The RECONCILE Project
(funded from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon Europe, EU’s main research and innovation programme (2021–2027. 

Acronym: RECONCILE

Project no. 101171645

Name: Community Through Constitution. REsearching how CONstitutions Construct Identity and LEgitimacy in Europe and MENA

Duration: 5 years, May 1, 2025, to April 30,2030

About the project

The role of a constitution is twofold: it sets up an institutional design that restricts the use of public power and guarantees fundamental rights. Our project focuses on a third possible role: identity building. The identity of a political community is mostly based on language, ethnicity, religion or the combination of them. We suggest that the constitution could also become the primary source of identity for a society. For that, the following requirements are necessary. First, citizens must consider the constitution to be an authentic expression of their will. Second, the constitution must ensure compatibility with morality and international law. These two aspects are crucial to the legitimacy of a constitution. Third, there must be a constant, but not too harsh public debate among different institutions of the state about the interpretation of constitutional norms.

In order to find out more about how these requirements function and about the barriers of identity building through constitutionalism, we conduct comparative legal analysis and fieldwork in eight selected states from Europe (primarily, but not exclusively Central and Eastern Europe) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.