Ihana, vaikea demokratia : EU:n demokratiavaje neljä vuotta Lissabonin sopimuksen jälkeen

Authors

• Päivi Leino-Sandberg
• Hanna Wass

Abstract

Although democracy constitutes an underlying principle in the functioning of the European Union, the EU is still considered to suffer from a democratic deficit. Especially during the past decade, several attempts have been made to strengthen the democratic structures in the EU and increase its legitimacy. In this article, we discuss the current state of EU democracy from the viewpoint of the European Parliament and its elections, openness of its decision-making processes and the recent EU citizen initiative. The forthcoming elections will provide opportunities for the development of democracy at the EU level, but also demonstrate many of its shortcomings. In addition, discussion concerning Europe’s economic crisis and the means to tackle it have brought to the fore a number of fundamental questions relating to democratic entitlement and will continue to do so, as new proposals amending the power relations between the EU and its Member States, on the one hand, and the EU institutions, on the other, are made. Many of the recent decisions suffer from a lack of openness. It is not self-evident that the most efficient way of ensuring the democratic quality of EU decisions goes through the European Parliament. At the same time, the citizen initiative, which was expected to exemplify direct democracy in the EU, has so far been utilized only to a limited extent. As a conclusion, we argue that stronger emphasis should be placed on the openness of decisionmaking structures in the EU, since only openness and access to information will enable genuine participation, which is a precondition for well-functioning democracy.