a critique with old if widely forgotten credentials: “L’économie politique”, Phillipe Steiner reminds us, “est une science globale de la société”.4 Rodrik’s political economy is not physiocratic, but is indebted to Karl Polanyi’s economic sociology, which has experienced an unexpected, yet unsurprising, renaissance in the last decade.5 Polanyi is present in a good
Interestingly, the Polanyi renaissance can be observed even in legal research, although Dr. jur. Karl Polanyi never made use of the works of my discipline in his academic and political writings. Lawyers, taking note of his economic sociology, are nevertheless impressed. Polanyi’s analyses of market societies illuminate helpfully and constructively the interdependence between the economy, society and law, i.e., the agenda of students of “Wirtschaftsrecht”.7 “Economic Constitutionalism” is well suited for such an exercise.
The materials collected in the course of this project gave me much cause for thought. And although I cannot do justice to the richness of the contributions submitted, I can explain how they have helped me to refine my own understanding of economic constitutionalism. As some of the authors will know, my perception of the European problématique, far from remaining confined to the idea of an “ordoliberalization” of Europe (2.), is an ongoing endeavour to do justice to the fortunate motto of the unfortunate Draft Constitutional Treaty of 2004: how can Europe realize this Treaty’s vision of unitas in pluralitate? (3.) I will not undertake a systematic presentation. Let me, instead, specify the two main concerns which I will pursue throughout the various steps of my deliberations – and their relation to my Polanyian understanding of Economic constitutionalism (1.).
1
1.1 The Law of European Integration and the Ordoliberalization of Europe
My first leitmotiv is – as per Polanyi – the neglect and misperception of “the economic” and its political importance in European legal scholarship. To be sure, the community of European lawyers has meticulously pursued the steady growth of legal provisions which concern the operation of the economy. This perception, however, is committed, mostly implicitly, to an understanding of markets as a world apart, functioning according to an economic logic beyond the scope of democratic constitutionalism, and without discussions of the importance and validity of economic paradigms and rules. As late as 2020, a leading scholar of European constitutionalism wondered where the “E”[conomy] is in Europe’s Constitution.8 The most important exception to the mainstream mindset in European law scholarship, namely, German ordoliberalism and its allies, is the target of many critics represented in this project. My queries with this critique are twofold. They concern the validity of essential aspects of the critique, in particular the diagnoses of much more than a “Schmittian flavour”9 in the ordoliberal tradition; they furthermore concern a misperception and overestimation of the impact of ordoliberal ideas in the past and the presence of the integration project. The presence is particularly worrisome. The “ordoliberalization thesis”, which is so widely shared in analyses of European crisis politics, risks camouflaging the post-liberal essence of the financial and sovereign debt crisis as well as the gradual acceptance of the failings of the integration project.
Our discussion will be focused on the ordoliberal claims as to the proper understanding of European legal provisions and the impact of these ideas on the law of European integration. Following the differentiation between a “micro”- and a “macroeconomic” European constitution first suggested by Kaarlo and Klaus Tuori,10 and taken up in Chapters 3 and 4, I will deal with the two constitutions separately.
1.2 The European Heterogeneity and the Search for Its Unitas in Pluralitate
[…] with the disappearance of the automatic mechanism of the gold standard [Author’s Note: or, in today’s words, the stability criteria and market-oriented procedures of the emu], governments will find it possible to […] tolerate willingly that other nations shape their domestic institutions according to their inclinations, thus transcending the pernicious nineteenth century dogma of the necessary uniformity of domestic regimes within the orbit of world economy.17
Empirically speaking, Polanyi’s visions proved to be overly optimistic. Normatively speaking, however, we have to concede that the “liberty to organize national life at will” is a democratic essential. Has this command been overruled by Europeanization and globalization? I suggest that we should care about its survival and that a survival is conceivable under a re-conceptualization of European and international economic law as “conflicts law” (3.).
Could the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic by the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (pepp) and the Recovery Plan “Next Generation EU” be a
2 Ordoliberal Economic Constitutionalism in the Integration Project
Has ordoliberalism been taken too seriously in recent debates on European integration? Vincent Valentin shares my doubts.19 In a conference paper published in 2016, Josef Hien and I characterized ordoliberalism as “an irritating German idea”.20 We found the ordoliberal conceptual framework defective,
This attentiveness is a recent phenomenon. It is a by-product of the financial crisis. Ordoliberalism is read as an explanatory framework for Germany’s crisis politics. This explanation was first submitted in an online paper by Sebastian Dullien and Ulrike Guérot.21 One of the irritating aspects of this interpretation
2.1 Ordoliberalization of the Microeconomic Constitution?
2.1.1 The Law
The reading of Europe’s microeconomic constitution as an ordoliberal project seems to rest on somewhat firmer grounds. We have to distinguish, however between the foundational period of the integration project and its present state.
2.1.1.1 The Early Years
The academic school of thought which promotes the Wirtschaftsverfassung [...] is not committed to the elaboration of the political potency of the economic, in order to fall into the arms of the democratic regime, but rather seeks to place that regime in a position whereby it can independently and adequately perform its mandated rule of law and welfare tasks.32
The mainstream of Europe’s academic scholarship, however, did not pay much attention to such subtleties and continued to rely on the “integration through law” orthodoxy. The ordoliberal record looks much better in competition law and policy,33 albeit only in the formative phase. The Commission Directorate General for Competition (dg iv) was something like an ordoliberal stronghold and Mestmäcker among the Commission’s most important advisors.34 This alliance was strong, albeit of limited duration. During the later periods, after the European turn to “a more economic approach”, tensions between the ordoliberal tradition and European policy became clearly visible35 – resulting
My remarks on the law of the microeconomic constitution have underlined the ordoliberal contributions and visions. I have thereby continuously referred to the theoretical ambitions of the school. They are unique in their, so to speak, meta-legal understanding of economic constitutionalism, which addresses the whole of European governance and argues that there is no such thing as a European democratic deficit simply because the economic constitution does not require the credentials of democratic constitutionalism as enshrined in the constitutional democracies of the Member States of the EU. I have also documented the failing of ordoliberal ambitions even in the field of economic law and policy. Frédéric Marty’s distinction between an ordoliberal Wettbewerbsordnung and the really existing European competition law since the adoption of “a more economic approach”39 is fully in line with the gist of my argument, and much more informative with its insistence on the varieties of neoliberalism in economic theory, competition policy and legal practice. I will supplement my theoretical argument in the following discussion of the contributions of Thomas Biebricher and Werner Bonefeld. However, I first have to underline the discrepancies between ordoliberal visions and the “really existing” European law and then consider the irresolvable tensions between micro- and macroeconomic constitutionalism.
2.1.1.2 Microeconomic Constitutionalism and the Turn to Macroeconomic Politics
The structuring with its distinction between the microeconomic (Section 3) and the macroeconomic constitution (Section 4) follows an influential
As a preliminary step to this critique, we underline the impact of the very advent of European macroeconomic politics on the ordoliberal constitutional project. This impact has a specific neoliberal imprint. Keynesian macroeconomics have co-existed peacefully with the liberty of states to organize their microeconomic politics “at will”. Keynesianism was the dominating economic philosophy of the post-war European nation-state.46 The ordoliberals of both generations, and even more so F.A. Hayek and Anglo-Saxon Neoliberalism, insisted instead on the primacy of the market mechanisms in both micro-and macroeconomics. The austerity politics of the efforts to rescue the Euro after the financial crisis have radicalized this re-orientation. The new strategy of the so-called structural reforms has subjected microeconomic politics to assumed functional necessities.
