Deirdre M. Curtin, Chapter 1 – Geology of the European Union (October 2009). Deirdre Curtin, EXECUTIVE POWER OF THE EUROPEAN UNION – LAW, PARACTICES, AND THE LIVING CONSTITUTION, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009 . Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1525407
This paper is the introduction to a book that aims to bring the EU’s executive powers out of the shadows by mapping the evolution and current form of the EU’s various executive actors, their powers, and the mechanisms for holding them accountable. The term executive power embraces the political executive, the administrative executive and what is termed the ‘satellite’ executive. The book’s analysis covers both the formal legal structure of the Union (pre and post Lisbon) as well as the evolution of the EU’s living institutions in practice. The picture presented is of a fragmented, cluttered and complex European executive space, resistant to radical Constitutional reform. On the other hand what also emerges are layers and pieces of a sedimentary process of EU and national checks and balances as part of an organically growing ‘living constitution’.
