The Treaty on European Union gave the European Parliament a greater input in legislating with the introduction of Articles 251 and 252. Article 251 is the co-decision procedure by which Parliament can veto proposed law or propose amendments to proposed law. Article 252 is the co-operation procedure by which Parliament can force the Council to require a unanimous verdict or propose amendments to proposed law. When introduced Article 252 was used far more frequently than 251 however the Treaty of Niece has redressed the balance. It is arguable that the control the Parliament has over the legislative process makes it more accountable then if it were totally left to the auspices of the Council.
The Parliament however is not exactly a perfect specimen of democracy. For a government to be a legitimate one in a democratic state then it requires a high percentage of the population to turn out, otherwise it would not fit in with the principle of popular control. At the last European elections in the United Kingdom only 24% of those eligible to vote did so. This would be seen as an atrocious statistic if were not the fact that the voter turnout in the general election of 2001 was a mere 59% only 6.2% above the European average. It could be argued that there is disillusionment with democracy itself rather than with Europe in particular. Attendance at parliamentary debates is very low which is not helped by the fact that it has to split its time between Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg. Low turnout means that parliament can find it very difficult to make up the requisite voting margins. However yet again low attendance at parliamentary debates has become a feature of British parliamentary democracy and has been for some years.
A further criticism of the European Parliament is that with the population of Europe being around 360 million and as the European Parliament has 626 MEP’s it means that the average constituency size is 575,000 people compared to the average of 88,000 people in the United Kingdom. However to have similar sized constituencies in Europe would mean that there would need to be 4090 MEP’s, which would make it difficult to find a building large enough to accommodate them all let alone get them to all agree. However in the United States the Senators have similarly large constituencies and manage very well. There are some problems with the European Parliament, and the fact that these are problems shared by national governments alike does not make them any better but they should not draw focus away from the positive aspects.
The Council of Ministers is made up of ‘a representative of each Member State at ministerial level authorised to commit the government of that member state’. As the Council comprises elected officials it can be argued that it is democratically accountable to a degree. Before the Single European Act for a vote to be passed in the Council the result would have to be unanimous, giving the Member States a veritable right to veto council proposals. This was changed by Article 205 which introduced Qualified Majority Voting by which a set majority has to be met for proposals to be approved. This system means that the power over what legislation is passed rests with the many and not with the few, as under the previous system it would take only one dissenting vote to stop legislation from being made, a seemingly democratic reform.
On the other hand there are some less democratic sides to the council. Although the council is made up of ministers it can be argued that it is not an elected chamber. The ministers are elected in domestic elections and generally speaking on issues of domestic policy, this does not really give them a mandate to begin legislating on European affairs. It is essential in a democracy that the decisions made are done so in an open an honest manner so as to make the decision maker more accountable, however the Council is plagued by a society of secrecy. Many of the debates of the Council still take place behind locked doors and access to documents is still being curtailed on the grounds of national security, commercial interest and so on. The Council is a very powerful institution with both executive and legislative power if there is to be a purer form of Democracy in Europe then it is important that the Council become more accountable to the people they are supposed to serve.
The next institution to be dealt with is the Commission. In an institution of such abstract diversity as exists in the European Union, there needs to be an institution whose primary purpose is not bargaining for better national interests, but battling on behalf of the Union itself, this is the role of the Commission. The commission is supposedly composed of persons whose ‘independence is beyond doubt’, who ‘neither seek nor take instructions from any government or from any other body’. It is considered the ‘guardian of the treaties’ having the task of making sure that EU law meets compliance.
The Commission is however far from being a democratic institution, one of the biggest problems that are often highlighted is the problem of Comitology. Comitology is a system of committee’s made up of civil servants from the Member States, these committees are presented draft legislation by the Commission, they in turn vote on the legislation. Comitology can be seen as a way of speeding up the legislative process. Though more often this is seen as an increasing bureaucratic strangulation of the Commission. However the powers the Comitology committees have over the Commission in respect to delegated legislation are by no means excessive when you consider the fact that in the UK it is often civil servants who draft the primary legislation let alone the secondary.
An avenue, in which greater democracy can be found, at least in the eyes of the more euro-sceptic, is in the National Parliaments. The national parliaments are democratically elected and so it can be argued that they have legitimate authority to legislate on behalf of the electorate of the Member States. National Parliaments do have some power, for instance, following the Amsterdam treaty, they are able to scrutinise draft legislation as well as being given other controlling powers over the Commission and Council. However the Parliaments are given only six weeks in which to consider proposed legislation before it goes on to be considered by the Council, not a great deal of time especially if the parliament is working to a strict time frame with regards to domestic legislation.
National Parliaments do have an advantage over the other European Institutions as they are closer to the citizens. Aristotle in his book the ‘Politics’ said that ‘If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government in the utmost’. This sentiment is to be found in the principle of Subsidiarity. This principle is held under Article 5 and states that the Community will legislate only if ‘the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States’. If the National Parliaments are allowed to produce more of the Community’s legislation then the legislation will be made by people with expert knowledge of the member state and its legal system and will be accountable to the electorate.
