Seizing Europe - – Crisis Management, Constitutional Transformations, Constituent Movements

The essay highlights some aspects of the new political situation in Europe in the wake of the global economic crisis, particularly focusing on the resulting consequences for such important political and legal concepts as citizenship and constitution. It is important to keep in mind that these concepts have been part and parcel of European history and even “identity” for centuries. Their contemporary transformations provide therefore an effective angle on the stakes of the current crisis in Europe. Highlighting the shifting configurations of power within the material constitution of the EU compels to go beyond any rhetoric of “democratic deficit” and to posit democracy and citizenship themselves as concepts and practices that need to be radically reinvented in Europe. In other words it leads to contend that there is a need to imagine a constituent movement and moment in Europe, capable of realistically interpret the challenge of the “provincialization” of Europe, which is one of the main trend in the current crisis, as a chance for a new project of freedom and equality.