Martinico: The Tangled Complexity of the EU Constitutional Process: The Frustrating Knot of Europe

Giuseppe Martinico (Centro de Estudios Politicos y Constitucionales) has publishedThe Tangled Complexity of the EU Constitutional Process: The Frustrating Knot of Europe (Routledge 2012). Here’s the abstract:
Despite the rejection of the EU Constitutional Treaty eventually leading to the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, the debates concerning the European Union’s constitutional framework continue. This book builds on the discourse in European Union constitutionalism in order to offer a novel analysis of the EU’s constitutional developments.


Giuseppe Martinico sets out a unique account of EU constitutionalism which argues that the EU legal order is a complex entity which shares some features with natural systems. The book is soundly anchored in the theory and methodology of legal science and based on a deep knowledge of judicial practices. The author contends that Europe is still suffering from the failure of the Constitutional Treaty and is practicing the new institutional equilibrium afforded by the coming into force of the Reform Treaty. The book goes on to explore the methodological implications of such constitutional complexity for the study of EU law.