Strong constitutions

For all practical purposes, the EU Constitution is dead!, thank God for that, says Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta.

When my wife found out that I was ensconced in the loo with a copy of the European Constitution, swearing and cursing while fiercely annotating the book, all she had to say was that I was a perfect example of a sad plonker. I have to admit that it is one of the most boring written pieces that I have ever read and believe you me, I have read some really dense stuff in my epistemology courses. After finishing the book, the long and short of it is, I was sorely tempted to give it the Guantanamo Bay treatment but desisted when I thought of the plumbing bill. Here’s what I think of this execrable piece of trash.

Let us go back to basics. A constitution for a state (whether codified – in a single document as in the USA and India or uncodified as in the UK) lays out the rules, regulations, character, aims, goals, structures and procedures which encapsulate the people’s governance framework. In other words, it’s the organized way to conduct the business of the state. In some countries, it is also called as the Basic Law (such as in Israel). While we have evidence of democratic rule going back to the old Indian states, as seen in the Pali Canon of 300BC, the first written and codified document which lays out a governance structure was first noted in 622 AD in Medina, Saudi Arabia. It was followed on by developments in the UK where Henry I proclaimed the Charter of Liberties in 1100, John I who signed the Magna Carta in 1215 and the next major development was the constitution of the United States of America in 1787.

After that, constitutions broke out like a rash all over the world. Starting in the late 19th century, but mainly in the 20th century, the number of countries declaring themselves to be nation-states increased rapidly. Constitutions are sort of a rite of passage for every new country, and most embarked quite enthusiastically into the process of dragging in every noble virtue and every fad into the process. Since quite a lot of countries emerged out of the detritus of imperialism and colonization, there is a heavy influence of colonial legal systems carried on into the newly independent country. Just like the USA constitution took from the British Magna Carta, Japan took much from the USA in the post war constitution, India took from the British, the Francophone countries took from France and so on and so forth. The other major impact which can be seen is the impact of communism/socialism. In the post WWII period, a huge number of newly elected leaders were definitely and strongly influenced by Socialism/Communism, which explains why so many Asian and African countries had socialism by the ton. No point in delving deeper into what each country has got. India claims to have the longest constitution for any country while Alabama, the US state, seems to have an even longer one, if state constitutions are considered. Alabama’s state constitution has also been amended a record 740 times.

To explain this monstrosity briefly, the stated objective behind starting off on the project to simplify the governing structure of the European Union. Why simplify? The EU has come together over the past 50 odd years on the basis of a whole host of founding treaties, amending treaties, accession treaties and budgetary treaties. The EU already has a constitution, mind you, just not a codified one. Starting from the Treaty of Paris in 1951 related to the European Coal and Steel Community through the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997, the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 and the last one, Treaty of Nice of 2001. These are only the main ones, there are many more relating to new countries joining, budgetary ones etc. etc. So the entire EU edifice actually rests on this combination of treaties as of now. I have no idea about the number of pages involved but it should be a tome. Putting it in another way, every new country which joins the EU has to incorporate 80,000 pages of EU law into its own domestic legal system. While not directly comparable, it’s pretty safe to say that the complexity of this uncodified constitution is rather big. The second reason is that a structure designed for six then modified to fifteen members cannot simply handle 25 members, it will collapse into gridlock. Not that much gets done anyway, it’s so sad that only strange legislative items seem to emerge out of that odd beast of Brussels.

Let’s cut to the chase, what exactly do I hate about this piece of moldy - manky cheese? First of all, it’s more than 300 pages and over 60,000 words in length, so it’s shorter than the Indian constitution, but longer than the American constitution which is 4600 words in length. Try going through it, its one of the most boring pieces of documentation ever written. The only other more boring piece would be the technical specifications and assembly manual of a hospital bed.