Abstract
The chapter discusses the history of the democratic deficit and its evolution until the 1980s. It is based upon one assumption and has three major aims. The assumption is that in the burgeoning debate on the EU democratic deficit, historians had little to say on its origins and developments, as well as on its evolving meanings. For this reason, the first aim is at discussing the emergence of an early definition of “democratic deficit”. Rather than considering it as an innate feature of the institutions created by the Treaty of Rome, it argues that a specific and clear democratic deficit emerged as the unintended consequence of three decisions adopted at the 1969 Hague Summit, namely the granting of budgetary powers to the not-yet-directly elected European Parliament, the strengthening of majority voting within the Council, and the accession of more sceptical Europeans to the EEC as a consequence of the 1973 enlargement. Second, it will discuss the evolution of the meanings that “democratic deficit” assumed to scholars, politicians and civil society in those years. Finally, it will highlight the main, although partial, solutions elaborated to cope with it before the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty.
Keywords
1 Introduction
In 2017, at the high of the populist tide, with the prolonged effects of the economic crisis, and with Brexit and the migrant crisis being the top news across Europe, scholars Stéphanie Hennette, Thomas Piketty, Guillaume Sacriste and Antonie Vauchez presented a draft treaty (T-Dem) establishing a brand-new parliamentary assembly for the Eurozone. Such an institution—comprised of Members of national Parliaments and a selection of Members of the European Parliament—would have been in charge of assuring a democratic governance for the Euro and the Eurozone and—in doing so—renewing democracy in Europe, containing populism, promote more progressive policies (Hennette et al. 2017). Beyond the merits and the limits of such a proposal, the idea of addressing the democratic deficit through the empowerment of a European Assembly was not new. Regardless of the multiple meanings attributed to this expression by academics, the democratic deficit is often associated with the constant increase in European executive powers; a simultaneous decrease in national parliamentary control; the traditional weakness of the European Parliament; and the large distance between European institutions and citizens (Weiler et al. 1995; Moravcsik 2002; Follesdal and Hix 2006). As a consequence, every time the democratic nature of the European Union has been under public scrutiny and contested, the strengthening of the European Parliament has been identified among the top priorities.
This chapter deals with the historical roots of the democratic deficit and its early evolution. Despite the voluminous production of the democratic deficit in European integration, historians have partially neglected this problem. There are however two general exceptions. First, a recent wave of scholarship on the origins of populism and Euroscepticism has touched upon the rhetoric and mobilization against Europe, underlying that the criticism of the undemocratic features of European integration is a common theme that spans over all European countries and over decades (Gilbert Pasquinucci 2020). Second, in 1994 scholar K. Feathersome has proposed a sort of standard interpretation of the origins of the democratic deficit by arguing that it was an innate feature of Jean Monnet’s blueprint for European integration. In his own words: “Monnet established the European integration process with a particular character—which was marked by technocracy and elitism—and that the legacy of this early strategy has been to afford the Commission a weak and fragile democratic legitimacy” (Feathersome 1994a). This chapter adopts a different perspective. While it does not ignore the institutional limits that emerged already in the early integration process and the accountability problems it had, it aims at challenging such an interpretation by arguing three major points. First, when European integration started, its institutional system was imagined and crafted as a democratic surplus, whose purpose was to strengthen national parliamentary democracy, in a moment in which the democratic reconstruction of Europe was deeply entrenched in the national level and challenged by the Cold War. Second, a real and uncontested democratic deficit emerged only in the Seventies as an unintended and unexpected consequence of some of the decisions adopted at the 1969 Hague Summit. Finally, the introduction of direct elections to the European Parliament did not solve these democratic contradictions, although it paved the way to an increase in the European Parliament’s powers and role within the European Communities.
