The impact of the economic crisis in our two constitutions

Abstract

This paper presents the text of the conference pronounced by Javier García Roca at the Center of Political and Constitutional Studies, on January 30, 2014. That commitment served to expose the main thesis of our essay: Budgetary stability and constitutional consecration of debt brake (Civitas-Thomson Reuters, 2013). So we decided we both would sign this article. Now we try to stimulate discussion about the transformation of the economic crisis is leaving problems that we had long and have gotten worse and emerged practically at once, after thirty-five years of constitutional development. The crisis has introduced in the law of the European Union and in our domestic legislation —with the reform of Article 135 of the Constitution—a stronger principle of budget stability, a true constitutional prohibition. At European level, we are witnessing a material constitutional place, that is where there are the basic and supreme political decisions about the economy. And at the domestic level it is urgent to undertake a constitutional reform, as a defense of the Constitution, in order to avoid the blackout of the representative democratic system.