Awakening Europe’s Giant

Abstract This Article contrasts the latent potential of the Guarantee Clause of the Constitution of the United States (Article IV, Section 4) with the recent active enforcement of article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) by the European Commission and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Unlike the “sleeping giant” of the U.S. Constitution, article 2 TEU is awakening as an enforceable guarantee clause against the rise of authoritarianism within the European Union. The analysis reveals how the European Union’s pluralist constitutional architecture, once characterized by constructive judicial dialogues, confronts escalating tensions that threaten to undermine the European Union’s constitutional stability. Employing a federal constitutional theory lens, the Article delves into the origins of federations as unions of states, conceptualizing the European Union not as a sui generis entity but as a genuine federal union. This theoretical framework provides a foundation for understanding current crises through comparative federalism and the constitutional debates of the early American republic. The Article further shows that a central purpose of federal guarantee clauses or homogeneity clauses is to protect a shared constitutional identity that underpins the stability of any federal system combining self-rule and shared rule. While such clauses aim to bolster the constitutional stability of the EU, their full activation may lead to overreach. As Europe’s giant awakens, the need for vigilance becomes paramount to ensure that the defense of shared constitutional values does not itself destabilize the delicate balance between the Union and the member states on which the EU’s constitutional architecture rests. The Article ultimately argues that transforming the European Union’s foundational values into judicially enforceable standards risks closing the political space necessary for future Europeans to contest, reinterpret, and democratically redefine those very values.