2 A Democratic Surplus? European Integration and Democracy in Europe
In the original scheme for the ECSC, and later in the EC, there was no mention of a clear democratic control mechanism. The technical and functionalist nature of the new Communities, a general fear that an elected assembly would become a resounding box for nationalism, and the common will to exclude communists from representation within the Community contributed to make the Assembly an unelected body, with no democratic legitimacy nor function (Corbett 2001; Mény 2009). The ECSC Common Assembly consisted of members selected by and among members of national parliaments, who therefore held a dual mandate. Its powers were very limited, as symbolized by its need to borrow the building of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly. This did not even change when, after the 1957 Treaties of Rome, the Assembly (now renamed the European Parliamentary Assembly) also came to represent the two newly added communities, the European Economic Community and Euratom. However, since then, besides its purely advisory, the Assembly only gained a very general right to censure the European Commission and to participate in legislative and budgetary matters through the weak consolidation procedure. Its powers therefore remained very restricted. Even its official name—Common Assembly and, later European Parliamentary Assembly—betrayed that it was far from being a true democratic Parliament, although in 1962 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) began referring to their institution as “European Parliament” (a change which was not recognized by other institutions until the adoption of the Single European Act) (ECSC Common Assembly 2016).
If we limit ourselves to the supranational level, this institutional scheme does not seem to respond to the most basic principles of democracy and accountability. Yet, at the time, two conditions not only prevented any discussion of the democratic deficit in European integration, but they also contributed to perceive such a process as a democratic surplus, which contributed to the strengthening of democracy among EC Member States.
First, European integration was assumed as democratic simply because its member states were democracies, with strong national Parliaments. As the quintessential democratic institutions in post-war Europe, national Parliaments were the only national political body to be directly elected by citizens. They would assure checks and balances and hold governments to account. It was in national Parliaments that representatives would debate the future of the country and legislation adopted. To some extent, the creation of a supranational community with no clear democratic mandate was meant to strengthen a vision of national, moderate, and centrist parliamentary democracy, with clear limits to people’s sovereignty both at the national and supranational levels (Conway 2020; Müller 2011). Although parliamentary democracy was declined almost exclusively in domestic terms and within national boundaries, the European dimension of parliamentary democracy became increasingly important, and the ECSC Common Assembly (and later the EEC European Parliamentary Assembly) became part of a European political landscape filled with powerless and non-elected supranational assemblies, whose major aim was to strengthen the democratic features of member States and the pivotal role national parliaments played within their own political systems (Hovey 1966). The European Parliamentary Assembly became the quintessential expression of such a democratic ethos: a non-elected, almost powerless supranational talking shop, which confirmed national parliaments’ central role (Cohen 2006, 2012).
Second, lacking any significant redistributive power, European supranational institutions were hardly perceived as something that could have had an impact on democratic accountability. If a democratic deficit was there in the ‘50s, it became more evident and clearer in retrospect than at the time (Feathersome 1994b). After all, both the ECSC High Authority and the EEC Commission were checked and controlled by the Council, in which Ministers were accountable to their national parliaments for their decisions, and by the non-elected European Assembly, which could eventually approve a motion of censure in respect to the Commission. More than a democratic deficit, the general perception was that this complex institutional system was a democratic surplus for Western Europe, which assured predictability and stability to national political systems and empowered national parliaments even in international relations (Tulli 2017a).
However, by the early 1960s, under the impulse of some federalist activists and politicians, there was a clear attempt to transform the EC into a supranational parliamentary democracy. In 1960, the European Parliamentary Assembly approved the so-called Dehousse Convention, which aimed at introducing direct elections by universal suffrage at the European level. The Dehousse Convention, as it was called, contained a few guiding principles for holding European elections. Nevertheless, it soon dominated political discussions about the future development of the Community. Its relevance lay primarily in being a political manifesto; its underlying principles were a blend of federalist aspirations and faith in parliamentary democracy as developed in Western Europe after the Second World War. To Fernand Dehousse and his supporters, the introduction of direct elections at the European level would have favoured the federal evolution of the Community or—to use Dehousse’s words—it would have provided Europe with a “salutary shock”: the elected European Parliament would be invested with greater political legitimacy and obtain more power, thus triggering a transposition of national democracy from the national to the European level and, eventually, leading Europe toward its federal future. In this sense, introducing direct elections to the European Parliament was supposed to become a trigger for a federal revolution within the Community, not a solution to European institutions’ accountability problems (Tulli 2017b; O’Connor 2014).