In the law of the microeconomic constitution, as per Pieter Van Cleynenbreugel and Xavier Miny’s re-constructions, such tensions are not visible simply because their account of the law of the micro-constitutionalism mirrors neoliberal economic theorems. Hans-W. Micklitz with his dedication to “the social distributive justice” in all compartments of private law and a notion of access justice which seeks to realize at least a “thin version of social distributive justice”,47 finds himself in a less comfortable position. To be sure, European crisis politics have not directly intervened in the domains of private law. Macro-economic exigencies have nevertheless had a strong impact. Micklitz observes a “shift from consumer protection law to consumer law without protection”,48 in more general terms, the dedication of European politics to economic efficiency and marketization of all spheres of European society.49 Micklitz seems nevertheless to be confident with regard to the survival of the social accomplishments of the European project. The social embeddedness
2.1.2 Political Science
Two renowned political theorists have contributed to the discussion of economic constitutionalism in the present project. I have – again – to be very selective in my comments on their works.
2.1.2.1 Thomas Biebricher’s Neoliberal Lineages of an “Economic Constitution”
Thomas Biebricher has addressed ordoliberalism from many perspectives, recently also in a critique of the questioning of the ordoliberalization thesis by Josef Hien and myself.52 Political theorists tend to avoid the nitty-gritty of legal debates as I have resumed it above,53 in favour of more abstract theorizing.
In the case of Biebricher, however, I see some convergence. One is that Biebricher appreciates the ordoliberal concern with economic power and Germany’s organized capitalism,54 which, in order to be successful, does indeed require a “strong state”, but certainly not the strong state which Carl Schmitt called for in his “Address to Business Leaders” of 1932.55 Equally significant is Biebricher’s very precise differentiation between the various strands of neoliberalism and the significant breaks with the ordoliberal tradition. There is a difference of paradigmatic dimensions between Walter Eucken, the
2.1.2.2 Werner Bonefeld’s Analysis of the Underlying “Authoritarian Liberalism” of Economic Constitutionalism
Bonefeld’s record of analyses of the ordoliberal tradition is outstanding.61 The notion of the “strong state” to which he regularly refers, is one of Carl Schmitt’s best-known infamous terms. For stringent reasons, affinities of an intellectual tradition with the Dark Lord of German constitutionalism are wearing and incriminatory, and somewhat paradoxical insofar as the democratic and liberal constitutional order was at the centre of Schmitt’s critique, as Grégoire and Miny note in their introduction to the project.62 Such affinities do exist:63
2.2 Ordoliberalization of the Macroeconomic Constitution?
The following remarks on the macroeconomic constitution seek a way out of a dilemma. I resort, therefore, to the famous barzelletta of the Bavarian comedian Karl Valentin in a fictive funeral address: “Es ist schon alles gesagt, nur noch nicht von allen” (everything has been said about the deceased, albeit not by all of us). There are of course differences, some significant and others much less so, among the commentators on the so-called macroeconomic constitution and my own pertinent publications. However, rather than explaining and evaluating these, I will, instead, take up two issues: one is again the
I feel quite safe with the first point. More than a decade ago, I started my analyses of the ordoliberal framing of the integration project with a “melancholic eulogy”,70 in which I highlighted the incompatibility of the emu with the ordoliberal legacy. In another publication, I pointed to the critique of the Maastricht Treaty by renowned proponents of the ordoliberal tradition;71 I then submitted that the establishment of emu does not deserve a “constitutional” characterization72 if that notion is to indicate more than pure facticity, and finally submitted that the law has been “running out” in European crisis politics.73 This is strong language. It is, however, in substance identical with the analysis of Francesco Martucci74 and the diagnoses of other critics, in particular that of Hjalte Lokdam and Michael A. Wilkinson in Section 4. The latter underline that the institutionalization of the emu was inherently contradictory and no mechanism was foreseen for a legitimate resolution of controversies. The Maastricht Treaty, the authors continue, subjected instead “governmental discretion to constitutional rules rather than ordinary political contestation”.75 Can this be qualified as “ordoliberalization”?76 Where is, to paraphrase Neil Walker,77 “the C” in that “macroeconomic constitutional superstructure”? To read into the Treaty a mandate which would legitimate the ecb to “resolve” the
The paradox of the European order after the crisis is the simultaneous strengthening of constitutional constraints on member states and relaxing of legal constraints on European-level actors, such as the ecb… The tragic irony of the Eurozone crisis is that the effort to remove money from the hands of states ended up creating a new concentration of power in the ecb less accountable than those that came before.85
The legitimacy of the ecb’s praxis has been questioned by the economist Ashoka Mody,86 its creation been called a “constitutional monstrosity” by political scientist Giandomenico Majone,87 and the political economy of it operations has been characterized as “central bank capitalism” (Zentralbankkapitalismus).88 The mainstream in legal scholarship is less concerned.89 Lawyers understand
3 Unitas in Pluralitate: Conflicts-Law Constitutionalism versus Economic Constitutionalism
Steven Klein’s diagnosis of Europe’s entrapment in a dead-end alley corresponds to the views of many analysts, contributors to this project included. I take it as an encouragement of the search for unconventional responses to the present impasses of the European project. The best known conventional response is the quest for “more Europe” through complementing the emu by a fiscal union. A less demanding alternative or complement is an upgrading of the political accountability of the ecb.90 Less conventional ideas are the re-conceptualization of the EU as a “demoi-cracy”,91 increased differentiation,92 or targeted disintegration.93 Instead of reviewing all these suggestions, I conclude my preceding analyses by a restatement of my own “conflicts-law constitutionalism”, an approach which I have long since defended and refined, most recently as “democracy-enhancing conflicts law”.94 Conflicts law (private international
3.1 Economic Democracy at National Level
To explain the latter assertion, I depart from Guillaume Grégoire’s remarks on the idea of economic democracy developed “by a certain side” under the Constitution of Weimar. This side sought to “bring about a sound and organic interaction between the political and economic spheres of life”. Grégoire95 refers with this citation to the key figure on that side, Hugo Sinzheimer, whose visions continue to attract some attention.96 It is not by chance, however, that the project of economic democracy is taken up by the legal historians – and lawyers informed by history – in this project.97 Only some traces of Weimar are still visible, in particular in Germany’s co-determination which the Constitutional Court has defended against the proponents of an economic constitution.98 However, the much more comprehensive concepts developed under the Weimar constitution cannot be transferred to the present. It is here where conflicts law constitutionalism can step in.
