The Extent of Democratic Deficit in the European Union and Potential Remedies to the Problem

Assess to what extent there is a 'democratic deficit' in the EU. What concrete institutional remedies might be proposed to address it?

There have been debates about whether there exists a democratic deficit in the EU since the mid 1980’s, a number of authors have written on this subject and in this essay I aim to put forth a series of arguments to assess whether or not there is a democratic deficit in the EU, and suggest some institutional remedies that could address the deficit.

I will begin by explaining what we mean by a democratic deficit in the EU. What I mean by a democratic deficit is that the governance of the EU lacks democratic legitimacy because of the way that it functions, there are 5 main factors that authors on the subject have identified which show how there is a democratic deficit in the EU, these are: “Increased executive power-decreased national parliamentary control, The European parliament is too weak, there are no European elections, the EU is too distant and policy drift” , may authors such as Follesdal believe that these factors show clearly that there is a deficit of democracy in the EU. I would like to now assess these factors and explain how in my opinion there is a democratic deficit in the EU.

One of the biggest reasons in my opinion for the lack of democratic legitimacy in the EU is as a result of institutional changes that resulted in increased executive power. Increased executive power in the EU has meant that the European parliament is now too weak and national parliaments can be ignored by the council. This has caused a deficit in democracy because “governments can effectively ignore their parliaments when making decisions in Brussels” this means that some decisions that are made in the council...

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...o be passed through the co-decision procedure, the majority are already passed through the co decision procedure, this would ensure that all decisions have been passed by both houses and therefore would improve democratic legitimacy.

In Conclusion I believe I have shown the two sides of the argument that analyse to what extent there is a democratic deficit in the EU, and I have shown that I believe that although Majone and Moravcik do make some salient points, I believe that there is a lack of democratic legitimacy in the EU, and because of this I have put forward a number of institutional remedies, namely, the creation of a EU media station, making decision making procedures more transparent and increasing the power of the parliament which would reduce the democratic deficit and promote greater interest in the workings of the EU and aid its democratic legitimacy.