Back to Flexible Constitutions: The Impact of Financial Crisis and the Decline of the European Constitutionalism

The essay investigates the consequences of the current economic crisis on the European legal systems. In particular, the article suggests that the crisis is not the main cause of the damage suffered by constitutional systems. According to the author, the reasons of these transformations are deeper and more structural than the urgent need to fight against financial crisis. This kind of emergency simply introduced a new factor into the complex evolution of contemporary legal systems i.e. the crisis of the overall legitimacy of public institutions. Therefore, reflections on the decrease of trust in political bodies bring to the loss of rigidity of national Constitutions, because a reduction in legitimacy has repercussions on the legal superiority of constitutional sources