Overview of the European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union between the 28 countries that collectively cover over four million square kilometres. The European Union was evolved from the desire of forming a European political entity, so as to end the warfare in the European countries that actually culminated from the World War II and destroyed a large part of the continent. The members of the EU are as follows: Austria, Croatia, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Czech Republic, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Lithuania, Poland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovakia, Romania, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Slovenia and United Kingdom. The Maastricht Treaty was used for creating the European Union. This particular treaty was especially designed to improve both “the economic and political integration with the help of creation of single currency “Euro”. The European Single Market was then established in the year 1993, so as to ensure the four forms of freedom such as the freedom of movement of services, people, money, and goods. The European Union is based on certain common principles of democracy, fundamental rights and the rule of law. The article 2 and article 21 of the treaty of European Union highlights the same.
Article 2
The European Union is founded on the principles such as democracy, freedom, dignity, human rights, rule of law and equality.
Article 21
The actions of the European Union are guided by the principles that have inspired the creation development as well as enlargement such as rule of law, respect for human dignity human rights, equality and solidarity and respect for the principles.
Another major concept of this particular paper is the “democracy”. The concept of democracy refers to the involvement of citizens particularly in the political decision- making. Democracy is achieved generally with the help of general elections in which the citizens elect the representatives for making the major decisions of parliament. Another major aspect associated with democracy is that in democracy, is the citizen’s ability to hold the representatives to the account. Elections are one of the major ways in which citizens reflect on the decision made by representatives and they can choose to elect or re-elect the representatives. European Union proclaims that the union was formed on the basis of democracy. The Reform Treaty (Lisbon) enhanced the overall role of European Parliament reinforcing the democratic status of the representatives of the nations.
However, it is indicated that EU is supranational in nature and it is also known to be “democratic deficit” because of a number of reasons that will be discussed in detail in this particular paper. The European Union is linked strongly with democracy that ensures the achievement of aims of the union. A ‘democratic deficit’ is known to exist in the EU; it is the situation that significantly damages the institutions and Unions. There are some elements of democratic deficit that are found in EU and hence, a debatable topic is originated that does EU has a democracy deficit or not.
Principles of the European Union
Paul Craig has provided a definition of democracy deficit that has helped in understanding the concept of democratic deficit by clearly highlighting the features of the concept. The author states that democratic deficit has different features such as executive dominance, disjunction between power and electoral accountability, distance issue, transparency and complexity. These features support the argument that there is a democratic deficit in the EU. The problem of transparency is one of the major reasons behind the democracy deficit in the EU.
Schakleton (2017) conducted a study on democracy in EU and indicated that one of the institutions that depict the democracy is the European Parliaments that makes laws in coordination with the EU council. The European Parliament has improved and expanded its role because of its most important legitimation of being elected by its citizens. The author in his study highlighted a number of factors that support the claim that EU is democratic. There are some actors such as political parties and the National parliaments along with the youth organizations that play a crucial role in the political system of EU. The National Parliaments in the EU also operate as the veto players in different processes such as an entry of a new country in the union, participation in the process of revising the treaties such as the Treaty of Lisbon. The Treaty of Lisbon known as reform treaty initially, is an international agreement that amended the treaties that formed the constitutional basis of the EU. The study conducted by Bevir & Phillips (2016) stated in their study that there is a democratic deficit in the EU. In this context, the authors indicated that there is a need of broadening the Lisbon Treaty so that it can be more democratic in nature.
Carruba also argued in his study that the Council Ministers are not transparent in their decision making, the commission is also not accountable to the public of Europe and it accountable only to the European Union.
The Court of Justice of the European Union is the institution of European Union that includes the whole judiciary. There are two separate courts in this institution- General court and the Court of Justice and the General Court. The Court of Justice of the European Union has interpreted and applied the principle associated with democracy. It is argued that the principle of democracy has been understood effectively by the CJEU but still there are number of arguments against this fact that are discussed in the paper in detail. Some of the examples from the case law of the CJEU and EGC (European General Court) indicate that the court protects the rights of European Parliament members.
Democracy in the European Union
Grasso (2018) indicated that the article 21(2) of the Treaty on European Union includes the aim of supporting and consolidating democracy, the rule of law and human rights. The studies however indicate that there is a democracy deficit in the EU in other words the EU is not able to achieve its objectives related to democracy.
Strategic Framework on Human Rights and Democracy
A strategic framework has been adopted on the human rights and democracy, by the European Union. The strategic framework helps in implementing the actions plan associated with protecting the human rights and democracy in the union. EU has unified the strategic framework for the different policy areas. The framework highlights the objectives, priorities and the principles that can help in improving the overall consistency and effectiveness of the EU policies. The strategic framework focuses on the collective efforts, by involving the European Union members and the institutions. The strategic framework also guarantees a genuine relationship with the society. Some of the key messages of Strategic Framework are as follows: i) protection of human rights throughout the European Union policy; ii) promotion of human rights; and iii) implementing the EU priorities related to human rights.
The strategic framework also makes it essential for EU to present the information related to the performance in the meeting, along with the major objectives related to democracy and human rights. This will further help in improving the democracy in the EU by providing the opportunities to the civil society and stakeholders to contribute in future priorities.
