Michalis Zivanaris

Despite its economic origins, the Eurozone crisis triggered an equally significant constitutional moment as Eurozone members and European institutions abandoned existing channels of intergovernmental cooperation and Community decision-making, in favour of informal ad-hoc means of coordination between them. The turn to executivism and informality challenged Europe’s constitutional settlement, forcing European legal scholarship to investigate the broader constitutional significance of the Eurozone crisis. Operating within this moment of reflection, the aim of this thesis is to investigate the constitutional implications of the Eurozone crisis and to assess the wider constitutional significance of this moment.
The ways through which response measures have been decided and overseen by national and supranational courts is studied through the case of Cyprus. More specifically, the thesis observes how coordination between European institutions and Eurozone members intensified during the crisis, leading to the development of existing bodies of the European Union. The Eurogroup’s involvement in devising and implementing a bail-in resolution for the Cypriot financial crisis is studied more closely. After determining the constitutional implications of institutional development, the thesis continues to consider how national and supranational courts responded to claims brought before them by Cypriot depositors affected by the bail-in.
Drawing on critical literature conceptualising the political economy of constitutionalism beyond the state, the thesis positions institutional development within the ongoing relationship between neoliberalism and European constitutional law. One of the central elements of neoliberal political economic thought, as identified by the thesis, is the separation and insulation of economic decision-making from political interference – what I term as a scrutiny lacuna. By tracing the separation and insulation of economic decision-making in the gradual development of European constitutionalism, I consider the constitutional implications of institutional development and assess the exercise of judicial oversight during the crisis. Through the scope of a political economy of constitutionalism, I argue that during the crisis we can observe the creation and constitutionalisation of a scrutiny lacuna, thus resolving any conflict between opposing constitutional objectives operating within European constitutionalism prior to the Eurozone crisis.

Towards the end of his life, Foucault turned his attention to antiquity where he located an additional process by which the subject is constituted. These developments are often misinterpreted as an aesthetic turn while his findings are challenged due to his unique reading of antiquity. The thesis attempts to address these limitations by pulling together various elements of Foucault’s work but also through a detailed survey of Stoicism. While a holistic view of his work allows us to appreciate that Foucault perceived the study of subjectivity as a counter-effect to processes of subjectification, the study of Stoicism counters conceptual and methodological criticism. As a result, the thesis argues that Foucault’s focus on the self is not an aesthetic turn. Instead, it is a relational and transversal endeavour.