Hello everyone, welcome back to EU Untangled. I'm happy to be back on the set with Harpa and Alex.

Hello. Hey!

Hello! I hear you're excited, guys, and I am too, because we're going to be talking today about a fundamental topic that I believe more often than not goes unnoticed.

That is constitutions.

Constitutions are, you know, the fundamental body of doctrines and practices that allow any

society to organize itself.

At least that's how I picture constitutions to be.

However, today we have a guest that will help us untangle what

constitutions are, what they mean, and whether there is such a thing as a constitution for Europe

and whether that constitution should exist in the first place. Our guest today is Valgerdur

Bjork Paltzotir, who is a second year PhD student in political science at the University of Iceland.

She's joining us all the way from Reykjavik, where she's studying citizen participation in policy making,

and she's zooming into citizen engagement in constitutional reform in Iceland.

Lately, the Icelandic government has established several participatory and deliberative processes

in an effort to change the constitution.

The results of these democratic innovations have not yet been translated into actual changes to the constitutions,

and today we're going to learn why.

Val, and that's what I'm going to call you for the rest of the pot to avoid butchering your name.

Perfect.

Welcome to EU Untangled.

Thank you. Nice to be with you guys.

It's a pleasure to have you here. So I guess the first question that pops into my mind is, what the heck is a constitution?

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