Time for Defending Europe’s Ordoliberal Constitutionalism against Neoliberal and 
Authoritarian Power Politics in the New Multipolar World Order

Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann

Europe’s multilevel democratic, republican and cosmopolitan constitutionalism acknowledges the ordoliberal insight that comprehensive protection of human and constitutional rights of citizens requires multilevel constitutional restraints on market failures and governance failures; the EU constitutional requirement that
internal and external EU governance must comply with Europe’s constitutional principles and «strict observance of international law» (Articles 3, 21 TEU), has no equivalent outside Europe. Neoliberal US deregulation prioritising libertarian «negative freedoms» for business-driven market regulation, and authoritarian aggression and state-capitalism, risk undermining Europe’s homogeneity commitments to a «competitive social market economy», sustainable development and protection of human rights in a rules-based «European society» (Articles 2, 3 TEU). EU emergency governance responding to financial, migration, environmental, health and security crises led to dynamic interpretations of EU regulatory powers, emergency powers, and evolutionary constitutionalism. It also promotes EU leadership for UN and WTO sustainable development reforms, and for a new European security system responding to the dangerous, geopolitical changes imposed by the US Trump 2.0 administration.