"Anticipating the European Constitution: Parliamentarization or Re-nationalization?"

Since the entry into force of the Treaty of Maastricht and up to the adoption of the draft constitution by the IGC in June 2004, the European Parliament has acquired growing legislative influence, redefining its relation­ship with the Council and modifiying the balance of powers among the three institutions, arguably to the detriment of the Commission. In contrast, a number of new provisions of the constitution, especially the “presidential” innovations, are designed to increase the Member States' influence. Only few areas of shared sovereignty are added, important fields of activity are left untouched or appear to be shifted under executive domination. This is particularly manifest in foreign and macro-economic policy. Furthermore, the accession of ten new Member States, introducing new decision-making dynamics and enhanced socio-cultural and socio-economic diversity, combined with the historically novel coincidence of a liberal-conservative Commission and a Parliament dominated by liberal-conservative groups, could reduce legislative proposals with redistributive or harmonizing ambitions. Borrowing instruments from both historical institutionalism and liberal intergovernmentalism, we analyse selected institutional novelties of the constitution which will transform the future functioning of policy-making in the Union. In particular, the focus of the EU's activities could increasingly shift from the legislative to the executive domain, which raises the question of how, in which policy fields, and with which institutional interplay the Union will probably carry out its tasks under the new provisions in the foreseeable future, with rather limited resources