Politics of Ratification of EU Treaties

Carlos Closa is Professor at the IPP-CSIC in Madrid, Spain, and Senior Fellow at the Global Governance Programme at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

• 1. Introduction: Mapping out Ratification 2. The History of the Ratification Rules in the EU Treaties: Why they have not Changed? 3. The Role of National Parliaments 4. National Constitutions and EU Constitutional Change 5. The Role of Domestic Courts (Constitutional Courts and Advisory Bodies) in Ratification 6. Ratification Referendums 7. Citizens and Public Opinion: The Background for Ratification 8. Convergence and Divergence in Ratification Politics 9. Conclusion: Ratification and EU Constitutional Politics

"Covering eight treaties, with 118 national ratification processes, has been a big job. Closa deserves credit for carrying out this job. The amount of detail is impressive. Closa has succeeded in locating the necessary studies, even about ratification of the original treaties, and in making sense comparatively of this welter of information. In the end, success requires successful framing – some would prefer to say leadership, a term Closa uses more sparingly than framing. Some rationalist scholars, including this reviewer, would prefer to talk about leadership as a decisive ingredient of success in overcoming ‘collective action’ problems, without ignoring social constructivist explanations."- Finn Laursen, European Political Science,