Democratic deficit in the European Union

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The Democratic deficit in the European Union is an argument made against the perceived democratic problems that have been a result of the process of creating the European Union. The phrase "democratic deficit" has been attributed to Bill Newton Dunn, a British Member of the European Parliament who used the term in a pamphlet in the 1980s. In the context of the European Union it has been particularly concerned with issues of a parliamentary deficit resulting from the transfer of powers to the European level.[1]

Contents 1 The Arguments 1.1 Executive Dominance 1.2 Shortcomings Related to European Elections 1.3 Detached From Citizens 1.4 Insufficient Democratic Controls 1.5 Policy Bias 2 Defences 2.1 Accountability of European Executives 2.2 Transparency and Judicial Review 2.3 Process Promotes Consensus 2.4 EU Should Be Insulated From Democratic Pressures 3 Proposed Changes Under the Constitutional Treaty 4 References

[edit] The Arguments

Arguments against the democratic shortcomings of the European Union are hugely varied in their nature, but a synthesis of the main arguments can nevertheless be laid out. These are neither attributable to a single school of thought nor to particular individuals but taken as a whole they represent the main components of democratic deficit arguments.

[edit] Executive Dominance

First (and arguably most importantly) there are arguments which state that European integration has reduced the representational qualities of European democracies by concentrating an increasing amount of decisions in what is an executive dominated political system. This position essentially argues that as the EU has increased the areas of policy in which it has a say and as the EU’s institutions are disproportionately controlled by national governments - directly in the Council, or indirectly through the nominating of Commission members - there has been a shift in power away from national parliaments towards national executives, a shift which has not been adequately compensated for by the European Parliament due to the latter’s limited powers. As might be expected, a solution to this particular problem has often been sought in increasing the European Parliament’s powers to counteract this drift towards executives and compensate for the loss of parliamentary involvement at the national level. Indeed the European Parliament has increased its powers relative to the other European institutions in every new treaty since at least the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.

[edit] Shortcomings Related to European Elections

Secondly there are arguments which stress the lack of truly "European elections". The European Parliament is directly elected by European electorates every five years, however many scholars have criticised the idea that this amounts to a mechanism for European electorates to register their preferences on the performance of European actors. A classic study of European elections carried out by the political scientists Karlheinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt in 1980 concluded that European electorates vote primarily on domestic issues during European elections and not to register their preferences on developments at the European level. Subsequent studies (for instance Marsh) have confirmed the existence of a "second order" effect whereby voters gravitate towards smaller and more extremist parties due to the perceived low importance of the elections combined with evidence that domestic factors (such as how long a government has been in power) had a significant impact on voting decisions. More generally the absence of political parties which compete across Europe and not simply domestically raises serious problems for the representative function of European elections.

[edit] Detached From Citizens

Third there are arguments that the European Union is either too far removed from electoral controls (as described above) or is too complex for citizens of the member states to understand and form reasoned opinions about the actions of European officials - a prerequisite for it to be accountable to European citizens. In addition to the complexity of the process it is also argued that the nature of the policies in which the EU is involved are overly technical and discourage citizens from engaging with the process and that the system lacks transparency (particularly where the Council of Ministers is concerned). The end result according to such arguments is that the European Union has alienated European citizens with serious repurcussions for both the traditional democratic ideal of a citizenry educated in the governmental process and the ideal of government actors accountable to the general public.

[edit] Insufficient Democratic Controls

Fourth there are arguments which focus on the specific controls placed on European actors to ensure their accountability to European electorates. The main forms of this criticism relate explicitly to the Council of Ministers' perceived lack of transparency (as mentioned above) and the powers handed to the Commission and European Court of Justice (ECJ). A particular criticism of the ECJ is that it has been guilty of Judicial activism in acquiring powers for itself and EU law not formally given by any treaty - in particular the concepts of 'direct effect' which states that national courts of the member states must implement EU law and of 'supremacy' which states that when EU law and national laws are in opposition to one another, EU law has supremacy.

[edit] Policy Bias

Lastly and usually in accordance with some or all of the above arguments, various critics claim that the policies decided upon at the European level are not representative of the preferences of European voters. There are various strands of this argument depending on the preferences of the person articulating them but they are most often put forward by social democrat and left wing parties who argue that EU decisions have a neo-liberal bias. One common form of the argument is that due to the nature of EU policy areas it is less likely that interest groups on the left of the political spectrum - trade unions for instance - will mobilise at the European level as they are primarily concerned with national issues. In contrast corporate groups representing companies that engage in business across the whole of Europe have more of a stake in issues concerning trade regulations and the upholding of the principles of a common market. As such it has been argued that policy outcomes are skewed towards the interests of business.

[edit] Defences

Defences of the European Union have been almost as strongly argued as criticisms, some of the main counter arguments are as follows.

[edit] Accountability of European Executives

A notable response to the criticism that European integration has raised the powers of Executives in comparison to Parliaments has come from Andrew Moravcsik, who claims that the European Union has made Executives more accountable to their citizens. He notes that the actions of government ministers are no longer scrutinised simply at home, but in a wider European context and that ministers at home are no longer held to account solely for their domestic record, but also for their actions in Brussels - as for instance is demonstrated by some of the criticism Tony Blair received after concessions made over the UK rebate in 2005.