3 The 1969 Hague Summit, the Own Resources Mechanism and the Democratic Deficit
The Dehousse Convention was approved by the European Parliament by a large majority. Nevertheless, it was easily ignored by the Council of Ministers and for about a decade the discussion on the introduction of direct elections at the European level was frozen (Pasquinucci 2013). It re-emerged at the end of the Sixties, when the idea of direct elections to the European Parliament assumed a different meaning: it lost its explicit federalist ambition and was identified as a solution to a brand-new problem in the democratic legitimacy of the Community. This was an unexpected and unintended consequence of some of the decisions adopted during the 1969 Hague Summit of EC Heads of State and Government. Among them, European leaders adopted the so-called “own resources scheme” to finance the EC, which was then implemented by the 1970 Luxemburg Agreement. National contributions were replaced by three different financial sources: revenue from agricultural levies; customs duties; and a uniform share of not more than 1% of each State’s VAT revenue. It also called for a limited involvement of the non-elected European Parliament in defining a portion of the budget. Nevertheless, the European Parliament’s involvement in the definition of the budget was extremely limited. Firstly, its role concerned only non-compulsory expenditure, which accounted for a small share of the Community budget. In addition, the European Parliament could enter only in a second stage, after the Commission and the Council had defined the basic structure of the EC budget. Thirdly, in the event of a conflict between the Parliament and the Council, the Council would have the last word. Finally, the Parliament had no power in defining the revenues or the total amount of the budget (Knudsen and Laursen 2012).
Beyond these problems, such a scheme introduced two undeniable criticisms. First, national parliaments no longer had any role in checking the EC budget. Second, the treaty granted the non-elected European Parliament some limited, although relevant, budgetary powers. Many began pointing out the accountability problem introduced within the EC by the Luxemburg Agreement. The implementation of the agreement would have deprived national parliaments their essential control powers over the budget, thus creating a huge accountability problem. For this reason, many began arguing that the Council should have granted the European Parliament more powers and the right to be directly elected by European citizens. In January 1970, the Action Committee for the United States of Europe, for example, claimed that the introduction of direct elections to the European Parliament was the only viable solution to assure a “democratic control over the common budget” (Memorandum 1970). Many MEPs were even more explicit. To them, the entire democratic accountability of the Community was now under question. As a consequence, they argued it was time both to introduce direct elections to the European Parliament and to strengthen its budgetary powers (Europeo 1970).
Such a conclusion was shared by the European Commission. This institution has consistently backed a growth in the European Parliament’s power and repeatedly supported its direct elections (Ludlow et al. 2023). At this specific moment, it jumped into this debate and set up an independent committee with the aim of “examining the full implications of extending the powers of the European Parliament”. Composed of lawyers and political under the leadership of Georges Vedel, the committee worked between October 1971 and March 1972, when it published its conclusions. The Vedel report, as the document was known, was marked by a pragmatic, moderate and minimalist approach. To make the European Parliament a more effective body and a new democratic pillar for the Community:
The processes of democratic legitimation are far from absent from the structures and mechanisms set up by the Treaties. But in the main, these processes are only indirectly connected with the Community since they are derived from the national parliaments and take place via the national governments. It is only to a minor extent, in limited fields and with limited powers, that the Assembly intervenes as a true parliament. The new assignments, arising from the economic and monetary union to be realized in the near future, call for an extension of the Parliament’s powers. This is because the development of the Community’s fields of operation and powers involves transfer to the Community bodies of powers which, on the national plane, belong wholly or partly to the parliaments. The growth of the Community’s powers must not result in a reduction of parliamentary powers […] But above all, it should be emphasized that strengthening the role of the Parliament will fill up not only a sort of democratic vacuum but also certain gaps in the efficient working of the Community (rel. On Spènale. 1970).
