How to Form a European Policy Space? European Democracy in Light of Equality between Member States

László Trócsányi^*, Lénárd Sándor^**

https://doi.org/10.63189/VOEU8497

For the past decades, the notion of “European democracy” has been constantly referred to as one of the “keywords” of the integration by its supranational institutions including especially the European Commission and the European Parliament. The parliamentary elections are celebrated as the victory of democracy every five-year, and “democracy” is an integral part of the vocabulary of these institutions. There is a constant growling and planning to reach its idealised shape and to overcome the so-called “democratic deficit” while some of the Member States are being increasingly criticised of not living up to this ideal. Even though “democracy” has recently become a tool of disciplinary measure in the hands of the European Union, the EU does not consider to be bound by it.

Democracy is attributed almost magical power as the supranational institutions have been reaching out to and seeking for a common ground with the European public. There has been no shortage of reform proposals. Nevertheless, the mainstream debate has been rather one-sided because it predicts only one avenue to decrease the “democratic deficit” and strengthen the European policy space. The content of democracy in the European dimension remains rather unexplored and blurry, so the European Parliament continues to struggle with debating and resolving questions that are relevant to the European public. What is the function of democracy in the context of the European integration? How can it represent a European position or serve as a check over the Union institutions? What institutions could be able to create a bridge between the peoples of the Member States and the European institutions? How to form a European public space? What is the role of equality between Member States? The article seeks to shed light on these questions.

  The institutionalised cooperation in Europe now looks back to a more than seven decades long history. However, since the very beginning of this cooperation, there have been debates about the best method of introducing popular control over the supranational institutions and formulating a common European opinion. Part of this debate is the question of democratic legitimacy of the institutions through which Member States are committed to cooperate. According to Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union, democracy is not only a fundamental value of the Member States, but also an expectation towards the European Union. Even though the institutional setting of the European democracy has gone a long way in the past seven decades, the question of democratic legitimacy is still being one of the key subjects and one of future challenges within the framework of the currently ongoing discussions on the future of Europe.^[1] Since the conception of the idea of uniting the coal and steel productions of France and Germany under one supranational organisation, the “High Authority” in the Spring of 1950, the question of democratic – parliamentary – overview or control has been continuously present in the debates about the institutional setting and decision-making process of the growing European cooperation. With forming the ECSC, the six founding Member States agreed to provide the arrangement of their national parliaments with oversight functions.^[2] The democratic control was therefore secured by the national political systems. This early experience served as a model for the Rome Treaty of 1957 that established a common “Assembly” for the European Communities. Therefore, democratic legitimacy was constituted by the agreement of the Member States and was embodied by their national political systems, the delegations of their democratic institutions.

However, the Rome Treaty already induced a twofold shift. On the one hand, the “Assembly” was entrusted to prepare the main rules of a European election with direct universal suffrage.^[3] On the other hand, it began to declare itself a “Parliament” in order to show its – semantic – aspiration to vindicate its potential role as the representative institution of the “European people” or “European sovereignty”. These aspirations defined the following decades of the path of the “European democracy”: the first direct election was organised in 1979 while the Member States finally authorised the title “European Parliament” as the official name in 1986 with the adoption of the Single European Act.^[4] In the meantime, the concept of “democratic deficit” was introduced into the public and academic discourses in Europe.^[5] This suggests a compelling program for the integration so that a reinforced European Parliament can reach a potential “equilibrium point” and eliminate the deficit. These developments also aim to disconnect “European democracy” from the Member States and from their national political systems to lay it on a transnational basis.

  The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent geopolitical shifts increased the stake of the popular will form the democracy debates in Europe. The European construction has increasingly embraced political objectives since the conclusion of the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992. These political objectives include areas of internal and external securities. Therefore, the role of the public and of democracy increased, and the support of the peoples across Europe has become more important. To this end, the competence of the European Parliament has been further increased while the draft Constitutional Treaty of 2004 would have widened the legitimate basis of the European integration beyond the Member States – the “High Contracting Parties” – and would have included the European citizens as a constituting democratic foundation. However, since then, two referenda, organised in France and in The Netherlands, have rejected this approach of democratisation.

