*Originally published in 2025 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered directly to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

Europe is not just facing a cost-of-living crisis. Behind the headlines of inflation, austerity, and social unrest lies a deeper structural transformation—one that risks turning the European Union into a democracy for the rich. While millions struggle with precarity, Europe’s wealthiest citizens are entrenching their power in law, policy, and media. As wages stagnate, housing becomes unaffordable, and social protections wither across the continent, another reality thrives—one of extreme privilege and influence. (Cárdenas-García, Mesa, and Castro 2021; Tsoukalis 2012; Ioannou and Charalambous 2024; Palley 2013)  The super-rich are not merely surviving Europe’s overlapping crises; they are quietly reshaping its constitutional and political order to suit their interests. Their power is not incidental. It is systematically embedded in the legal frameworks, governance structures, and public narratives that define the European Union today.

In my recent article in the Journal of Common Market Studies, I argue that Europe is evolving into an oligarchic constitutional order: a system where the governance of society increasingly protects the accumulation of private wealth while hollowing out the principles of democracy, equality, and human dignity (Regilme 2023; 2024; 2025). Unless this trajectory is reversed, Europe's democratic promises risk collapsing into mere ceremony, concealing deep structures of inequality. In that article, I use the term oligarchic constitutional order to describe a system in which the formal structures of democracy—elections, legal norms, constitutional texts—remain intact, but their substance is gradually reoriented to serve the interests of the ultra-wealthy. Rather than dismantling democratic institutions outright, this order repurposes them to entrench inequality, shield capital from public accountability, and normalize economic exclusion as politically legitimate. Laws are written and interpreted to protect property over people; budget rules are codified to prioritize investor confidence over social need; and supranational institutions increasingly act as enforcers of market discipline, not democratic oversight. My hypothesis is that Europe may be evolving toward such a constitutional order—one where governance appears democratic in form, but increasingly functions in ways that reproduce oligarchic power. This trajectory, if left unchallenged, risks transforming the EU’s foundational promises of solidarity........

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