La (de-)costruzione giuridica dell'Europa. Un'introduzione

The article is an introduction to a seminar held at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici of Naples on 10-11 February 2022. Why “legal (un-)making of Europe”? First, to convey something in progress and not something made: the EU is still under construction since it is a complex of institutions and rules that currently seems to lack a final and concluded design. Second, “legal” and not “political” because EU does not come out from a political decision, as if a constitution-making process. Indeed, the history of European integration is very much a legal history: it is a history of treaties, of legislative acts, and even of judicial decisions. But, as known, the politics of the EU has passed through those treaties, those legislative acts, those judicial decisions: so, legal history and theory in Europe is actually political history and theory. That is the reason for the prefix “un-“: to unveil the political character of what European law jurists do. But for some, that prefix suggests something more: not just demystification, but dismantling of what has been done so far due to the “overconstitutionalisation” of the EU i.e., the de facto transfer of political choices to decision-making institutions that are not formally entitled to.