Paper presented on June 13, 2014, at the Summer School of the Dottorato di Scienze giuridiche, Università degli Studi di Perugia.

This article explores the constitutional dimension of the new European crisis-management law. The author’s critical stance is that the new architecture of European economic governance accentuates the well-known asymmetries between supranational market forces and national welfare state arrangements, by deeply transforming the constitutional functions of EU law. A double process of de-politicisation and de-legalisation takes place in an apparent contradictory but convergent manner at EU level, with dramatic implications for the viability of the so-called «European social model».