Since the Lisbon Treaty, the European Union (EU) has functioned under a double decision-making regime.
On the one hand, the supranational constitution governs the policies concerning the internal market
through the so-called ‘Community method’. On the other, the intergovernmental constitution regulates
those policies that are traditionally linked to national sovereignty (such as economic, foreign and
security policies). The globalisation of world politics has urged the EU to think over itself as multiple
crises swept across the continent. First, the ‘euro-crisis’ gave rise to a divide between northern (or ‘lender’)
and southern (or ‘debtor’) Member States as to which monetary policy should be implemented. Second,
the refugee crisis split the EU into western and eastern countries regarding how to share the burden of
migrant inflows. Finally, the ‘terrorism crisis’ led to a downright fragmentation of the European common
foreign and security policy. These crises all shed light on the underlying weaknesses of the intergovernmental
regime. My argument is that, to overcome these issues, the EU should consider adopting a new
Constitutional Treaty that redefines its structure and its very logic of functioning. I advocate the popular
election of the ‘President of the European Union’, who would preside over both the European Commission
(its technical branch) and the European Council (its agenda-setting branch), while preserving a strict
separation of powers at the federal level between the executive (the President) and the legislature (the
European Parliament and the Council of Ministers).
