European Law Open (2022), 1, 6–25
doi:10.1017/elo.2021.8
CORE ANALYSIS
European public law after empires
Signe Rehling Larsen
University of Oxford, Fellow by Examination in Law, Magdalen College, Oxford, UK
Corresponding author. E-mail: signe.larsen@magd.ox.ac.uk
(Received 5 October 2021; revised 21 December 2021; accepted 21 December 2021)
- Abstract
- This article seeks to remedy a fundamental flaw in the debate about European integration and European Union (EU) law: the almost complete absence of a reckoning with the legacy of empire and imperialism. The article shows that the significance of EU law can be understood only against the background of the historical transformation of the European public law order with the decline of the European empires. European integration is an integral part of a new European public law order that finally replaced the public law order of the European empires – Droit Public de l’Europe or Jus Publicum Europaeum – in which the European states held a privileged place as the only ‘civilised’, and hence, sovereign states in the world. The post-World War II European public law order entailed a new vision for domestic public law, but also constituted intra-European relations anew, and established a new set of external relations between Europe and its former colonies. With the shift from ‘European’ international law to ‘universal’ international law in the twentieth century, European integration helped carve out a space for ‘Europe’ in a world where Europe was no longer the centre of gravity.
Keywords: empire; Droit Public de l’Europe; post-colonialism; European integration; Eurafrica; value order constitutionalism; post-sovereignty
1. The founding myth of EU law
Empire and decolonisation are conspicuous mostly for their absence in the academic study as well as the public debate over the origins and nature of European integration and European Union (EU) law. The end of empire and decolonisation are among the most significant legal and political developments of the twentieth century, yet lawyers, political scientists as well as historians who study EU law and European integration have paid surprisingly little attention to the question of the end of empire and the broader transformation of the European states that followed.[1]
For example, one of the most prominent political scientists writing on European integration, Andrew Moravcsik, describes empire and decolonisation – almost in passing together with other geopolitical interests – as of secondary relevance for the study of European integration.[2]
- ↑ For important exceptions to this general rule, see Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson, Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism (Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2014); Giuliano Garavini, After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization, and the Challenge from the Global South, 1957–1985 (Oxford University Press 2012); Kalypso Nicolaïdis et al, Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies (IB Tauris 2014) pt III: From Imperial to Normative Power: the EU Project in a Post-Colonial World; Rebecca Adler-Nissen and Ulrik Pram Gad, European Integration and Postcolonial Sovereignty Games: The EU Overseas Countries and Territories (Routledge 2013).
- ↑ Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht (Cornell University Press 1998) 121 writes: ‘In sum, the preponderance of evidence – cross-issue variations in positions, timing, domestic cleavages, and political rhetoric – suggests the priority of economic over geopolitical motivations. The geopolitical concerns cited in most accounts (Suez and decolonization, the German problem, atomic energy) played modest roles; on balance these considerations probably mitigated against the Treaty [of Rome].’
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