  Nevertheless, the European Parliament, partly based on a new provision of the Lisbon Treaty that referred to the European Parliament as the representative of the European citizens^[6], as well as the other supranational institutions have continued to put forward proposals that broaden the scope of action of the European Parliament and rely on a hypothetical “European demos”. These initiatives include the reform of the electoral system with the introduction of the “lead candidate system” (“Spitzenkandidaten”) as well as the “transnational electorate list” or a Union-wide constituency, which is presented as the hallway of a so-called European political space. These initiatives are reinforced by the debate on the statute and funding of the European political parties and European political foundations that aim to strengthen the transnational dimension of the European political parties. Furthermore, the general right of initiative of the European Parliament has been also subject to debates and new proposals.

  Despite these efforts, the European Parliament remained unable neither to truly capture the attention of a European public nor to address their relevant problems. It could not resolve the crises of the 2010s. Instead, the European Council offered a meaningful debate forum to address these crises. The “transnationalisation” of the European political space will not lead to better engagement of the public as it fails to present, but will put the major fault lines, tensions and disagreements of Europe on stage. The transnational endeavour overlooks the historical experience that the major fault lines and disagreement within the integration lays between countries and regions of different histories and traditions. It is highly doubtful if a single public space can emerge from Europe since the reality is that the European public discourse has been built on a multitude of national democratic and political debates. Furthermore, the European Parliament, which is part of the supranational sphere, has embraced a vision and a self-image that is part of one specific political view that promotes a federalist or supranational vision of the European integration. This has made the European Parliament unable to put the rival views and visions on stage, which prevented it from offering a forum for democratic debates and dialogue.

  To increase democratic control and debates, the starting point should be in the national democratic systems of the Member States. Reflecting the equal sovereignty of the Member States, the European political discourse is rather built on the existing national public spaces and democracies. Consequently, a better involvement of the national democratic systems would be necessary to channel democratic debates and oversight into the European political discourse. This would express the equality of Member States by bringing every national democratic discourse into the European political space. It could involve the reinforcement of national parliamentary control of the European Council which is the most visible and also potent institution for the democratic opinion within the Member States. Furthermore, it could also include the national parliamentary participation in the European decision-making process. Beyond reinforcing the “yellow card” procedure, the right of legislative initiatives (“green card” procedure) could be also considered as a step forward. The institutionalisation of the involvement of the national political systems can also help the supranational institutions to stand on stronger foundations and enjoy acceptance. This seems to be unavoidable if the European cooperation wants to become more autonomous and a geopolitical reality in the 21^st century. 

 * Rector of the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church, Hungary.

** Head of the School of Law of Mathias Corvinus College, Associate Professor at Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church, Hungary.

^[1] According to Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union: The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. In addition, “Article 2 TEU is not a mere statement of policy guidelines or intentions, but contains values which, as has been set out in paragraph 145 above, are an integral part of the very identity of the European Union as a common legal order, values which are given concrete expression in principles” (see Judgment of 16 February 2022 in case C-157/21, Poland v Parliament and Council, ECLI:EU:C:2022:98, paragraph 264). It is therefore an institutionalised cooperation that exclusively consists of parliamentary democracies: a fundamental requirement for the adhesion as the Copenhagen accession criteria prescribe since 1993 and also a trademark of the cooperation. Furthermore, as the Member States agreed upon in the Founding Treaties, democratic legitimacy is a (constitutional) expectation towards the European institutions and their governance structure.

^[2] It was the German Federal Republic who favored and supported the introduction of democratic control of the national parliaments over the High Authority. See, for example, Luuk van Middelaar, The Passage to Europe: How a Continent Became a Union (Yale University Press, 2014). The “Assembly” was given a relatively strong democratic control function including, for example, the right to refuse the annual reports of the High Authority (Article 23 of the ECSC Treaty).

^[3] See, Article 138 of the Treaty of Rome, “L’Assemblée élaborera des projets en vue de permettre l'élection au suffrage universel direct selon une procédure uniforme dans tous les États membres.”

^[4] See the preamble of the document, The Single European Act is available: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/about-parliament/en/in-the-past/the-parliament-and-the-treaties/single-european-act.

^[5] The concept was first used by David Ian Marquand in its book: Parliament for Europe in 1979.

^[6] Article 189 of the Maastricht Treaty (Nice consolidated version) provided that “The European Parliament, which shall consist of representatives of the peoples of the States brought together in the Community, shall exercise the powers conferred upon it by this Treaty.” Overcoming this provision of the Maastricht Treaty, Article 10 of the Treaty on the European Union (Lisbon Treaty) provides that “1. The functioning of the Union shall be founded on representative democracy. 2. Citizens are directly represented at Union level in the European Parliament.”