To explain this very briefly: contemporary conflicts law cannot content itself with the search for some “spatial justice” like the lex locus delicti, as the Savignyian tradition has cultivated it. Conflicting laws regularly pursue policy objectives – and conflicts law has to mediate between competing policies and concerns. This mediating operation is omnipresent also within the legal systems of constitutional democracies.99 These systems legitimize a great variety
3.2 Promoting Economic Democracy in the EU through Democracy-Enhancing Conflicts Law
What is true within constitutional democracies is obvious in interstate relations. Where cases are connected with several jurisdictions, a search for the proper law has to consider the validity of their claims for application and examine the policies underlying the potentially applicable rules. This is my
How can and how should these interest configurations be resolved and overcome? Through freedom of trade and market integration, according to the promises and concepts of the integration project. “Laissez-faire was planned”: Polanyi’s insight can properly be called the dna of the European Community. Due to the complexity of our legal systems, harmonization policy experienced often enough unsurmountable difficulties; the “traditional approach” had to be revised and replaced by the “new approach to harmonization and standards”, complemented by the Cassis de Dijon principle of mutual recognition and the concept of regulatory competition. All of these innovations are compatible with the notion of economic constitutionalism: they all share commitments to economic rationality criteria and operate through, or in accordance with, competitive processes – and promise to enhance through such exposure “economic competitiveness”. Economic constitutionalism has, as Damien Piron documents, exerted a particularly strong influence within Belgium, and is, of course, present in all the contributions to Section 6 in their discussion of interstate relations. The reliance on competitive processes is, however, exposed to strong regulatory countermoves – and not so strong moves towards a “social Europe”.
I have sketched out the theoretical basis of my rejection of a reliance on competitive processes in my critique of Hayek’s conceptualization of “competition as discovery procedure” in the previous subchapter.105 Hayek is once more an important target of my critique of the reliance on market processes in the ordering of interstate and international relations. In his seminal essay on “The use of knowledge in society”, Hayek has tried to make us believe that markets are unique in their capacity to collect, process and co-ordinate knowledge which is dispersed in society.106 This thesis captures a great potential of markets.
“The Political of the Economic” – the title of my essay – is inspired by Karl Polanyi’s economic sociology and his messages. The one I am referring to here again stems from the concluding chapter of the Great Transformation: “Governments will find it possible to drop the most obstructive feature of absolute sovereignty, the refusal to collaborate in international economics. At the same time, it will become possible to tolerate willingly that other nations shape their domestic institutions according to their inclinations”.108 This vision concerns our project directly. “The liberty to organize national life at will” characterizes constitutional democracies. “Economic constitutionalism”, as understood by its proponents, restricts that freedom. The restraining force to which Polanyi referred was the “automatic mechanism of the gold standard” mentioned above.109 The restraints today stem from the assumed functional necessities of the financial stability of the Eurozone and the logic of globalization.
The foundational idea of “conflicts law constitutionalism” was a related, yet distinct concern. The operation of nation states ordering their economies at (democratic) will has restraining impacts on non-nationals. The external effects of national activities are unavoidable and ever more important with the increasing interdependence of Europe’s Volkswirtschaften (national
We must conceptualize supranational constitutionalism as an alternative to the model of the constitutional nation-state which respects that state’s constitutional legitimacy but at the same time clarifies and
sanctions the commitments arising from its interdependence with equally democratically legitimized states and with the supranational prerogatives that an institutionalization of this interdependence requires... [S]upranationalism does convey political rights and not just economic freedoms to Community citizens. Supranationalism is therefore to be understood as a fundamentally democratic concept. ‘Supremacy’ of European law can and should be read as giving voice to ‘foreign’ concerns and imposing corresponding constraints upon Member States. What supremacy requires, then, is the identification of rules and principles ensuring the co-existence of different constituencies and the compatibility of these constituencies’ objectives with the common concerns they share.113
It is this passage which provoked Peter Lindseth’s critique.114 Our difference in a nutshell: I retain and defend a notion of European democratic constitutionalism, which seeks to base European governance on the commitment to the correction of the structural democracy deficits of the nation states. Lindseth characterizes these activities as judicial and administrative.115 This is a discrepancy which is of limited significance. Our dissent is deeper when it comes to the evaluation of Europe’s present constellation and the correction of its deficits. Lindseth is inclined to accept this constellation as Europe’s new normalcy and even cites approvingly Adam Tooze’s defence of the activities of Europe’s “overmighty citizen”, the ecb, as “the only agency engaged in economic policy worthy of the name” and “the one part of the complex European constitution that actually functions with real authority and clout as a federal institution”.116 This is to equate validity with facticity. I believe, instead, as submitted below, that the democracy deficits of European governance have to be corrected by an involvement of the national polities in co-operative normative arrangements, rather than an ever more daring delegation of judicial and administrative functions.
- (1)The first deals with the tensions between European rules and national law. The core concern here, to borrow Fritz Scharpf’s terms, is to mitigate between “community and autonomy”.118 Often enough, fortunate solutions to this constellation have been found.119 More complex are “diagonal” conflicts, i.e., situations in which European law covers only one aspect of a legal controversy, while other aspects remain a national competence. The response to this constellation is the doctrine of “pre-emption”, which has to determine whether national law is ruled out or remains in place. This doctrinal framing was de facto overruled by the disregard of the enumerated powers principle long before and then continuously during the financial crisis.120 But the problématique which it has to address has gained ever more importance. In many cases, national courts and the ecj/cjeu have found creative answers.121 The by far most important of all “diagonal conflicts”, however, namely, the tension between European monetary policy and national fiscal and economic policies, remains on the European agenda as an unruly issue. The ongoing tensions between the cjeu and the German
Constitutional Court over the mandate of the ecb provide drastic illustration.122 - (2)The second variant deals with regulatory politics. The essay by Neyer and myself just cited123 re-constructs the operation of the European committee system in the foodstuff sector. Our optimistic reading was that this system has generated practices of deliberative problem-solving. “Deliberative” as opposed to orthodox supranationalism was the term we coined and defended.124
- (3)The third variant responds to the “privatization” of regulatory tasks and the development of new “governance arrangements” in which governmental and private non-actors are involved. Under what conditions do such arrangements “deserve recognition”? Under what conditions is the involvement of non-governmental actors in regulatory policies beneficial? How can the operation of self-regulation be evaluated? A case of exemplary importance is the role of non-governmental organizations at all levels of governance in the development of standards and their certification.125
Is all this just a “stark utopia”? “Democracy-enhancing conflicts law” can build on the work of the Harvard political economist Dani Rodrik.126 Rodrik questions the viability of widely shared confidence in the problem-solving potential of transnational governance arrangements. His critique has been inspired by a group of renowned political scientists.127 His suggestions can be understood against the background of his famous “trilemma-thesis”, developed back in 2011.128 Here, Rodrik asserted the impossibility of the simultaneous pursuit of economic globalization, democratic politics, and national determination (autonomy), highlighting a trilemma in which only two goals can be paired: economic globalization and democratic politics, or democracy and national autonomy. For Rodrik, the European Union furnishes dramatic illustration of this thesis. On the one hand, the European Union could “transnationalize” democracy through federalization and thus defend the advantages of the internal market; at the same time, however, it would be forced to establish a common European politics to legitimize its necessary assumption of fiscal and social policy, with negative consequences for national sovereignty. In the absence of such a de-nationalizing prospect, the European Union will have to give up the common currency and accept economic disintegration.129 This is not simply a pessimistic scenario. It can be better understood as a case for the toleration of diversity. In the passage already cited, Rodrik submits that “the policy failures that exist arise not from weaknesses of global governance,
The “discovery procedure of practice” as a chance to promote economic democracy in the complex European polity? Admittedly, there is idealism in such suggestions. Nevertheless, they also share a merit in their refusal to become “bogged down in undemocratic transnational technocracy”. And there is no easy way out anywhere. Peer Zumbansen concludes his recent comprehensive survey on the notion of economic law with a query: “the question still on the table is whether and how it might be possible to think of an economic law from the perspective of transnational democratic politics”.130 This query denotes a demanding transformative agenda. The contours of this agenda have become visible in a new crisis.
