In Search of a Foundation for Europe

Undeniably, and as I dealt with in the previous chapter, ever since the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, which formally estab-lished the EU, a general legitimation crisis has haunted the project of European integration.1 Such a generalized crisis is to be expected whenever foundationalist rhetorical figures of polity foundation are deployed in an era where the facile appeal to such absolutes has become increasingly questioned. Indeed, European integration could in large part be seen as an attempt at polity foundation in the age of its impossibility — i.e. in an age where the theoretical vocabulary needed for such an endeavor has largely exhausted itself. This historical epoch, which is characterized by, as Jean-François Lyotard famously put it, an ‘incredulity to metanarratives,’2 usually goes under the name of postmodernity, and provides the historical backdrop to the attempted European unification.3 The attempt to endow the EU with a constitution, which this chapter explores, may be understood as a high-profile attempt at polity foundation, and at symbolically unifying Europe after two devastating wars as well as the Cold War.4