Von Krokodilen, Hebammen und großen Männern: Spinellis Erben und ihr Plädoyer für ein föderalistisches und post-nationales Europa = About crocodiles, midwives and big men: Spinelli's beneficiaries and their plea for a federal and post-national Europe. taif 8, 2014

Abels, Gabriele. and Oesterle, Frieder (2014) Von Krokodilen, Hebammen und großen Männern: Spinellis Erben und ihr Plädoyer für ein föderalistisches und post-nationales Europa = About crocodiles, midwives and big men: Spinelli's beneficiaries and their plea for a federal and post-national Europe. taif 8, 2014. [Working Paper]

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Abstract

30 years after the adoption of a draft Treaty for a European Constitution (Spinelli draft), a new Spinelli Group takes up this legacy; in 2013 it presents a proposal for a post-national, federal Union. The article examines the contexts of the origins of the two crisis-induced constitutional projects that were supported by the "Club Crocodile" respectively by the Spinelli Group. While Spinelli in 1984 managed to mobilize a broad parliamentary support for his draft constitution, the Spinelli Group today operates more as an "advocacy coalition" lacking this large parliamentary backing. The paper discusses the continuities of the federal program and how it is adapted by the Spinelli Group to nowadays circumstances in the form of the draft of a Fundamental Law of the European Union. We argue that the impacts of the two constitutional projects cannot be reduced to short-term effects, but their long-term effects must be considered as well. Thereby, the specific restrictions influencing the work of the reform groups in the 1980s and today have to be taken into account.

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