Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

502Appendix IIhave to retain certain features of de Gaulle's "Europe of Fatherlands."The nation-states as we know them would, even in such aEurope, continue to have a strong structuring effect.However, nation-states present a problem along the thorny pathto European Union not so much on account of their insuperableclaims to sovereignty but because democratic processes have hithertofunctioned, imperfectly to be sure, only inside national boundaries.To put it briefly, up to the present the political public spherehas been fragmented into national units. Hence we cannot avoidthe question whether a European citizenship can even exist at all.By this I do not mean the possibility of collective political actionacross national boundaries but the consciousness "of an obligationtoward the European common good."14 As late as 1974, RaymondAron answered this question with a decisive "No." At the supranationalsteering level, an extensive European market will soon beset up with legal-administrative instruments. This contrasts with thevery limited powers of the European Parliament, a body that willprobably be scarcely visible in the political public spheres of themember states. To date, rights of political participation do noteffectively extend beyond national boundaries.The administration of justice by the European Court takes the"Five Freedoms of the Common Market" as its point of orientationand interprets as basic rights the free movement of goods, the freemovement oflabor, the freedom of entrepreneurial establishment,the freedom to provide services, and the free movement of capitaland payments. This corresponds to the powers the Treaty of Romeconferred on the Council of Ministers and the High Commissionin Article 3. These in turn are explained in terms of the goal set outin Article 9: "The Community shall be based upon a customs unionwhich shall cover all trade in goods." The internal market and theplanned establishment of an autonomous central bank serve thesame end. The new level of economic interdependence should giverise to a growing need for coordination in other policy fields as well,such as environmental policy, fiscal and social policy, and educationalpolicy. This need for regulation will again be assessedprimarily from the standpoint of economic rationality, accordingto standards of fair competition. Thus far these tasks are accomplishedby European organizations that have intermeshed to form