This was the first essence of the democratic problem of the EC: the evolution of the Community had entailed a transfer of powers and competences from national parliaments to the Community level, where the Council—not the European Parliament—had seen an increase in its powers. Some critically important instruments of economic management were in the community’s hands, and none of the EC institutions were subject to responsible political direction and control unless Parliament would be elected (Marquand 1979). For this reason, it would have been appropriate to act on the European Parliament, strengthening its powers of control, proceeding swiftly to its election and, later, extending co-decision powers on all EC matters to the EP.
There was another dimension in the democratic deficit; one that was linked to another decision adopted at the Hague, namely the strengthening of majority voting within the Council. As political scientist, David Marquand noted already in 1979:
So long as each member government can veto a Council decision, if it wants to, there is a sense in which each member government is responsible for all Council decisions, and can therefore be held to account for them by its parliament. If national vetoes disappear this will no longer be true; and a national parliament will no longer be able to hold its government to account for what the Council has done. The resulting democratic deficit would not be acceptable in a Community committed to democratic principles. Yet, this deficit would be inevitable unless the gap were somehow to be filled by the European Parliament.Footnote 1
4 The Enlargements and the Popularization of the Democratic Deficit
The discussion of institutional unbalances and the early definition of two technical democratic deficits—the lack of direct elections to the European Parliament and the strengthening of majority voting within the Council—were parallel to a broader and vaguer political debate about other undemocratic features of the European Communities. Between 1969 and 1975, several transformations modified the political and geographical boundaries of the EC, bringing new and more sceptical Europeans within its perimeter and modifying the “dynamic of dissent”, as historian O’Connor Har argued (O’Connor 2014). Until the early Seventies, the few European citizens who opposed European integration had been mostly supporters of Communist parties or radical nationalists. Yet, the enlargement, the holding of national referendums on European integration, and the crisis that Europe was experiencing in the 1970s moved the opposition to European unity to central stage. Citizens were now asked to develop their own opinion on European integration. Referendum campaigns in France, Britain, Denmark, Ireland, and Norway generated an incredible information and formidable propaganda both in favour and against integration. At the same time, the inclusion of more sceptical Europeans, such as the British, within the boundaries of the community fuelled a debate on the (non) democratic features of the community. Calls for the democratization of European institutions entered political life during the 1970s. They were no longer confined to federalist activists or advocates of a stronger Europe. Rather, the appeals now encompassed many vocal critics of European integration. For about two decades, federalist activists had been the stronger critics of an integration with a weak and non-elected Parliament. Now, many began to argue that the EC had a democratic problem, although with different tones and from different political perspectives.Footnote 2
French Communists who entered the European Parliament in July 1973 addressed immediately this problem. They formed a new political group within the Parliament, joining their Italian fellows, although they did not share the Italians’ federalist penchant. Yet, they agreed on the necessity to make direct elections a priority for the future of the Community (Scalingi 1979; Maggiorani 1998). However, what was crucial in the analyses of the French communists was that the European democracy to be built was very different from the bourgeois and supranational conception that other political groups had embraced: it was necessary to work for a progressive Europe, open to the political forces of the workers. It is certainly no coincidence that the secretary of the French Communist Party, Georges Marchais, had identified East Germany as a model of democracy for the future of both France and Europe. These themes first emerged in the French political debate between March and April 1972, on the eve of the French referendum on the proposed enlargement of the community, when they constantly denounced the undemocratic features of the European community. Opposing European integration on capitalist terms, they called for greater “democratization” of European institutions (Marchais 1973).
