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 politics of EU. Anand Menon has analyzed the study and come to the conclusion that polls more often than not show that people only vote on things that look as though they will directly affect them, meaning there is often electoral apathy where legislation looks as though it will not affect the member states public personally. Majone argues that the EU elections due to their ‘second-order’ nature are only useful when it comes to understanding the responsibility of the current national government in office. However they are irrelevant when it comes to the EU due to lack of democratic legitimacy.
• Euro elites often tried to promote economic integration as a positive however as the financial crisis began it was realised that are also many costs, not just benefits. It could even be said that the optimism within Politicians speeches is accountable for at least some of the underwhelmed feelings of member states as they mask the problems with long winded speeches that have little factual content.
• Politicians care more about furthering their careers than dealing with their publics issues
• Lipset said there was a link between effectiveness and efficiency, for example the ‘breakdown of effectiveness, repeatedly or for a long period, will endanger even a legitimate system’