PhD thesis defence by Pablo Puertas Roig
Since its inception, the European Union (EU) has been a Janus-faced project, conceived both as a ‘rescue of the nation-state’ and as an effort to transcend it. This duality has generated lasting normative uncertainty about the EU’s purpose and the standards by which it should be judged. These tensions sharpened during the Eurozone crisis, when financial turmoil exposed the fragility of an ‘incomplete’ monetary union and revived the claim that a viable currency union ultimately requires a Political Union.
This thesis examines the relationship between money and sovereignty —the sovereign–monetary nexus— in the context of three competing normative models for the EU: federalist, disintegrationis, and democratic.
Chapter 1 explores Jürgen Habermas’s federalist case for a European supranational democracy, reconstructing his critique of the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ in light of the sovereign-monetary nexus. While the federalist approach offers a plausible response to the pathologies created by an incomplete monetary union, the chapter questions the viability of a European constitutional patriotism and exposes the limits of the EU as a multinational polity.
Chapter 2 examines the disintegrationist response —which mirrors the normative logic of the sovereign-monetary nexus but accepts the ‘no-demos’ thesis— contesting the portrayal of the Single Market and the euro as neoliberal projects, and presenting them as precariously governed yet valuable European public goods that merit reform rather than abolition.
Chapter 3 addresses the alleged obsolescence of the nation-state, arguing that, despite the challenges of globalisation and cosmopolitanism, nation-states remain valuable civic communities capable of meeting the demands of justice and constituting a ‘realistic utopia.’
Chapter 4 clarifies normative ambiguities concerning the relationship between nationhood and civic virtue, and advances a demoicratic foundation for a European Social Union to address the tensions of the sovereign–monetary nexus, reconciling the principles of European solidarity and national responsibility.
Pablo Puertas Roig is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute (EUI). He is a political theorist mainly interested in normative debates surrounding European integration, nationalism, and welfare reform.