Some other arguments that support the presence of democracy deficit in the EU are discussed below:
The EU is unresponsive to the democratic pressures. One of the most important features of democracy or the democratic regime is that the voters can change the government. However, in case of European Union this cannot be done. There are three councils in the EU – The Commission, Council and the Parliament. However, it is only the Parliament that is elected by the citizens. Therefore, if the parliament is changed with the help of elections not much policy changes will occur as Parliament is one of the three pillars with limited powers.
The fact that there is a democracy deficit in the EU is supported by the claim that there is an Executive dominance in the EU. The European integration has decreased the national parliamentary control along with increasing the executive power. The study conducted by Curtin (2014) also indicates that there is a wider migration in executive power of EU towards the type of decision-making that abstains the democratic control and the electoral accountability. The author further emphasized on the democratic gap in EU in terms of the practices and secrecy arrangements that are exercised by the actors only at the Executive level and the governance level that further results into black out of some important documents and information.
Arguments for the existence of democracy deficit
The arguments associated with comitology further indicate that there is democracy deficit in the EU. Comitology can be defined as the set of procedures that control the implementation of EU laws.
The comitology results into delegation of duties to civil servants or technocrats that further results in paper related to decisive issues that completely isolate the citizens from the process of decision making and places the decision making in hands of committee structures. This argument clearly indicates that the EU bypasses democracy. The European Union has also proposed that there is a crucial need to inject more accountability and transparency in the procedures that seek to make the comitology more democratic in nature.
The arguments against the claim that EU has democratic deficit is not limited to the arguments that have been discussed above but, there are other arguments as well.
Ekensenem (2014) indicated in their study that there are the distance issues in EU that further result in the democracy deficit. The decisions are made in the seat of government that leads to isolation of individual nations from the powerful decision- making system. The democratic deficit is found especially in case of European Parliament. There is a distance between the citizens of different member states because of low participation rate of citizens in the elections of European Parliament. The author further indicates that a lack of democracy in EU at any level will result in loss of legitimacy of EU system and the parliament. Further, there are complexity and transparency issues in the EU that further makes it more deficits in terms of democracy. The members of the council do not conduct their negotiations openly and undertake it in a transparent manner; this indicates that there is a lack of democracy in the functioning of EU. Bradley (2017) also indicated in their study that there are some Transparency and Complexity Issues in the European Union. The EU adopts the complex processes and procedures that create a state of confusion that also result in the isolation of the citizens. The ignorance of the process and procedures further leads to a democratic gap in the EU.
One of the major reasons behind the deficit gap in the EU is that it is too distant from its citizens. EU is also considered as too complex for involving the citizens in the process of decision- making. In addition, as discussed above, there is a lack of transparency and education that prevents the citizens from understanding the functioning and nature of European Union. The Lisbon treaty however, helps in improving the transparency but it does not helps in improving the relationship between the EU and its citizens that is one of the important parts of the concept of democracy.
Arguments against the existence of democracy deficit
Another argument that supports the claim that there is a democracy deficit in the European Union is that the EU is an appointed institution that is not elected democratically and it also has monopoly in context of proposing the laws. In addition, there is no competition over the political authority that will set the agendas at the European level. In addition, the citizens of EU do not get a choice to make decisions regarding the powerful body of EU. The EU commission further lacks legitimacy, as it is not democratically representative of the citizen of EU.
The doubt that there is a democracy deficit in the European Union is true according to our findings. There is a significant lack of participation and engagement of members of EU in the decision- making process. This further result in widening of deficit gap in context of democracy and alienation of the citizens from the EU’s decisions- making processes. The fact that the distance between citizens and democracy is more is true with all the representative democracies. The democracy in the European Union can be questioned because of the reasons such as rational ignorance, policy issues and power of certain special interests.
Conclusion
The overall discussion and arguments associated with the democracy deficit in the EU indicate that there are some deep rooted and integrated issues that lead to a gap in the democracy in EU. The paper has also highlighted the studies that indicate that democracy deficit is just a myth however the truth according to the analysis is that there is a democracy deficit in EU that needs to be reduced. There are a number of reasons as well as solutions regarding the democracy gap or deficit in the EU. Therefore, it can be concluded that there are different perspectives from which the democracy in EU can be seen. Some of the recommendations that can help in minimizing the democracy gap in EU are that the leaders of EU should be given more power and held accountable for the same. For the members of European Parliament, the focus should be on exercising the democratic control. The links and relationships between the parliaments and the citizen should be strengthened. The yellow card procedure of electing the members should be converted into red card procedure so that the election decisions can be made at the lowest level of EU. It is important for EU to reduce the democratic gap as proclaimed and, build strong relationships with the citizens. This paper is highly valuable in terms of understanding the issue related to democracy deficit along with understanding the major reasons behind the same. In this context, the focus should be on signing of new treaties that ensure that there is no democracy gap in EU and the citizens have the right to select the members of the union. Democracy in the EU will indicate that the citizens of EU have most of the prosperity, freedom and opportunity.
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