Concluding Remarks – The covid-19 Pandemic Responses or the Limits of Epistocratic Economic Constitutionalism
The pandemic is another drastic illustration of the regulatory limits and democratic deficits of national governance. Irresponsible inactivity as well as misguided activities on the part of the Member States can impose burdens on their neighbours. Hjalte Lokdam and Michael A. Wilkinson, Susanna Maria Cafaro, Peter Lindseth and Cristina Fasone, Stephen Gill and Thibault Biscahie all concur. This pandemic concerns the EU as a whole – the pandemic fight must be understood as a European commitment. The Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme as well as the Recovery Plan “Next Generation EU” indicate that this has indeed been understood. However, the programme is a response with its own ambivalences. It is a chance for the integration project, and, at the same time, a threat to the integrity of the Union’s constitutional constellation.131 All
See on the context of this pronouncement U. Mader, « “Die Wirtschaft ist das Schicksal!”. Walther Rathenau als Reichsminister 1921 und 1922 », Mitteilungen der Walther Rathenau Gesellschaft, 2002, n° 13, pp. 17–40.
D. Rodrik, Economics Rules. The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science, New York/London, W. W. Norton, 2015.
See, on the “contest of disciplines” in European studies, C. Joerges, « Pereat iustitia et fiat mundus? Die Krise des Rechts in der Krise Europas », Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken, 2016, vol. 70, n°803, pp. 17–31.
See supra in this volume, P. Steiner, « Les Physiocrates, l’économie politique, l’Europe ».
“We are all Polanyians now”, suggested Jens Beckert, Co-Director of the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Societies, in his Discussion Paper 07/1 on « The Great Transformation of Embeddedness. Karl Polanyi and the New Economic Sociology », Cologne 2007. The attraction by lawyers is well explained by S. Frerichs, « The Rule of the Market: Economic Constitutionalism Understood Sociologically », in P. Blokker and C. Thornhill (eds.), Sociological Constitutionalism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 241–264; see for a concise summary : S. Frerichs, « The legal constitution of market society: Probing the economic sociology of law », The european electronic newsletter, issn 1871-3351, Max Planck Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung, vol. 10, n°3, pp. 0–25.
See supra in this volume, G. Grégoire & X. Miny (« Introduction – La Constitution économique : Approche contextuelle et perspectives interdisciplinaires »); see also the contributions by H. Rabault in Section 1 (« Le Concept de Constitution économique: émergence et fonctions »); F. Marty (« Évolution des politiques de concurrence en droit de l’UE: de la Wettbewerbsordnung ordolibérale à la More Economic Approach néolibérale? ») and H.-W. Micklitz (« Society, Private Law and Economic Constitution in the EU ») in Section 3; H. Lokdam & M.A. Wilkinson in Section 4 (« The European Economic Constitution in Crisis : A Conservative Transformation ? »); T. Biscahie & S. Gill in Section 6 (« Three Dialectics of Global Governance and the Future of New Constitutionalism »).
On the meaning of this notion and the necessity to consider its context see comprehensively P. Zumbansen, « Economic Law: Anatomy and Crisis », Journal of Law and Political Economy, 2021, vol. 1, n°3, pp. 461–492.
N. Walker, « Where’s the “E” in Constitution? A European Puzzle », in A. Skordas, G. Halmai and L Mardikian (eds.), Economic Constitutionalism in a Turbulent World, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, forthcoming, available at:
J. Baquero Cruz, Between Competition and Free Movement: The Economic Constitutional Law of the European Community, Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2002, p. 26.
K. Tuori and K. Tuori, The Eurozone Crisis. A Constitutional Analysis, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014.
F.A. Hayek, « The Economic Conditions of Interstate Federalism » (1939), in Individualism and Economic Order, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1948, pp. 255–272.
See F.W. Scharpf, « Forced Structural Convergence in the Eurozone – Or a Differentiated European Monetary Community », MPIfG Discussion Paper 16/15, 2016; M. Dawson, « The Legal and Political Accountability Structure of ‘Post-Crisis’ EU Economic Governance », Journal of Common Market Studies, 2015, vol. 53, pp. 1–18, esp. p. 9; J. Zeitlin and B. Vanhercke, « Socializing the European Semester: EU Social and Economic Policy Co-ordination in Crisis and Beyond », Journal of European Public Policy, 2018, vol. 25, n°2, pp. 149–174.
Initiated in 2001 by P.A Hall and D. Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford, Oxford University Press. A related movement, under-studied in European law scholarship, is the “école de la Régulation” in France, which insisted (since the mid-1970s) on the varieties of mechanisms and institutions (money regulation, competition law, state form, salary relationship, etc.) that constitute the “formes de régulation” which underly the (historically and geographically different) capitalist regimes of societies (competitive/bourgeois regulation, Fordism, financial capitalism, etc.) and which can explain the different types of socio-economic crises (exogenous crisis, endogenous crisis, crisis of the mode of regulation, crisis of the accumulation regime), The founding fathers are Robert Boyer and Michel Aglietta. See, e.g.: M. Aglietta, Régulation et crises du capitalisme, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1976 ; R. Boyer, La théorie de la régulation : une analyse critique, Paris, La Découverte, 1986; R. Boyer, « Une contribution au renouveau d’une économie institutionnaliste : la théorie de la régulation dans les années 90 », Actuel Marx, 1995, n°1, pp. 19–38; R. Boyer and Y. Saillard (eds.), Théorie de la régulation : L’Etat des savoirs, Paris, La Découverte, 2002; R. Boyer, Économie politique des capitalismes: théorie de la régulation et des crises, Paris, La Découverte, 2015; R. Boyer (eds.), La Théorie de la Régulation au fil du temps, La Plaine Saint-Denis, Éditions des maisons des sciences de l’homme associées, 2018.
L. Baccaro and J. Pontusson, « Rethinking Comparative Political Economy: The Growth Model Perspective ». Politics & Society 2016, vol. 44, pp. 175–207.
See, J. Hien and C. Joerges, « Cultural Political Economy and Conflicts Law – A New Way to Approach the Eurozone Crisis », Global Perspectives, 2020, vol. 1, n°1, 13301.
See G. Teubner, « Legal Irritants: Good Faith in British Law or How Unifying Law Ends up in New Divergences », The Modern Law Review, 1998, vol. 61, n°1, pp. 11–32.
K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (1944), Boston MA, Beacon Press, 2001, p. 262.
Supra, Section 4 in this volume, P. Lindseth & C. Fasone, « The Eurozone Crisis, the Coronavirus Response, and the Limits of European Economic Governance ». This notion coined by Ruti G. Teitel in her work on Transitional Justice (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000) is indeed a poignant indicator of an innovation of paradigmatic dimensions. Without using this concept, the idea of a paradigmatic change is also present supra in this volume, in the contributions of S. Cafaro (« The Evolving Economic Constitution of the European Union: Eulogy to Stability ? »), T. Biscahie & S. Gill (« Three Dialectics of Global Governance and the Future of New Constitutionalism »), H. Lokdam & M.A. Wilkinson (« The European Economic Constitution in Crisis : A Conservative Transformation ? ») and F. Martucci (« Les racines historiques et théoriques de l’Union économique et monétaire »).
