The Constitutional Core of the Union Basic Provisions and Structures of the EU Treaties

Over the past two decades, the European Union has faced repeated crises, including sovereign debt, migration, Brexit, the pandemic, and rising authoritarianism in several Member States. While many predicated disintegration, the post-Lisbon legal framework has proven surprisingly resilient. In recent years, confronted with the imperial geopolitical ambitions of Russia, China, and the second Trump administration, the polity constituted by the EU Treaties has become even more pivotal to the European political and legal order. Against this background, The Constitutional Core of the Union: Basic Provisions and Structures of the EU Treaties reflects on the basic structures of EU constitutional law as established by the Lisbon Treaty to offer a new conceptual framework that centres on the constitutional core of the Union. Each chapter systematically evaluates the Article 1 to 19 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), evaluating the constitutional core, substantive objectives, the federal balance of power, and the institutional framework of the Union. With its deeply focused, structured approach to the fundamental provisions of the Treaties, this book provides an essential, accessible guide to the modern constitutional reality of the European Union. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.