The Normativity of the European Union

Reconstructing the integration process with a view to the Eurozone crisis, Eriksen provides an insight into the conditions for integration and the nature of the EU. The book offers a novel account of what has made European integration possible based on a pragmatist approach. The force of reasons in legally organized orders constitutes the core component of this approach. Eriksen identifies the main reasons for European integration as imperatives – as normative musts. The book explains why further integration has become a moral duty and why there is an expectation that the EU should be democratic. A novel model of the EU as a non­state government premised on a set of democratic innovations is suggested. This model, which has a cosmopolitan underpinning, is in line with changes in international relations brought about by the integration process; the conditioning of sovereignty upon the respect of democracy and human rights.

Erik O. Eriksen is Professor of Political Science and Director of ARENA Centre for European Studies at the University of Oslo. His main research fields are political theory, public policy, European integration and the preconditions for post -national democracy. Among his recent books are The Unfinished Democratization of Europe and Rethinking Democracy and the European Union (co-edited with John Erik Fossum).

1. The musts of European integration
2. Voluntary supranationalism
3. European democracy
4. Democratic alternatives or dead ends?
5. A cosmopolitan European future
6. Fraternité – the missing must of integration