See supra in this volume, in Section 2, V. Valentin, « L’idée de constitution économique et l’hypothèse du libéralisme autoritaire ». It is noteworthy that he distances himself the equation of the ordoliberal positions with the type of “authoritarian liberalism” criticized under this heading by Hermann Heller (H. Heller, « Autoritärer Liberalismus? », Die Neue Rundschau, 1933, vol. 44, pp. 289‑298; English translation available in: H. Heller, « Authoritarian Liberalism? », European Law Journal, May 2015, vol. 21, n° 3, pp. 295‑301). Heller deals exclusively with Carl Schmitt’s infamous “Address to Business Leaders” to the 1932 conference of the Langnamverein (see C. Schmitt, « Starker Staat und gesunde Wirtschaft » (« A Strong State and a Healthy Economy. A Lecture for Business Leaders »), held on November 23, 1932, published, e.g. in Volk und Reich 1933, pp. 81–94, cited here after the carefully annotated reprint in G. Maschke, Carl Schmitt, Staat, Großraum, Nomos. Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1916–1969, Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1995, pp. 71–94; English translation: « Strong State and Sound Economy. An Address to Business Leaders », in R. Cristi, Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism, Cardiff, Wales University Press, 1998, pp. 212–232). I should add that I have committed this error myself in C. Joerges, « What is left of the European Economic Constitution? A Melancholic Eulogy », European Law Review, 2006, vol. 30, pp. 461–489, esp. p. 467 (French translation in Revue Internationale de Droit Économique, vol. xx, n°3, pp. 245–284).
J. Hien, « Ordoliberalism as an Irritating German Idea? », EuVisions, 21 October 2016, available at:
S. Dullien and U. Guérot, « The Long Shadow of Ordoliberalism: Germany’s Approach to the Euro Crisis », ecfr Policy Brief, 2012, available at:
Suffice it here to name M.E. Streit and W. Mussler, « The Economic Constitution of the European Community. From ‘Rome’ to ‘Maastricht’ », European Law Journal, 1995, vol. 1, n°1, pp. 5–30.
The account of political scientists contrasts strikingly with the state of the art in Germany’s academic economics. It is of course true that e.g. the ministerial language often refers to ordoliberal terms and views. However, even Lars P. Feld, formerly the Chairman of the Sachverständingenrat of the German Ministry of Economics and still Director of the Walter Eucken Institute in Freiburg does hardly qualify as such a straw man. Feld has very lucidly explained why the pertinent Treaty provisions are disregarded (see his « Europa in der Welt von heute: Wilhelm Röpke und die Zukunft der Europäischen Währungsunion », hwwi Policy Paper No. 70, 2012, available at:
See the concise critical evaluation by R. Wiethölter, « Wirtschaftsrecht », op. cit. On economics, see S. Pühringer, « The Success Story of Ordoliberalism as the Guiding Principle of German Economic Policy », in J. Hien and C. Joerges (eds.), Ordoliberalism, Law and the Rule of Economics, op. cit., pp. 134–160. The kind of success reported by Pühringer is not the kind of academic reputation discussed critically by A. Nützenadel (Stunde der Ökonomen. Wissenschaft, Politik und Expertenkultur in der Bundesrepublik 1949–1974, op. cit.).
BVerfG, Judgment of 20 July 1954, Investment Aid, BVerfGE 4, 7.
BVerfG, Judgment of 1 March 1979, Co‐determination, BVerfGE 50, 29.
E.-J. Mestmäcker, « Offene Märkte im System unverfälschten Wettbewerbs in der EWG », in H. Coing, H. Kronstein and E.-J Mestmäcker (eds.), Wirtschaftsordnung und Rechtsordnung. Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von Franz Böhm, Karlsruhe, C. F. Müller, 1965, pp. 345–391, esp. p. 345. Mestmäcker has repeated his argument with particular clarity in his essay « Zur Wirtschaftsverfassung in der Europäischen Union », in R. Hasse, J. Molsberger and C. Watrin (eds.), Ordnung in Freiheit. Festgabe für Hans Willgerodt, Oldenburg, De Gruyter, 1994 (reprinted in E.-J. Mestmäcker, Wirtschaft und Verfassung in der Europäischen Union, Baden-Baden, Nomos, 2003, pp. 507–537), explicitly contrasting the judgment of 20 July 1954, Investment Aid, BVerfGE 4, 7 (p. 512).
See ecj, Judgment of 5 February 1963, van Gend en Loos, Case 26/62 (eu:c:1963:1), 1963 e.c.r. 1; ecj, Judgment of 15 July 1964, Costa v. ENEL, Case 6/64 (eu:c:1964:66), 1964 e.c.r. 585.
ecj, Judgment of 23 April 1986, Parti écologiste “Les Verts” v European Parliament, Case 294/83 (eu:c:1986:166), [1986] ecr 1365. 42; ecj, Judgment of 5 February 1963, van Gend en Loos, Case 26/62 (eu:c:1963:1), [1963] ecr 24. 43.
See recently R. Byberg, « The History of the Integration Through Law Project: Creating the Academic Expression of a Constitutional Legal Vision for Europe », German Law Journal, 2017, vol. 18, n°6, pp. 1531–1556.
Giandomenico Majone observed soberly: in the 1950s, planification and interventionist practices were commonplace in the founding states in all sectors of the economy – how could defeated Germany, of all countries, have been able to prevail in Europe with a liberal Ordnungspolitik that could not even be implemented domestically? (G. Majone, Rethinking the Union of Europe Post‐Crisis: Has Integration Gone Too Far?, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 90 ff).
E.-J. Mestmäcker, « Wirtschaftsordnung und Staatsverfassung », in E.-J. Mestmäcker and H. Sauermann (eds.), Wirtschaftsordnung und Staatsverfassung. Festschrift für Franz Böhm zum 80. Geburtstag, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 1975, pp. 383–419, esp. p. 419.
See H. Buch-Hansen and A. Wigger, The Politics of European Competition Regulation A Critical Political Economy Perspective, New York/London, Routledge, 2015, pp. 41–72.
See W. Mussler’s appraisal at the occasion of Mestmäcker’s 90th birthday in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 February 2018, n° 45, p. 22.
Setting the scene again E.-J. Mestmäcker with his « The E.C. Commission’s Modernization of Competition Policy: A Challenge to the Community’s Constitutional Order » (European Business Organization Law Review, 2000, vol. 3, n° 1, pp. 401–444), cited after the reprint in E.-J. Mestmäcker, Wirtschaft und Verfassung in der Europäischen Union, op. cit., pp. 218–257. These tensions are lucidly documented and discussed in the essay of C. Mongouachon, « Les difficultés d’une interprétation ordolibérale de la constitution micro-économique de l’Union européenne » (Section 3), Subchapter 2. La place ambivalente de l’ordolibéralisme comme outil d’interprétation du marché intérieur.
See E.-J. Mestmäcker, A Legal Theory without Law. Posner v. Hayek on Economic Analysis of Law, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2007.
See supra in this volume, C. Mongouachon, « Les difficultés d’une interprétation ordolibérale de la constitution micro-économique de l’Union européenne ».
See A. Wigger, « Debunking the Myth of the Ordoliberal Influence on Post‐war European Integration », in J. Hien and C. Joerges (eds.), Ordoliberalism, Law and the Rule of Economics, op. cit., pp. 161–178.
See supra in this volume, F. Marty, « Évolution des politiques de concurrence en droit de l’UE : de la Wettbewerbsordnung ordolibérale à la More Economic Approach néolibérale ? » (Part 2, Section 3).
