Democratic Deficit in the European Union
Contributing factors towards the democratic deficit within the European Union. Complexity of the political system means that the public are unable to understand the inner workings of the EU parliament and means they feel powerless in regards to law making and how it affects their national country. As EU law has supremacy most feel their country is governed by an unchecked body that has enormous control over their lives. There has been an increase of using majority voting within the council, meaning that 25% of member states could disagree and still be forced to accept the new legislation. Member states have also been limited in regards to the fact that they are no longer able to veto in the council of ministers. Lack of turnout for EU elections may be due to the fact that 54% of UK residents think that voting in the EU elections is not a good way of influencing the politics of EU institutions, compare this to the 71% of Romanians believing that it voting does affect the...