A more general point not related to Moravcsik's argument is that already mentioned, namely that the European Parliament has received a notable increase in powers since the Maastricht Treaty, with mechanisms such as co-decision procedures (between the Council of Ministers and European Parliament) being introduced and adopted in many policy areas. The European Parliament has also acquired something of a de facto scrutinising role where the conduct of Commissioners is concerned as evidenced by the resignation of the Santer Commission in 1999 under EP pressure in addition to explicit powers to veto Commission lineups - a power used in 2004 against the Barroso Commission. Nevertheless the debate over whether the European Union has increased the power of Executives vis a vis Parliaments remains highly contentious.

[edit] Transparency and Judicial Review

Contrary to the claims mentioned above many scholars have argued that the decision making process in the EU is actually more transparent than the corresponding processes in member states. Notable reforms (partly motivated by a desire to respond to the initial criticisms) have made it comparatively easy for interest groups and citizens to access EU documents concerned with policy making including memos from debates in the Council of Ministers. Furthermore the actions of European actors come under scrutiny from not only the ECJ but also from national courts and this extensive judicial review, it has been argued, is sufficient so as to ensure the accountability of policy makers in the EU.

[edit] Process Promotes Consensus

In response to arguments concerning policy bias some scholars have been keen to point out that the decision making process in the European Union relies heavily on consensus between actors. Qualified majority voting and unanimity are still used in Council votes and as such it has been argued that policies will inevitably reflect very centrist positions because any policy which leans too far to one side of the political spectrum will only require a small minority to oppose it for it to be rejected. Empirical evidence for either side of this debate has perhaps unsurprisingly been hard to come by due to the subjective nature of 'policy bias' arguments.

[edit] EU Should Be Insulated From Democratic Pressures

Some scholars have taken a slightly different line from arguments over whether the EU is or is not democratic and argued that due to its particular functions it is counter-intuitive to force democratic mechanisms - such as a directly elected Commission - into the European system. The most prominent of these theorists has been the Italian academic Giandomenico Majone who argues that the EU is primarily concerned with regulatory policy areas and as such should be insulated from democratic measures in the same manner as an independent central bank such as the Bank of England. Majone has written in length on the problems with what he terms 'analogous arguments' whereby the EU is held to the same democratic standards which a state would be held under. For Majone this is to ignore the unique nature of the EU and its primarily regulatory nature which are unsuited for democratic mechanisms found in the member states. The most notable observation he makes in relation to this argument is the absence of a European demos or citizenry which he maintains is a prerequisite to any idea of democracy at the European level.

[edit] Proposed Changes Under the Constitutional Treaty

Successive revisions of the treaties that form the constitution of the European Union have increased the power of the directly-elected European Parliament in an attempt to reduce the perceived democratic deficit.

The proposed Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, if it had been ratified, would have made the following changes in this regard:

• It would have extended the power of codecision to virtually all policy areas. This means that Parliament would become an equal legislative partner with the Council for virtually all EU-level decision-making.

• It would have required the Council to meet in public when legislating.

• It would have ensured that national parliaments receive information about new EU legislative proposals in enough time to mandate ministers on how to vote in the Council.

• It would also have given national parliaments a new power to send any proposal back to the Commission for reconsideration if they believe the proposal lies outside the EU's competence (i.e. if they believe it covers a policy area for which the treaties do not allow EU-level decision-making).

• It would have confirmed the principle of subsidiarity as a fundamental principle of the Union.

• It would have created a new citizens' right of initiative, obliging the Commission to consider any proposal for legislation that has the support of 1 million EU citizens.

However, some commentators argued that the treaty did not go far enough in reducing the perceived democratic deficit. In particular, they pointed out that:

• There would be no change to the principle that EU laws, and the terms of constitution itself, supersede national laws: "The Constitution and law adopted by the institutions of the Union in exercising competences conferred on it shall have primacy over the law of the Member States" (Article I-6). The constitution specifically spelled out that, for those areas of policy where member states share competence with the EU, national governments may act at national level only where they have not already acted through the EU. In other areas, member states confer sole competence on the EU, i.e. they agree to act only at European level (Article I-12). In any case, the question of whether EU laws can reasonably be described as "national governments acting at EU level", when the European Commission has the sole right to propose those laws, is controversial.

• The appointed European Commission would remain the sole initiator of legislative proposals. Other bodies (Parliament, Council, citizens) can only require it to consider drafting a proposal.

• Similarly, national parliaments would acquire the right to send a proposal back to the Commission for reconsideration, but there is no explicit requirement for the Commission to make any changes to its proposal as a result.

The constitutional treaty failed after a rejection of the draft first by the French voters and days after, the Dutch voters in 2005. Each member state was required to accept the new treaty for it to become legal. Several states, including the United Kingdom, have yet to vote on the proposed document, however once France and the Netherlands vetoed it, there was no point in continuing the process. There are discussions now about whether to scrap the entire constitution or pick and choose from the treaty and create a new one based on those sections.

[edit] References

• Follesdal, A and Hix, S. (2005) ‘Why there is a democratic deficit in the EU‘ European Governance Papers (EUROGOV) No. C-05-02

• Majone, G. (2005) 'Dilemmas of European Integration'.

• Marsh, M. (1998) ‘Testing the second-order election model after four European elections’ British Journal of Political Science Research. Vol 32.

• Moravcsik, A. (2002) ‘In defence of the democratic deficit: reassessing legitimacy in the European Union’ Journal of Common Market Studies. Vol 40, Issue 4.

• Reif, K and Schmitt, S. (1980) ‘Nine second-order national elections: a conceptual framework for the analysis of European election results’ European Journal of Political Research. Vol 8, Issue 1.