K. Tuori and K. Tuori, The Eurozone Crisis. A Constitutional Analysis, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014.
See, e.g., C. Joerges, « Integration through Law and the Crisis of Law in Europe’s Emergency », in D. Chalmers, M. Jachtenfuchs and C. Joerges (eds.), The End of the Eurocrats’ Dream. Adjusting to European Diversity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 299–338, esp. pp. 301 ff.
See supra in this volume, C. Mongouachon, « Les difficultés d’une interprétation ordolibérale de la constitution micro-économique de l’Union européenne », Subchapter 2. La place ambivalente de l’ordolibéralisme comme outil d’interprétation du marché intérieur.
See the remarks in Section 3.2. below (Promoting Economic Democracy in the EU through Democracy-Enhancing Conflicts Law).
See E. Hoppmann (ed.), Konzertierte Aktion. Kritische Beiträge zu einem Experiment (Frankfurt am Main, Athenäum, 1971); see, for a critical comment, C. Joerges, « Vorüberlegungen zu einer Theorie des Internationalen Wirtschaftsrechts », Rabels Zeitschrift für ausländisches und internationales Privatrecht, 1979, vol. 43, pp. 6–79, esp. pp. 44 ff.
The “judicial system cannot be wiser than contemporary economics in judging macroeconomic relationships”, he conceded already in the 1980’s in his seminal essay: E.-J. Mestmäcker, « Power, Law and Economic Constitution », The German Economic Review, 1973, vol. 11, pp. 177–192, esp. pp. 187, 190–191.
See A.S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State, 2nd ed., London, Routledge, 1982, pp. 21–118.
H.-W. Micklitz, The Politics of Justice in European Private Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 2 and 24.
See supra in this volume, H.-W. Micklitz, « Society, Private Law and Economic Constitution in the EU ».
H-W. Micklitz, The Politics of Justice in European Private Law, op. cit., p. 41.
See supra in this volume, H.-W. Micklitz, « Society, Private Law and Economic Constitution in the EU ».
See C. Joerges, « Private Law in Europe’s Political Economy after the Financial Crisis », in M. Ruffert (ed.), European Economy and People’s Mobility, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2016, pp. 101–125, esp. p. 125: It is simply inconceivable that the entire body of the law which constitutes the infrastructure of the EU can be subjected to the “structural reforms”. The pretence of knowledge, which characterizes Europe’s monetary policy, may well encounter the limits of its “power fantasies” in the ordering functions of private law.
See J. Hien and C. Joerges, « Dead Man Walking? Current European Interest in the Ordoliberal Tradition », European Law Journal, 2018, vol. 24, n°1, pp. 142–162 and T. Biebricher, « Zur Ordoliberalisierung Europas – Replik auf Hien und Joerges » Leviathan, 2018, vol. 46, pp. 170–188.
See supra, Subchapter 2.1.1.
Famously, yet untranslated, F. Böhm, « Das Reichsgericht und die Kartelle. Eine wirtschaftsverfassungsrechtliche Kritik an dem Urteil des RG v. 4. Februar 1897, RGZ 38, 155 », ordo: Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1948, vol. 1, pp. 197–213.
C. Schmitt, « Starker Staat und gesunde Wirtschaft. Ein Vortrag vor Wirtschaftsführern », op. cit. On this point see Subchapter 2.1.2.2. below (Werner Bonefeld’s analysis of the underlying “Authoritarian Liberalism” of Economic Constitutionalism).
See supra in this volume, C. Mongouachon, « Les difficultés d’une interprétation ordolibérale de la constitution micro-économique de l’Union européenne ».
See, W. Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, New York, Columbia University Press, 2019, p. 62 and her references to Biebricher at p. 201, note 21.
T. Biebricher, « Zur Ordoliberalisierung Europas – Replik auf Hien und Joerges, », op. cit.
See, e.g., W. Callison, « Ordoliberalism’s Trans-Atlantic (Un)Intelligibility: Theory and Crisis from Eucken to Schäuble »; K. Dyson, « The Ordoliberalism as Tradition and as Ideology », both in J. Hien and C. Joerges (eds.), Ordoliberalism, Law and the Rule of Economics, op. cit., resp. pp. 49–70 and 87–102.
Communication with author; in writing: H. Schweitzer, « Law, Economics and Politics in an Ordoliberal Perspective: A Modern or an Outdated Approach? », Ms. Berlin, 2016 (on file with author).
See his monograph: W. Bonefeld, The Strong State and the Free Economy, Boulder CO, Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017.
See supra in this volume, G. Grégoire & X. Miny, « Introduction – La Constitution économique : Approche contextuelle et perspectives interdisciplinaires ».
See supra in this volume, G. Grégoire, « The Economic Constitution under Weimar. Doctrinal Controversies and Ideological Struggles » and for two equally cautious evaluation by historians: J. Hacke, Existenzkrise der Demokratie. Zur politischen Theorie des Liberalismus in der Zwischenkriegszeit, 2nd ed., Berlin, Suhrkamp, 2018, pp. 342–355; Q. Slobodian, Globalists. The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2018, pp. 210–217.
W. Eucken, F. Böhm and H. Großmann-Doerth, « Unsere Aufgabe. Begleitwort der Herausgeber zur Schriftenreihe ‘Ordnung der Wirtschaft’ », in F. Böhm, Die Ordnung der Wirtschaft als geschichtliche Aufgabe und rechtsschöpferische Leistung, Stuttgart/Berlin, Kohlhammer, 1937, pp. vii–xxi. For the translation see T. Biebricher and F. Vogelmann (eds.), The Birth of Austerity. German Ordoliberalism and Contemporary Neoliberalism, London, Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017, pp. 27–39.
R. Wiethölter, « Franz Böhm (1895–1977) », in B. Diestelkamp and M. Stolleis (eds.), Juristen an der Universität Frankfurt am Main, Baden-Baden, Nomos, 1989, pp. 209–252.
Ibid., p. 213.
Ibid., pp. 225–226.
Ibid., p. 230.
See also supra in this volume, S. Audier, « Le néolibéralisme : Un “libéralisme autoritaire” néo-schmittien ? ».
C. Joerges, « What is left of the European Economic Constitution? A Melancholic Eulogy », op. cit.
C. Joerges, « Economic Law, the Nation-State and the Maastricht Treaty », in R. Dehousse (ed.), Europe after Maastricht: an Ever Closer Union?, Munich, C.H. Beck, 1994, pp. 29–62.
C. Joerges, « Constitutionalism and the Law of the European Economy », in M. Dawson, H. Enderlein and C. Joerges (eds.), Beyond the Crisis. The Governance of Europe’s Economic, Political and Legal Transformation, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 216–231.
C. Joerges, « ‘Where the Law Runs Out’: The Overburdening of Law and Constitutional Adjudication by the Financial Crisis and Europe’s New Modes of Economic Governance », in S. Garben, I. Govaere and P. Nemitz (eds.), Critical Reflections on Constitutional Democracy in the European Union, Oxford, Hart Publishing, pp. 168–178.
See supra in this volume, F. Martucci, « Les racines historiques et théoriques de l’Union économique et monétaire » (Section 4).
See supra in this volume, H. Lokdam & M.A. Wilkinson, « The European Economic Constitution in Crisis: A Conservative Transformation? ».
An economic constitution must provide legal guidance in the form of rules “aligned with justiciable criteria”, E-J. Mestmäcker has insisted in his seminal essay: « Power, Law and Economic Constitution », German Economic Review, 1973, vol. 11, pp. 177– 192, esp. p. 183.