Quite paradoxically, French Communists’ analyses on the lack of democracy within the EC were somehow echoed by French supporters of European integration. On the occasion of the referendum, President Georges Pompidou claimed:
The French people have never been consulted on Europe. The Treaty of Rome, which created the Economic Community, was signed and ratified at a time when referendums were not customary in the Republic and rulers could decide without consulting them. Now, who can deny that the construction of Europe represents a choice of capital importance for our country? [...] In asking you to approve France's European policy, I am asking you to approve the guidelines that emerged from the Hague Conference, when the six signatories to the Treaty of Rome agreed to reopen negotiations with Britain, adopted the common agricultural market definitively and irrevocably, and chose to commit themselves to economic and monetary union and political cooperation. By giving your assent to the accession of four new States, you will confirm all the guidelines that I have outlined to you [...] It is a question of deciding whether, through economic and monetary union, the Europe of ten will be able to pursue its economic and social development, ensure full employment, the recovery and improvement of working conditions, affirm its political personality and make its voice heard in its relations with the other great powers (Conférence de presse 1972).
To Pompidou, the referendum would have given the EC the democratic legitimation it had been lacking until then. Moreover, it would have strengthened the French President vis-à-vis both some intransigent Gaullists opposing British membership and the union of the left in view of the 1973 general elections (Association Georges Pompidou 1995).
The French debate runs parallel to the one that opened in the United Kingdom over the same months. Anti-marketeers were horrified by the fact that their government could accept subjecting the British Parliament to the unelected technocracy of the EC. In the parliamentary debate that opened in October 1971, Conservatives and Labour invoked repeatedly the principle of the American Revolution “no taxation without representation”, to denounce how British membership would be accompanied by a lack of representation and new taxes not voted on by the London Parliament. In dramatic tones, the Conservative Derek Walker-Smith denounced how “the edifice of our parliamentary system, built by the resolution of our forefathers and sustained by the sacrifice of successive generations, would crumble at last in the dust” (Ludlow 2015). Another Conservative, Enoch Powell, soon became the staunchest defender of British parliamentary sovereignty, now threatened by supranational integration. He pointed out that he “had not become a member of a democratic and sovereign assembly to allow that democracy to be denied and that sovereignty diminished” (Extracts from the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations Annual Conference, 1971). His opposition to membership was rooted in a strenuous defence of Parliament's rights, now threatened by supranational integration: “if we remove Parliament from the history of England that history will be meaningless. […] Britain could never imagine itself except with and through its Parliament. Consequently, the sovereignty of our Parliament is for us something different from what your assemblies are for you” (Powell 1972). Similar tones emerged among Labour Members. “To join the common market,” wrote Anti-marketeer Ron Leighton from the Labour Party, “would mean transferring many of the powers of the Westminster Parliament to untried and undemocratic institutions outside this country, beyond our control and not answerable to us.” He then continued: “The striking feature of the institutional structure of the common market is the complete lack of democracy (…) the common market is a bureaucracy not a democracy” (O’Connor 2014). Even Michael Foot, a Labour leader with a strong record of support for British membership, harshly criticized the European Parliament: “this last and ineffable invention—dumb legislature—must surely have been the touch of some Laputan satirist (Foot 1975)”.
Even those British Conservatives, who were pro-marketeers and joined the European Parliament in 1973, could not ignore that the differences between the Westminster model and the European Parliament represented a threat for a real democratic accountability. Led by Peter Kirk, British Members of the European Parliament identified themselves as champions of democratic principles and procedures within the European Parliament. “From a Westminster point of view,” head of delegation Peter Kirk explained, a crucial problem for the parliament’s search for a proper role within the community was the “highly formalized” nature of the debate “most of the real discussion goes on in committee, and, in the plenary debate, priority is given to the official spokesmen of the party groups” (Kirk 1975). On Kirk’s initiative, the newly established European Parliament’s Conservative Group presented the Parliament’s bureau with a list of proposals to improve its effectiveness and transparency. The so-called Kirk memorandum saw “the development of an effective instrument of democratic control” as a priority for the future of the community, which would “depend largely on the active participation of the peoples of Europe, on their growing belief in themselves as citizens of Europe.” The memorandum listed a series of measures to improve the effectiveness of parliamentary action, such as the introduction of “question time” or a major emphasis on plenary works, instead of work in the committees. The main aim of these proposals was “to strengthen the role of the Parliaments as the only forum for scrutiny, control, and constructive criticism of executive institutions of the communities.” Yet, the memorandum admitted, the internal changes meant little: “unless the powers of the Parliament are formally increased by agreement between the member of governments and between the institutions of the Communities, its ability to fulfil its proper role as the representative institution of European democracy will be seriously limited. We, therefore, wish to express our support for the Parliament’s efforts to enhance its position in the decision-making process of the Communities, and as democratic parliamentarians, we will not be happy until the European Parliament both acquires real decision-making powers and is elected by the people of Europe” (Memorandum 1973).
