Desiring a Democratic European Polity: The European Union Between the Constitutional Failure and the Lisbon Treaty

The problem of democracy is general and the European Union (EU) is just one of its many specific contexts. During EU constitution-making, political constructivist notions of European democratic polity-building and federal statehood in waiting were frequently courted by European politicians and political scientists. At the beginning of the new millennium, the EU was engaged in the self-generating process of supranational form of constitutionalism which was expected to legally strengthen the principle of democratic legitimacy at EU level and thus justify the concept of an ‘ever-closer Union’ within the context of political and legal integration