Abstract
In recent times, the European Union has come to be known in many academic and activist circles as : authoritarian liberalism, as embodied in the neo-liberal or ordo-liberal software of the European treaties. The term's origins date back to the last days of the Weimar Republic, when jurist Hermann Heller coined it in response to a speech by Carl Schmitt to German employers. Entitled " strong state, healthy economy ", Schmitt's speech of 1933 would, for many authors, provide the fundamental motif that has informed the policies developed within the framework of the European Union for over half a century. However, the thesis of a conceptual and political affinity between Schmitt and German ordo-liberalism and, beyond that, with neo-liberalism and the construction of Europe raises three major difficulties: the relationship between Schmitt and liberalism, the misuse of the concept of authoritarianism and the reduction of liberalism to a defense of the market order. Hence the importance of maintaining a sense of the distinctions between market constitutionalism and authoritarianism, between liberalism, neo-liberalism and capitalism, to avoid making an oxymoron one of the keys to understanding the contemporary world.