British representatives boosted the European Parliament’s activities, as well as French and Italian communists. A number of resolutions asking for new powers were introduced, and the issue of direct elections re-emerged prominently as a viable solution to the perceived lack of democratic accountability within the EC. In June 1973, the Parliaments debated the necessity to update the Dehousse Convention. The Political Affairs Committee found Dutch socialist Schelto Patijn its rapporteur. Patijn’s actions followed many of the assumptions that drove Dehousse in 1960. He accepted a minimalist approach to the uniformity required by the treaties, leaving member states the definition of the electoral system. As with Dehousse, Schelto Patijn’s prudent approach to the issue was focussed on curbing member states’ opposition. Yet, contrary to what inspired Dehousse, the Patijn Convention embraced a new sense of urgency, as the democratic structure of Europe was now under the spotlight (Political Affairs Committee 1974).
5 Electing and Empowering the European Parliament
By the time the decision to elect the European Parliament was taken (1976), everyone was talking about the EC democratic deficit. It would be tempting to draw a direct consequentiality between the debate and the introduction of direct elect the European Parliament. Indeed, when the Council gave its favour to the introduction of direct elections, many in the European Parliament claimed that such a decision proved the correctness of their stance and campaign. To federalist activists, it represented a logical consequence of their campaigns across Europe. On the contrary, to Georges Vedel, the decision in favour of direct elections came from out of the blue. Writing in the mid-1970s, he explained that direct elections were perceived as a possible solution to the crisis because “when all the paths so far explored are blocked, one is compelled to try new, hitherto unexplored ways” (Vedel 1975). Yet, it seems more appropriate to consider the decision in favour of direct elections as part and parcel of a broader attempt to reform European institutions at a moment in which the EC was facing a deep crisis. After all, Member States’ assent to direct elections was parallel to the official adoption of the European Council, which strengthened the role of national governments in the integration process.
Moreover, direct elections were not the panacea to the EC accountability problems. Indeed, to a majority of scholars—political scientists, sociologists and historians alike—the European Parliament remained an almost irrelevant player until the Maastricht Treaty and the creation of the EU. Nevertheless, the vote boosted the European Parliament’s legitimacy by enhancing its standing vis-à-vis other EC institutions and Member States. For example, in a speech in the European Parliament plenary on 21 May 1980, Italian MEP, former member of the Commission and arch-federalist Altiero Spinelli claimed that “the Community is practically paralysed” because decision-makers in the European Communities (EC) could not rely on suitable institutions for effective political action. The Commission could only make proposals, the now-elected European Parliament only debated them, and the Council effectively used unanimity since the 1966 informal Luxembourg Compromise. In this situation, as Spinelli put it, the European Parliament should recognize “that it has been elected to represent all European citizens” and should start a bold initiative to reform and democratize the Community as well as to enhance its role vis-à-vis other EC institutions and Member States (Spinelli 1981).
Initially, the European Parliament focused on using its already existing powers to extract concessions from other EC institutions. Such small steps strategy led the Parliament to vote down the proposed budget for 1980. Soon after, the European Parliament clashed with national governments to increase the scope of the budget and its non-compulsory parts over which it had joint control since the 1970 and 1975 Luxembourg and Brussels treaties (EEC Budget 1979).
Emboldened by the European Court of Justice’s 1980 “Isoglucose ruling”, which cancelled legislation for not having fully respected the European Parliament’s right to consultation, MEPs compelled the Commission and the Council to treat this consultation seriously (Davies and Rasmussen 2014).
