Pro/Contra : Does the EU have a democratic deficit ? YES ! - commentaires

Pro/Contra : Does the EU have a democratic deficit ? YES !

Dear Jofre,

thank you for your good und constructive comment. You have point there, mentioning the need for political will and ideology. Since Iam convinced that european integration is the only answer in todays globalized world, it is probably the only logical conclusion. particular the media, the organisations and the elites are called to be responsible and to look much more ahead there nations´backyard. yet, the fear remains that brussels apparatus doesnot work swimmingly and that there are drawbacks. so while being committed to a federalist vision of a united europe, we always have to look for solutions, which are compatible to the heterogenity we have. subsidiarity would be the catchword here.

Pro/Contra : Does the EU have a democratic deficit ? YES !

Dear Niklas,

I know the arguments you bring into play in your article might not be the ones that the readers of ‘the new federalist' generally share, but they are, indeed, often employed by Europhobic groups, who try to dismiss the European project while revealing a serious lack of political vision.

I will reply to what I think is one of the main points of your article, when you state that the European parliament can't be further empowered because it lacks a European political parties and common language. It is true that European integration might have reached the point where no further powers can be transferred without addressing these fundamental questions, if it is to maintain its democratic status.

Those who see this barrier as the end of the European project have their theoretical bases in the thesis of no-demos, announced by Deiter Grimm after the Maastricht treaty. According to this theory, the constitutionalization of Europe, and therefore its democratization, is impossible because there is no European people, and hence no one to support such process, anyone to represent in a representative political system. The lack of a common language and a European public opinion are the symptoms of the inexistence of the European ‘demos' or people.

The European project has been so far an antidemocratic elitist construction, and even if we cannot deny that, we can seek for ways to turn it upon the people. Habermas, in his ‘Reply to Grimm' never said that is desirable to give more powers to a representative institution that has no one to represent, what he mainly said is that the European public sphere can emerge with political action, which means, in other words, that the ‘democracy' can be before the ‘demos'.

It is true that Habermas hasn't spoke a lot about how much time it takes to spread a common political culture in order to establish a stable base for building up representative democracy, but this is not the real problem. After all, any institution can increase the speed of it change indefinitely.

The real problem is that the policy measures to educate self-conscious European citizens we the union needs to start policies in areas where national states are as sovereign as they once were in monetary policy. This is, nation building policies. We might call it another way, because obviously no one is going to try to lobotomize kids to make them believe that Europe is itself a nation, but essentially, these policies are about awakening the European self-identity. So far, if Erasmus and all the other programs for youth can be seen as one of these policies, their effect has been very limited.

The other big problem about acting politically to increase the political identification of the people with the Union is that is, again, depending on political will, and political will is essentially ideological. The quest for ideology has begun.

Pro/Contra : Does the EU have a democratic deficit ? YES !

Sir , the above article is both right and wrong .

Wright as far as the political democratic deficit is concerned . The low visibility of the EP and the low turn out at elections are sufficient proofs.

Wrong as far as the legal democratic deficit is concerned . Present competences and prerogatives of the EP are comparable - even superior in certain domains - to that of many EU national parliaments . Those competences are actually increasing in the setting up of new Lisbon treaties dispositions .

So that the real problem is the gap between political and legal legitimacy . This gap is narrowing at too low a pace and this is were the real challenge stands . Yours Jean-guy GIRAUD