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

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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 77
may confuse observers. On-line Journal Modelling the New Europe Issue no. 4/2012 In the end, the Union will be strong in the eyes of public opinion and member states alike if it manages to come up with solutions to the challenges of globalization, external and internal security, energy and the environment. In this respect, there is no reason why difficulties encountered over the last decade should endure, to the extent that they were a systemic consequence of poor Union functioning. On the contrary, we are perhaps reaching the end of a long and painful adjustment process to an exceptional series of real and financial shocks, generated by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Time will no doubt tell. For the time being, what needs to be kept in mind is that the member states and EU citizens, however mangled by crises and difficulties, continue to turn to the Union when seeking solutions to problems that cannot be solved nationally. That is an extraordinary proliferation of subjects and channels providing participation in European debates and decisions, in new and ever-changing ways. The current crisis is only a symptom of a bigger problem between the EU and its citizens. Until the early 1990s, citizens seemed to accept a situation in which decisions were being taken in their name at the European level, but without their involvement in the process. Since then, however, European leaders have had to learn that the era of “permissive consensus” was over. The French and Dutch no votes were only the latest example in a series of lost referenda, starting with the Danish rejection of the Maastricht Treaty. Since 1992, there have been many calls for the EU to get closer to its citizens and to “reconnect” with them. Obviously, it has not yet achieved this goal. According to the analysis of voters’ motivations in the Dutch and French referenda (Flash Eurobarometer 2005a, Flash Eurobarometer 2005b), many seized the opportunity to express a general dissatisfaction with the EU and the way in which the European integration process has developed. In the White Paper on European Governance published in July 2001 by the European Commission, the need to reform European governance against the background of a 78
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Bibliographie On-line Journal Model
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Introduction On-line Journal Modell
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Table no. 1- Proposed indicators 1
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On-line journal no. 4 – July 2012 - Modelling the New Europe

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