time for some european politics

[Occhidiangela]

I'd be more frightened if they'd voted for the constitution without knowing what it said.
-Bob
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Well put. Bob.

Structurally, the fundamental tension is outlined right up front.

1. The union shall respect the equality of Member States before the constitution as well as their national identities, inherent in their fundamental structures, political and constitutional, inclusive of regional and local self-government. it shall respect their essential State functions, including ensuring the territorial integrity of the State, maintaining law and order and safeguarding national security.

2. Pursuant to the principle of sincere cooperation, the Union and the Member States shall, in full mutual respect, assist each other in carrying out tasks which flow from the Constitution.

The Member States shall take any appropriate measure, general or particular, to ensure fulfilment of the obligations arising out of the Constitution or resulting from the acts of the institutions of the Union.

The Member States shall facilitate the achievement of the Union's tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union's objectives.

Article I-6
Union law
The Constitution and law adopted by the institutions of the Union in exercising competences conferred on it shall have primacy over the law of the Member States.

This is similar to "the supreme law of the land" framework of the US Constitution.

However, and I may have missed the salient paragraph, (Para I-59 seemed to be what I was looking for) this Constitution is far more federalist in structure than ours, in that it does not appear to assign to the EU only those powers defined, and reserving the rest to the several states. This Constitution presumes that membership is something states desire, that its own primacy is self evident. That position is similar to the Federalist position during out early years, though not identical. The tone is of "Union granting limited powers to members" rather than "members granting XX limited authority to the Union." Subtle, but fundamentally different.

That does not make it inherently bad, but it may explain the cold feet of any number citizen blocs who are wary of their loss of sovereignty. As a practical matter, a federal system is one of the few ways to effectively rule a large political entity, though any system is susceptible to corruption and influence peddling.

For a similar tension, the "states' rights" school of American politics, since inception, has always held a wariness of Federal Power not explicitly granted the Government.

Occhi