WHILE POLITICS WRESTLES with the Constitutional Treaty as the founding legal document de lege ferenda, this volume presents a European constitutional law—not as a mere project but as binding, valid law, as lex lata. Of course, no document in force carries this designation. Scholarly terminology, however, does not require the blessing of politics. There are good reasons to treat the European Union’s current primary law as constitutional law. After all, it establishes public power, legitimates legal acts, provides a citizenship, protects fundamental rights, and regulates the relationships among legal orders as well as between law and politics