N. Walker, « Where’s the “E” in Constitution? A European Puzzle », op. cit.
BVerfG, 2nd Senate, Judgment of 5 May 2020, pspp, 2 BvR 859/15 (ecli:de:bVerfG:2020:rs20200505.2bvr085915), para. 116.
See supra in this volume, H. Lokdam & M.A. Wilkinson, « The European Economic Constitution in Crisis: A Conservative Transformation? » (Section 4), and to cite just one concurring analysis see the manifesto signed by M. Dani, J. Mendes, A.J. Menéndez, M.A. Wilkinson and H. Schepel, « At the End of the Law: A Moment of Truth for the Eurozone and the EU », Verfassungsblog, 15 May 2020, available at:
S. Klein, « European Law and the Dilemmas of Democratic Capitalism », Global Perspectives, 2020, vol. 1, n°1, 13378.
K. Polanyi, « The Economy as Instituted Process », in K. Polanyi, C.M. Arensberg and H.W. Pearson (eds.), Trade and Market in the Early Empires, Glencoe IL, Free Press, 1957, pp. 243–270.
K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation, op. cit., pp. 204 ff.
S. Klein, « European Law and the Dilemmas of Democratic Capitalism », op. cit., p. 8.
Ever since the Pringle judgment: ecj, 27 November 2012, Thomas Pringle v Government of Ireland and Others, Case C-370/12 (eu:c:2012:756).
S. Klein, « European Law and the Dilemmas of Democratic Capitalism », op. cit., p. 10.
A. Mody, « Did the German Court do Europe a Favor? », Bruegel Working Paper, n° 2014/09, available at:
G. Majone, Europe as the Would-be World Power: The EU at Fifty, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 151–178.
This notion has only recently been submitted by J. Wullweber, Zentralbankkapitalismus. Transformationen des globalen Finanzsystems in Krisenzeiten, Berlin, Suhrkamp, 2021; for a sketch in English which includes comment on the management of the Corona pandemic see: J. Wullweber, The Covid-19 Financial Crisis, Global Financial Instabilities and Transformations in the Financial System, Berlin, Finanzwende/Heinrich-Böll-Foundation, 2020 (published in the course of « Transformative Responses to the Crisis », available at:
It seems remarkable in light of the discussions on the ordoliberalization of EU politics that the « Kronberger Kreis », a group with commitments to the ordoliberal tradition (L.P. Feld, C. Fuest, J. Haucap, H. Schweitzer, V. Wieland and B.U. Wigger), has criticized the ECB’s reading of its mandate, albeit somewhat cautiously: « Dismantling the Boundaries of the ECB’s Monetary Policy Mandate: The CJEU’s OMT Judgement and its Consequences », Kronberger Kreis Studies No. 61, 1916, available at:
See S. Hennette, T. Piketty, G. Sacriste, A. Vauchez (eds.), How to Democratize Europe, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1019; D. Curtin, « ‘Accountable Independence’ of the European Central Bank: Seeing the Logics of Transparency », European Law Journal, 2017, vol. 23, nos1–2, pp. 28–44.
K. Nicolaïdes, « European Demoicracy and its Crisis », Journal of Common Market Studies, 2013, vol. 51, n°2, pp. 311–339; similar R. Bellamy, « An Ever Closer Union Among the Peoples of Europe: Republican Intergovernmentalism and Demoicratic Representation within the EU », Journal of European Integration, 2013, vol. 35, n°5, pp. 499–516.
D. Leuffem, B. Rittberger and F. Schimmelfennig, Differentiated Integration. Explaining Variation in the European Union, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
M. Patberg, « Can Disintegration be Democratic? The European Union Between Legitimate Change and Regression », Political Studies, 2020, vol. 68, pp. 582–599.
C. Joerges, « Responding to Socioeconomic Diversity in the European Union (and to Steven Klein’s Essay) with Democracy-Enhancing Conflicts Law », Global Perspectives, 2021, vol. 2, n°1, 18788.
See supra in this volume, G. Grégoire, « The Economic Constitution under Weimar. Doctrinal Controversies and Ideological Struggles ».
Grégoire refers to R. Dukes, « Hugo Sinzheimer and the Economic Constitution », in The Labour Constitution: The Enduring Idea of Labour Law, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 12‑32 and G. Teubner, « Transnationale Wirtschaftsverfassung: Franz Böhm und Hugo Sinzheimer jenseits des Nationalstaates », Heidelberg Journal for International Law, 2014, vol. 74, pp. 733‑761; one could add G. Teubner, « Transnational Economic Constitutionalism in the Varieties of Capitalism », Global Perspectives, 2020, vol. 1, n°1, 13412.
See supra in this volume, H. Rabault, « Le Concept de Constitution économique : émergence et fonctions » and P.C. Caldwell, «The Concept and Politics of the Economic Constitution ».
BVerfG, judgment of 1 March 1979, Co‐determination, loc. cit.
R. Wiethölter, « Begriffs- oder Interessenjurisprudenz – falsche Fronten im IPR und Wirtschaftsverfassungsrecht. Bemerkungen zur selbstgerechten Kollisionsnorm », in A. Lüderitz and J. Schröder (eds.), Internationales Privatrecht und Rechtsvergleichung im Ausgang des 20. Jahrhunderts. Bewahrung oder Wende? Festschrift für Gerhard Kegel, Frankfurt am Main, Metzner, 1977, pp. 213–263, esp. p. 226.
See, e.g., C. Joerges, « Quality Regulation in Consumer Goods Markets: Theoretical Concepts and Practical Examples », in T. Daintith and G. Teubner (eds), Contract and Organization, Berlin, de Gruyter, 1986, pp. 142–163; C. Joerges, « Relational Contracts Law in a Comparative Perspective: Tensions Between Contract and Antitrust Law Principles », Wisconsin Law Review, 1985, vol. 581, pp. 581–613.
N. Stehr, C. Henning and B. Weiler, (eds.), The Moralization of the Markets, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Transaction Books, 2006.
C. Joerges, B. Stråth and P. Wagner, The Economy as Polity: The Political Constitution of Contemporary Capitalism, London, ucl Press, 2005.
F.A. Hayek, « Competition as a Discovery Procedure », The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, 2002, vol. 5, n°3, pp. 9–23.
See C. Joerges, « Quality Regulation in Consumer Goods Markets: Theoretical Concepts and Practical Examples », op. cit., pp. 53 ff.
Supra, Subchapter 2.1.1.2. Microeconomic Constitutionalism and the Turn to Macroeconomic Politics, text accompanying notes 42 ff.
F. Hayek, « The Use of Knowledge in Society », American Economic Review, 1945, vol. 35, pp. 519–530.
See L. Herzog, « Markt oder Profession? Die Politik zweier Wissenslogiken », Leviathan, 2018, vol. 46, pp. 189–211; elaborated in her Democratic knowledge. Markets, experts, and the epistemic infrastructure of democracy, Ms. Groningen 2022 (on file with author; forthcoming with Oxford University Press), Chapters iii and vii.
K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, op. cit., p. 262.
See supra, second point of « Preliminary Remarks on the Conceptual Framework », Subchapter 1.2. The European Heterogeneity and the Search for its Unitas in Pluralitate.
