On-line journal no. 4 – July 2012 - Modelling the New Europe

On-line Journal Modelling the New Europe
Issue no. 4/2012
making process”. In a communiqué of the EU summit, which launched the Convention,
European leaders designated the EU’s lack of democratic legitimacy as the “first challenge
facing Europe” (Moravcsik 2002: 610).
According to Zweifel (2003), there are two sorts of deficit in the EU; a structural one and a
normative one. The structural deficit can be found in the institutional setup and procedures
of the EU. This can be formulated as the lack of transparency, consensus, accountability,
and redistribution. The normative deficit entails the lack of a common identity and the lack
of a public sphere.
A democratically viable Europe requires a “public space” or “public sphere” which might
take very different forms from those familiar at national level. Its irreducible character is to
offer a framework for a set of practices which are citizenship-oriented, i.e. which allow
participants to adopt, to debate, and indeed to reconstruct a ‘public interest’ perspective.
What these practices might look like in a context of multi-governance is an open question,
and the kinds of indicators that can be used to monitor the achievement of a European
public space must be sensitive to this fundamental openness and indeterminacy. European
democracy is, necessarily, a project to be defined, rather than a process to be simply
observed.
The European Union is not a state, so comparisons with state-type models of democratic
legitimization may well prove misleading. Nor is the discussion about intervening ex ovo
to introduce democratic accountability within an organization that did not previously know
it. The first direct election to the European Parliament took place nearly thirty years ago;
since then, the Union’s institutional system has continued to evolve, establishing
significant scope for democratic participation and control in the process (Micossi 2008).
The Union is recognized as an innovative polity, where power is shared by a large number
of players, with many participation and influence-wielding mechanisms, constantly
adapting its institutions to the requirements of its component parts. It becomes apparent
that overall it complies no less with democratic legitimization standards than do member
states, even if multiple, and potentially conflicting legitimization channels and principles
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