However there are problems with giving the National Parliaments greater power, firstly the National Parliaments share a lot of the problems faced by the European institutions, low attendance, laws being drafted by civil servants, in terms of democratic accountability it is no better. Also the more the individual states do by themselves the less influence they have over each other and there would begin to be less and less of a union. Thirdly the National Parliaments are elected on issues of domestic policy giving them no mandate over European issues.
There is no doubt about it, Europe is in need of reform, and after the disappointment of the Treaty of Niece the reform needs to be drastic. A proposal made at the Maastricht Inter-Governmental Conference merits review. The Commission proposed a new hierarchical system of norms by which the European Community would be revised into a more familiar and much stronger structure. It proposed that the Commission was to be given sole rights to initiate legislation thus making it the sole institution with executive power, it then suggested that the legislative functions where to be equally split between the Council and the Parliament effectively having a two chamber legislature. It also proposed that all EC should be binding in its entirety and directly effective. This would make the EC a great deal more effective however the plan did not go far enough. On top of the proposed reforms the Parliament would have to be given a role in the Comitology procedure. The parliamentary buildings in Strasbourg and Luxembourg would have to be closed leaving one base from which it operates and there would have to be a fixed system of penalties for MEP’s who miss to many debates. The Commission would also have to be reformed so that its power would not be wasted, there would need to be comprehensive reform of structure and practices.
There are problems with the European system of Democracy or lack thereof, but it is arguable that the problems facing Europe are problems facing every liberal democracy in the developed world. Europe has been created in a piecemeal way over the last half century and this has led to a confused structure and a confused and alienated population, if Europe is to survive the coming years it needs to become stronger, taking radical action at the risk of short term unpopularity, if there is to be a political union then it will need stable foundations, and that lies in stable structure.
Bibliography
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Barnett, Hilaire, ‘Constitutional and Administrative Law’, Cavendish, 2001
Beetham, D, ‘Defining and Measuring Democracy’, (Sage 1994)
Douglas-Scott, Sionaidh, ‘Constitutional Law of the European Union’, Longman, 2002
Duff, Andrew et all, “Subsidiarity Within the European Community”, Federal Trust Report, 1993
Edwards, Geoffrey et all, “The European Commission”, Cartermill Publishing, 1995
Foster, Nigel, “Blackstone’s EC Legislation 13th Edition”, Oxford, 2002
Corbett, Richard et all, ‘The European Parliament’, Cartermill
Craig, Paul and De Burca, Grainne, “EU Law” Oxford, Third Edition 2003
Foster, Nigel, ‘Blackstone’s EC Legislation’, 2002-2003
Hayes-Renshaw, Fiona and Wallace, Helen, “The Council of Ministers”, Macmillan Press, 1997
Koutrakou, Vassiliki N et all, “The European Union and Britain”, Macmillan Press, 2000
Luff, Peter, ‘A Brilliant Conspiracy’, 1st edition, The Greycoat Press
O’Keeffe, Twomey, “Legal Issues of the Maastricht Treaty”, Chancery Law Books, 1994
Siedentop, Larry, “Democracy in Europe”, Penguin Books, 2001
Wallace, William et all, “Policy Making in the European Community”, John Wiley & Sons, 1983
Articles
Justice, “The Democratic Defecit: Democratic Accountability and the European Union”, 1996
Philip, Alan Butt, “Reforming the European Union”, John Stuart Mill Institute, 2002
Beetham,D, ‘Defining and Measuring Democracy’, (Sage 1994)
this power was shared with the Council
this number grew to 626 with the accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden
The Council and the European Council are both made up of elected officials however they are elected for domestic purposes
Corbett, Richard et all, ‘The European Parliament’, Cartermill, p10
see case 138/79 Roquette Freres v Council (1980) ECR 3333, case 139/79 Maizena v Council (1980) ECR 3393, case 13/83 Parliament v Council (1985) ECR 1513
they can only approve/disapprove of the commissioner en bloc
this is not exactly true, it was attempted in this case and the vote failed, the commission resigned fearing a second vote might be more successful
Craig, Paul and De Burca, Grainne, ‘EU Law’, Oxford, p 62
Philip, Alan Butt, ‘Reforming the European Union’, John Stuart Mill Institute, p 13
Barnett, Hilaire, ‘Constitutional and Administrative Law’, Cavendish, p 554
The average turnout at the European elections being 52%, see Philip, Alan Butt, op cit, p 13
working on the basis that there is around 58 million people in the United Kingdom and there are 659 seats in the house of commons
Article 203 (ex Article 146)
Craig, Paul and De Burca, Grainne, op cit, p19
Douglas-Scott, Sionaidh, ‘Constitutional Law of the European Union’, Longman, p142-3
Douglas-Scott, Sionaidh, op cit, p54
Douglas-Scott, Sionaidh, op cit, p66
Douglas-Scott, Sionaidh, op cit, p137
Douglas-Scott, Sionaidh, op cit, p67
Barnett, Hilaire, op cit, p585
Douglas-Scott, Sionaidh, op cit, p132-133
Article 5 (ex Article 3b)
Duff, Andrew et all, “Subsidiarity Within the European Community”, Federal Trust Report, p10
Luff, Peter, ‘A Brilliant Conspiracy’, The Greycoat Press, p57
