The European Parliament and the Authority-Democracy Crises

Abstract

Since its inception, the European Parliament has stimulated integration and the transition to a European Union based on liberal democratic principles. Its Draft Treaty establishing the European Union remains the benchmark for a new constitution. Institutional change and the alteration in the balance of power between the Commission, the Council of Ministers, and the European Parliament are useful indicators of the transition of the European Community (EC) to a federal union whose flexible parameters remain contested. The European Parliament, as the chief advocate of democracy, efficiency, accountability, and openness in the EC, continues to play a constituent role and to seek means of redressing the EC's democratic deficit, which exists not only in the legislative sphere but also on a horizontal and vertical plane within the union. New legislative practices and the Committee of Regions alone will not close the gap.

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References

1. See European Parliament, Committee on Institutional Affairs , Selection of Texts Concerning Institutional Matters of the Community from 1950 to 1982 (Luxembourg: European Parliament, 1983).

2. R. Cardozo , “The Crocodile Initiative,” in European Union: The European Community in Search of a Future, ed. Juliet Lodge (London: Macmillan, 1986).

3. Juliet Lodge , “The Luxembourg `Non-Paper' versus the Commission's Composite Working Paper,” in Beyond the Intergovernmental Conferences: European Union in the 1990s, ed. W. Paterson (Edinburgh: Europa Institute, 1991).

4. Juliet Lodge , ed. Direct Elections to the European Parliament 1984 (London: Macmillan, 1986).

5. The presidency of the Council of Ministers—and with it that of the European Council—rotates every six months. The European Council meets at least twice a year and, as a summit, consists of heads of state and/or government. Its sessions are always chaired by the person (and therefore the state) that holds the Council presidency.

Juliet Lodge , “Plurilateralism and the Single European Act,” in Plurilateral Negotiations, ed. I. William Zartman (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).

7. David Martin , An Ever Closer Union (London: Spokesman, 1991).

8. Juliet Lodge , Internal Security and Judicial Cooperation Beyond Maastricht (Hull: Hull University, European Community Research Unit, 1992).

9. See arguments presented during the Single European Act deliberations in European Parliament, Committee on Institutional Affairs, “Working Document on the EP Proposals Submitted to the IGC on the Appointment and Powers of the Commission” (Fanti Report), PE 101.517/1, 28 Oct. 1985.

10.

10. European Community, Commission, The Commission's Programme 1993-4, SEC(93) 58 final, 26 Jan. 1993; the reply on the investiture debate by Commission President Delors in ibid.

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11. Juliet Lodge , “Democratic Legitimacy and the EC: Crossing the Rubicon,” International Journal of Public Administration (in press).