J. Habermas, « Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still Have a Chance? », in The Divided West, London, Polity Press, 2007, pp. 113–193, esp. p. 176. In his preceding essay « Die postnationale Konstellation und die Zukunft der Demokratie » (in Die postantionale Konstellation. Politische Essay, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1996, pp. 91–169), he refers to Polanyi’s argument (at pp. 129 ff.).
U.K. Preuß, « Gibt es eine völkerrechtliche Demokratietheorie? », in H.M. Heinig and J.P. Terhechte (eds.), Postnationale Demokratie, Postdemokratie, Neoetatismus, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2013, pp. 169–178; in the same vein: M. Kumm, « Kosmopolitischer Staat und konstitutionelle Autorität. Eine integrative Konzeption Öffentlichen Rechts », Der Staat, 2012, vol. 51, n° 21, pp. 357–385.
C. Joerges and J. Neyer, « From Intergovernmental Bargaining to Deliberative Political Processes: The Constitutionalisation of Comitology », European Law Journal, 1997, vol. 3, n°3, pp. 273–299.
Ibid., pp. 294–295.
First in his seminal « Democratic Legitimacy and the Administrative Character of Supranationalism: The Example of the European Community », Columbia Law Review, 1999, vol. 99, n°3, pp. 628–738; most recently in his Power and Legitimacy. Reconciling Europe and the Nation-State, New York, Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 7, note 14.
See also infra in this volume, P. Lindseth & C. Fasone, « The Eurozone Crisis, the Coronavirus Response, and the Limits of European Economic Governance ».
A. Tooze, The Death of the Central Bank Myth, Foreign Policy, 13 May 2020, available at:
For a systematic presentation, see C. Joerges, « Conflicts-Law Constitutionalism: Ambitions and Problems », in M. Cremona, P. Hilpold, N. Lavranos, S. Schneider and A. R. Ziegler (eds.), Reflections on the Constitutionalisation of International Economic Law. Liber Amicorum for Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, Leiden, Brill/Nijhoff, 2013, pp. 111–138.
F.W. Scharpf, Community and Autonomy: Institutions, Policies and Legitimacy in Multilevel Europe, Frankfurt am Main, Campus, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, 2010.
For an exemplary analysis, see C. Joerges, « Interactive Adjudication in the Europeanisation Process? A Demanding Perspective and a Modest Example », European Review of Private Law, 2000, vol. 8, n°1, pp. 1–16.
See, for a recent re-construction and restatement of the doctrine, A. Arena, « The Doctrine of Union Preemption in the EU Internal Market: between Sein and Sollen », Columbia Journal of European Law, 2011, vol. 17, pp. 477–556.
Seminal examples include: ecj, 21 September 1999, Albany International BV v Stichting Bedrijfs pensioenfonds Textiel industrie, Case C-67/96 (ecli:eu:c:1999:430); ecj, 24 July 2003, Altmark Trans GmbH v Regierungspräsidium Magdeburg und Nahverkehrsgesellschaft Altmark GmbH, Case C-280/00 (ecli:eu:c:2003:415); and also against prevailing views: ecj, 9 March 1999, Centros Ltd v Erhvervs- og Selskabsstyrelsen, Case C-212/97 (ecli:eu:c:1999:126).
Suffice it here to recall Pringle judgment: ecj, 27 November 2012, Thomas Pringle v Government of Ireland and Others, Case C-370/12 (eu:c:2012:756); see also: ecj, 16 June 2015, Peter Gauweiler and Others v. Deutscher Bundestag, Case C-62/14 (eu:c:2015:400); ecj, 11 December 2018, Weiss and Others, Case C-493/17 (eu:c:2018:1000). These controversies have been “decided”, but by no means convincingly “resolved”; see, for a short analysis, C. Joerges, « ‘Where the Law Runs Out’: The Overburdening of Law and Constitutional Adjudication by the Financial Crisis and Europe’s New Modes of Economic Governance » in S. Garben, I. Govaere, and P. Nemitz (eds.), Critical Reflections on Constitutional Democracy in the European Union, Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2019, pp. 168–178.
C. Joerges and J. Neyer, « From Intergovernmental Bargaining to Deliberative Political Processes: The Constitutionalisation of Comitology », op. cit.
For restatements of the argument, see C. Joerges, « Deliberative Supranationalism’- Two Defences », European Law Journal, 2002, vol. 8, n°1, pp. 133–151; C. Joerges, « Deliberative Political Processes’ Revisited: What Have we Learnt about the Legitimacy of Supranational Decision-Making », Journal of Common Market Studies, 2006, vol. 44, n°4, pp. 779–802 – and for its further elaboration in the concept of “Conflicts-Law Constitutionalism” in the present Subchapter.
See, for an excellent study, H. Schepel, The Constitution of Private Governance. Product Standards in the Regulation of Integrating Markets, Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2005; see also C. Joerges, H. Schepel and E. Vos, « Delegation and the European Polity: The Law’s Problems with the Role of Standardisation Organisations in European Legislation », eui Working Paper in Law, n°9–1999, available at:
Affinities with the Lindseth & Fasone essay are again apparent in our references to this author (supra in this volume, « The Eurozone Crisis, the Coronavirus Response, and the Limits of European Economic Governance », Subchapter 2. The Fundamental Fracture Between Power and Legitimacy in European Integration).
R.O. Keohane, S. Macedo and A. Moravcsik, « Democracy-Enhancing Multilateralism », International Organization, 2009, vol. 63, n°1, pp. 1–31.
D. Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy, New York/London, W.W. Norton, 2011, pp. 184–206; see, for Rodrik’s indebtedness to Polanyi, his « Karl Polanyi and Globalization’s Wrong Turn », Presented at the opening of the Vienna part of the International Karl Polanyi Conference 2019, available at:
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P. Zumbansen, « Economic Law: Anatomy and Crisis », op. cit., p. 480.
As evidenced by the pending applications before the German Constitutional Court: BVerfG, 2 BvR 547/21 (concerning the Recovery Plan “Next Generation EU”) and BVerfG 2 BvR 420/21 (concerning the pepp programme).
See L. Herzog, « Markt oder Profession? Die Politik zweier Wissenslogiken », op. cit., and the elaboration in her recent Democratic Knowledge. Markets, Experts, and the Epistemic Infrastructure of Democracy, op. cit., Chapters iii and vii. The “Discovery Procedure of Practice” to which I have referred in Subchapter 3.1. Economic Democracy at National Level is the operational mode of law generation which has the potential of realizing such co-ordination.
For a strong critique see S.L. Mudge and A. Vauchez, « Fielding Supranationalism: the European Central Bank as a Field Effect », The Sociological Review Monographs, 2016, vol. 64, n° 2, pp. 146–169; A. Vauchez, « Statesmen of Independence: The International Fabric of Europe’s Way of Political Legitimacy », Contemporary European History, 2018, vol. 27, n°2, pp. 183–201; A.J. Menéndez, « The Crisis of Law and the European Crises: From the Social and Democratic Rechtsstaat to the Consolidating State of (Pseudo-)technocratic Governance », Journal of Law and Society, March 2017, vol. 44, n° 1, pp. 56–78. ; A.J. Menéndez, « A European Union Founded on Capital ? The Fundamental Norms Organising Public Power in the European Union », in C. Jouin (ed.), La constitution matérielle de l’Europe, Paris, Pedone, 2019, pp. 147–166; “epistrocracy/epistocratic institution” is the term which Menéndez uses there in the second contribution (at pp. 158–160).
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