Europe and its (tragic) statelessness fantasy

"This book provides the first comparative and multi-disciplinary investigation into what Siliquini Cinelli calls 'Europe's tragic statelessness fantasy'--a fantasy which is characterized by the progress in the promotion of what the author describes as the 'Europeanization of Europe' as the process to create a supra-national entity in which classic forms of law and politics (and thus the Member States) will have an increasingly weaker role. In arguing that the post-modern phase of the 'Europeanization of Europe' is the continental paradigm of the doctrine aimed at achieving the formal 'depoliticization' and 'dejuridification' of the world, Siliquini Cinelli explains why its statelessness fantasy is profoundly linked to the global '(a-)spatial turn' that legal and sociopolitical theories are undergoing.^

In doing so, he claims that the final goal of this process is to transform the 'Europe of trading' into the 'Europe of rights' while passing through the single market and a monetary economic union (the EU) with common fiscal policies supported by a banking union. Later, Siliquini Cinelli's comparative and inter-disciplinary approach calls for a thorough reconsideration of this project through an inquiry into (1) the lure of European private law as a particular type of 'stateless law'; (2) the several pluralist channels of soft-networked post-national governance that have been promoted in the continent in recent years; and (3) the challenges related to an effective protection of the political order within the EU's boundaries.^

^The innovative modus investigandi of this book is due to the fact that, starting from an inquiry into the 'European private law' project, which is aimed at developing a more coherent 'harmonization' (or 'dissolution'?) of national private laws, it identifies the underlying common sources and aims of these three topics, and then explains why academic research has sometimes not progressed satisfactorily despite the vast amount of literature that has been written on them. In pursuing the suggested roadmap, Siliquini Cinelli claims that both the sovereign and private debt (household and corporate) crises of the euro-zone reveal an a priori (and more profound) political crisis, which seems to confirm the perception that European unification was (and still is) all about economic interests, and that political ideology was (and still is) irrelevant.^

There is therefore an urgent need for a new discussion of the socio and geopolitical, legal, ontological, and economic dimensions of the 'Europeanization of Europe', together with a major update of high-level normative arrangements and theories. Only in this way will it be possible to liberate such concepts as 'Europe' and 'EU' from their instrumentalist confinements, and elaborate on new models of governance capable of providing the EU with the instruments it needs to escape the cage in which it has found itself trapped by also respecting Europe's spontaneously autonomous society, sociology of law, historicity of politics, and logic of memory. The present work is based, in part, upon Siliquini Cinelli's published works, presented papers, and lectures. This book will be of particular interest to comparative, private, public, and EU sociopolitical and legal scholars, as well as European policy-makers and practitioners dealing with EU law and policies."--Publisher website.