Yet, all these initiatives produced little change. For this reason, Spinelli and many other federalist MEPs worked for more than two years on the Draft Treaty on European Union (DTEU). Passed by the European Parliament in February 1984, it called for a radical increase of the European Parliament’s powers by providing for its legislative involvement in almost all EC initiatives. Although such a document was never ratified, it had two main consequences. First, many of the MEPs associated with its drafting contributed to the Dooge Committee in 1984–1985, which paved the way for the February 1986 Single European Act (SEA), which made the label “European Parliament” the official name of the Assembly and increased the EP’s legislative powers with the introduction of the cooperation and assent procedures. Second, the campaign for the ratification of the DTEU further popularized the concept of the democratic deficit. As historian Wolfram Kaiser wrote the now-elected “EP majority continuously and quite dramatically talked up this deficit. After all, the worse the EC’s governing practices looked, the greater the legitimacy of radical reform demands” (Kaiser 2021). As a consequence, it also trapped itself within such a narrative. To many citizens, it was becoming an empty slogan. As a 1989 poll reported, many European citizens believed that the European Parliament had already reached “competences comparable to national parliaments” (Niedermayer 1991). As a consequence, following once again Kaiser’s interpretation, one might be tempted to consider the European Parliament as responsible for such a democratic deficit, rather than its solution “as it had apparently done nothing to remedy it” (Kaiser 2021).
6 Conclusions
To some extent, the 1976 Act that introduced direct elections to the European Parliament has contributed to partially fix one specific form of the democratic deficit that was affecting the European Communities by ensuring better representation of citizens at the European level. Furthermore, emboldened by this direct legitimacy, MEPs assumed a firmer stance. Finally, the adoption of the Single European Act paved the way for the European Parliament’s empowerment. In this sense, the process started with the 1976 Act demonstrated once for all that European integration was not a process involving exclusively diplomats, bureaucrats and economic stakeholders, but also European citizens. From a symbolic perspective, not only did such an evolution gave ground to the claim that a European people existed, but it also heralded the existence of a European citizenship, well before it was officially acknowledged by the Maastricht Treaty, as scholar Oliver Costa has suggested (Political Affairs Committee 1974).
Of course, the election and early empowerment of the European Parliament did not erase problems of accountability and democratic legitimacy within the EC/EU. Even in the 1980s, it was clear that a democratic deficit still continued to exist. Furthermore, there was a clear limit in the EP’s strategy and its simplistic proposals after the introduction of direct elections, which continued to be focussed on its empowerment, instead of considering the decision-making process within the Council, the role of the Court of Justice and national institutions, or the greater involvement of the civil society, NGOs, and watchdog organizations (Kaiser 2018). Nevertheless, the introduction of direct elections was a significant turning point, which contributed to address a decade-long accountability problem within the EC, namely the absence of a democratic control over the EC budget, and brought EC institutions closer to European citizens.
Nevertheless, the democratic deficit assumed new meanings and salience after the Maastricht Treaty had transferred new considerable powers to the European Union. Since the 1990s it has been assuming new meanings and represents now a crucial challenge. The existence or non-existence of one or more European demoi, the transparency of decision-making, the accountability of Brussels technocrats, and the low and waning participation of citizens in European elections and European politics have been some of the issues that have put the process of European integration in the dock. In fact, as R. Mavrouli and A. Vann Waeyenberge sototlined, “the debate is no longer centered” on the existence of the democratic deficit but on the effectiveness of the EU measures to enhance “democratic participation and to find a solution to the rule of law crisis” (Mavrouli and Van Waeyenberge 2023). Increasing political participation, through the involvement of civil society, nongovernmental organizations, and individual citizens, is one of the responses developed in recent years, as the 2021–2022 Conference on the Future of the European Union, for example, seems to indicate.
Notes
- 1.
Ibidem.
- 2.
Ibidem.
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Tulli, U. (2024). Historical Perspectives on the Democratic Deficit(s). In: Antoniolli, L., Ruzza, C. (eds) The Rule of Law in the EU. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55322-6_2
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