A Steady Retreat from Democracy and a Growing Involvement in the European Union

Another common criticism of the UK system is that, although most politicians are elected, many powerful people hold their positions without having to face the voters. Over the years criticism has focused on the House of Lords, the civil service and judges. While the people serving these positions may indeed be experts in their field, the citizens of the UK have absolutely no say in who is elected into these positions. This shows a problem in the United Kingdom’s democratic system and one that does not follow a representative democracy.

The governmental system which embodies the European Union is currently both ambiguous and undemocratic. However, in order to explore alternative strategies of improvement, it is firstly crucial to identify the root of the deficit. One is then able to discuss contributing factors which affect the national parliaments lack of importance when creating legislation and strategies of review such as the subsidiary and proportionality tests.

With regards to the claim that the European Parliament is too weak (the second of Weiler's standard version claims), Moravcsik (2002; 2003) emphasises the fact that during the last twenty years, the European Parliament is the institution which have experienced the most reforms, regarding its increase of powers, compare to the Council and the Commission. The latter argument is in fact accurate because ever since the Single European Act (1986), the European Parliament gains more and more power by reforms in every signed Treaty (Moravcsik, 2003, p. 7). Despite that, however, the Parliament is still considered to be weak compared to the other institutions, as it will be analysed later in the essay.

The multigovernmental nature of the European Union and the national governments of its member states also helps to decrease the democratic deficit, not only on a supranational level, but on a national level as well (Eising 2011). Because there is a division of powers and sovereignty between these two levels of governance, citizens have the capacity, through interest group activity, to represent their interests to two different legislative bodies that could pursue legislation in their favour (Kohler-Koch 1997; Eising 2011). Similarly, due to the relatively nascent state of European Union interest group activity, many groups with similar interests are combining and coordinating efforts in order to have a bigger influence over policy decisions (Greenwood 2003, Eising 2011). Because of this unique phenomenon, smaller groups may work in tandem with

Most powerful of all is the Council of Ministers which deliberates in secret and until recently was not legally obliged to listen to the EP’s decisions. While indirectly accountable to voters, the link is too tenuous and the mode of interaction too technocratic to satisfy most observers. It also appears unreasonable that the deliberations of the Parliament must be public whereas the Council remains secretive. The European Council only meets every six months, largely as confirmation of decisions made elsewhere, but McCormick remarks upon its remarkable potential power: “It can in effect set the agenda for the Commission, override decisions reached by the Council of Ministers and largely ignore Parliament.”

The council of ministers- This is the European Union’s main decision making body, it is composed of ministers from the National governments of each of the member states, and meets in Brussels or Luxembourg to agree legislation and policy.

Further, the Commission’s institutional structure is a factor putting great weight on perceptions of the democratic deficit since it lacks democratic credentials yet largely dominates EU law-making in spite of the presence of the EP as its democratic face. Commissioners are not elected, directly nor indirectly, as is with most sovereign executives. Follesdal and Hix however argue that the exercise of these executive powers requires contestation of political leadership and policy. They also suggest that direct elections by citizens or national parliaments should be allowed for the contestation of the Commission President who holds the most powerful EU executive position, so as to increase democratic input. Contrary to this position is that of Moravcsik, who discounts the idea of elections as a possible remedy and rejects the notion of

Treaty of Lisbon has provided that Union should uphold the representative democracy and thus, the legislative power is divided between the European Commission (‘the Commission’) which represents the interest of the European Union as a whole, the Council of Ministers (‘the Council’) which represents the Member States’ interests or their citizens and the European Parliament which represents its citizens’ interests. However, only 34% turned out to vote at the last EU election which implied a growing dissent in Europe. The EU is described as “undemocratic from the start”. The gist of the question is whether the EU law-making process is sufficiently democratic. EU’s democratic performance should be judged on the basis of subsidiarity, representativeness, accountability and engagement.

In this assignment I will be assessing the democratic accountability of the European Union. I will begin by briefly describing the institutions, their functions, compositions and discuss how they work as check and balance system to ensure democratic accountability further to look on to how laws are made and what they are In order to establish whether or not the EU is in fact answerable to its citizens.

Whether UK should leave or stay with EU has recently become one of the most widely debated subjects and British citizens will soon have to decide their future in the EU as Prime Minister David Cameron has promised a referendum on ‘leave or stay’ question to the British people by 2017. This came at the time of Eurozone crisis when most of EU citizens including British are losing faith in EU, making the distance between EU institutions and EU citizens ever greatest. The reason for British people’s resentment is the lack of democracy: EU dictatorship, too many unnecessary laws and regulations to follow. Of course, there are Brexiteers who call for the UK to quit in order to regain national sovereignty and to be more democratic than they are now and those who want to stay. The essay to expresses disagreement to the statement that UK would be more democratic if it votes to leave EU.

This paper will assess the claim that supremacy of EU law is still an evolving and debatable concept. To do this, I have divided this paper into four sections. The first section will discuss the establishment of supremacy in EU law through ECJ case law. The second section will explore the vibrant debate surrounding constitutional pluralism that has arisen since the early 1990s. The third section will examine the debate and impact of the codification of primacy in the early 2000s. The fourth section will examine the extent to which the principle of sovereignty has been accepted in three EU Member States, namely, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Poland.

One of the central themes of the EU debate revolves around the issue of national sovereignty. The European project has always involved, to a certain extent, the relinquishing of some national sovereignty, but in trying to persuade Europe’s established nations to cede powers to a European centre, often without the consultation of the general public, has created a growing eurosceptic backlash, a narrative that has been well received in Britain.

On 25 March 2017, the European Union will celebrate the 60th anniversary of its existence. Nevertheless, the European Council and the presidents of the twenty seven member states are aware that it is not a perfect union.

Prima Facie the Spitzenkandidaten election model is directly democratic, however, in practice this system is not without flaws. Electoral participation remained at record low levels when it was first introduced in 2009 and the following elections of 2014, at 43%. This low voter turnout illustrates that those who believed that Spitzenkandidaten would increase public interest and promote a pan-European debate about the future of the EU were clearly mistaken. The effectiveness of this voting system is much debated. From, aggregate election results it is clear that, such a system of voting continues to be akin to second order theory for two reasons. Firstly, low voter turnout exemplifies that citizens are disillusioned by politics at a European level and hence true voting patterns are skewed, as it is more likely for citizens with vested interests to vote at a European level. This has the adverse effect on European Integration through paving the way for Eurosceptic parties into the EP, whose representation is considerable in the current parliamentary formation. This is exemplified by the fact that the success of Eurosceptic parties was interdependent on the suffering of governing parties. For example the conservatives coupled with the liberal democrats in the UK lost 30%age points since the general election of 2010. The two Dutch governing parties suffered the same losses as compared to the 2012 Dutch general election. Finally, the governing parties of France and Spain lost

The EU has an interesting, albeit confusing, system in which it operates. In order to understand the organization of its foreign policy, we must look into the different institutions which govern the EU and explain their roles. First, there is the European Commission, which is composed of 28 ministers from each country and manages the day-to-day business of the EU as well as drafting proposals. The President of the European Commission is essentially seen as the head of the EU. It is designed to represent the EU as a whole. The European Council is composed of the president or prime minister of each member country and represents each countries’ interests. The President of the Commission and the High Representative of Foreign Affairs sit as nonvoting council members. Then the Council of the European Union, which is a separate entity from the European Union Council, is made up of representatives from each country which are ministers for a specific subject. They pass EU laws and approve the