Napoleon

On the European Constitution, we can definitely declare that it is long and obscure, translating, in many ways, the difficulties faced by a federalized European Union. In their attempt to cover all areas, all populations, all issues facing a unified Europe, the legislators have included acts such as Declaration on Unit 1 and Unit 2 of the Bohunice V1 nuclear power plant in Slovakia or the Declaration on the Sami people. A constitution is never supposed to be exhaustive, because other judicial instruments, such as laws and governmental decisions or the European Commission’s directives will fill in the unaddressed issues. However, this is something the European legislators have a difficult time doing, because the European Constitution is approved by national referendums and, as such, each national must find his rights expressly mentioned in the act. This is probably what makes it obscure and what makes it ambiguous: when you want 462,371,237 individuals (estimated EU population in 2006) to find their rights mentioned in the Constitution, you are bound to run into some trouble. The Constitution of the Consulate had 95 articles in total. The European Constitution has 80 only in its final act and there are 4 parts before it. Of course, as one Napoleonic contemporary put it when asked what the Constitution was about, the Constitution of the Consulate was “about Bonaparte”, but no one really knows what the European Constitution is about.