Most powerful of all is the Council of Ministers which deliberates in secret and until recently was not legally obliged to listen to the EP’s decisions. While indirectly accountable to voters, the link is too tenuous and the mode of interaction too technocratic to satisfy most observers. It also appears unreasonable that the deliberations of the Parliament must be public whereas the Council remains secretive. The European Council only meets every six months, largely as confirmation of decisions made elsewhere, but McCormick remarks upon its remarkable potential power: “It can in effect set the agenda for the Commission, override decisions reached by the Council of Ministers and largely ignore Parliament.”
Analysts have also criticised the undemocratic nature of the legislation, because interest groups dominate policy-making in the EU excluding more regular channels of democratic governance. The very complexity of the legislative procedures also means that it is virtually impossible for even experts to understand them. In addition much of the decision making takes place behind closed doors. They have also targeted European elections as decentralised, apathetic affairs. In the 1999 European elections the voter turnout for Britain was just 23%. The party ‘List’ method of elections has caused a great deal of controversy and there is a strong argument that the system can be regarded as undemocratic. Not only is the choice of candidates for the list entirely the responsibility of the party hierarchy, but the very same people also choose the order in which the candidates’ names are listed on the ballot paper, thus determining the chances that candidates have of being elected and not being elected.
Those defending the EU say that since 1999, the EP has been progressively usurping the role of the Commission as the primary agenda-setter vis-à-vis the Council in the EU legislative process. It is now the EP that, late in the legislative process, accepts rejects or amends legislation in a manner more difficult for the Council to reject than to accept. In the Council of Ministers, which imposes the most important constraint on everyday EU legislation, permanent representatives and ministers act under constant instruction from national executives, just as they would at home, although admittedly they are compromising with their counterparts from other countries. Here the bonds of accountability are tight: these representatives can be re-instructed or recalled at will and this is an important channel of democracy, which maintains the intergovernmental structure of the EU. And, interestingly, the European Central Bank is more independent of political pressure than any known national example.
The EU’s appearance of exceptional insulation is due to the subset of functions it performs which are matters of low electoral salience and there is no need to divulge these matters to a public who would not understand nor be interested in them. There is a symbiotic relationship between national and EU policy-making- a division of labour in which commonly delegated functions tend to be carried out by the EU, while functions that inspire popular participation remain largely national. This gives the impression that the EU is undemocratic, whereas it is simply specialising in those functions of democratic governance that tend to involve less direct political participation. In addition, much is excluded from EU policy agenda, such as taxation and the setting of fiscal priorities, social welfare provision and education and cultural policy. With the exceptions of monetary policy, competition policy and the conduct over external trade negotiations, the powers of the EU to administer and implement are in fact exceptionally weak. How could it be otherwise, given the extraordinarily small size of the Brussels bureaucracy (14,000) which is only three times larger than the bureaucracy of national governments, of which the EU represents twenty five.
Constitutional checks and balances- the separation of powers, a multi-level structure of decision-making and a plural executive- indirect democratic control via national governments and the increasing powers of the European Parliament are sufficient to ensure that the EU policy making is, in nearly all cases, transparent and politically responsible to the demands of European citizens. There are constraints in the European constitutional settlement, such as treaties, that prevents the EU from becoming a despotic and bureaucratic ‘superstate’ or an arbitrary and unaccountable technocracy, even in areas where it enjoys clear competence. For legislation the Commission must propose; the Parliament must consent; if the result is then challenged then the Court must approve; national parliaments or officials must transpose into national law; and national bureaucracies must then implement. What distinguishes the EU from most national governments is the apparent willingness of it’s institutions to talk to lobbyists from section or interest groups. Mazey and Richardson say that this means that policy ideas are much broader than that of the UK.
The most fundamental constraint lies in the requirement of unanimity, followed by electoral, parliamentary or administrative ratification, to amend the Treaty of Rome. Thus the EU has developed over the decades by focussing only on core areas of an exceptionally broad consensus. Even ‘everyday’ EU directives must receive 62% of the total population of the Union and 74% and above of territorial representative in the Council of Ministers. This is a higher level of support than is required for legislation in any existing national polity: indeed the UK only requires a majority, legislation can thus be ratified with 51% of the elected representatives support. It is true that certain aspects of the system, such as early discussion of COREPER, tend to take place in relative secret, but the same could be said of the preparation of legislation in national systems, for example the increasing amount of private Cabinet meetings under Blair.
Given the vehemence of the critique levelled against it, one might assume that the EU lacks any form of democratic participation and accountability at all. Siedentop believes that this is the stuff of British tabloids, fuelled by ignorance of what the EU actually does. However, it does underlie much legitimate concern, particularly those amongst the libertarian right of the political spectrum. There is no elected head of state to give democratically controlled direction to the EU and concerns gain plausibility from the open role played by non-elected officials in Brussels, and the geographical and cultural distance between those regulators and the average European ‘person in the street’. The recent enlargement has at least altered the democratic legitimacy in a positive way. Each country has only one commissioner now and it is further on its way towards a constitution and a fairer weighted vote. The EU employs direct accountability via the EP and indirect accountability via elected national officials. When judged by the practices of existing nation-states and in the context of a multi-level system, the EU does not suffer from a fundamental democratic deficit to anymore of an extent that any national government.
