Democracy and accountability in the EU

It is now a conventional wisdom that fundamental problems of democracy and accountability in the EU originate from the early years of West European integration. For the European Community was constructed on the basis of a ‘permissive consensus’ within the six member states, with ‘peace, prosperity and supranationalism’ as its legitimating values (Weiler 1994).1 European construction was seen as conducive to the stabilisation of liberal-democratic capitalism within Western Europe as a whole, but this was not coupled with any genuine attempt to incorporate democracy within the new institutions. Certainly, the Coal and Steel Community and the EEC included parliamentary assemblies, but as their members were nominated by the governments, this was no more than paying lipservice to democratic principles. Furthermore, there was comparatively little discussion of the key decisions within the parliaments of the six, and much less popular involvement. There was therefore weak authorisation for an innovation of historic importance and, to the extent that democracy and accountability operated, these were entirely on the basis of the domestic systems of the member states. Yet it was in this period that the policymaking system was constructed on the basis of an increasingly common market, on capitalist principles, with the European Court of Justice establishing the doctrines of direct effect and legal supremacy. This meant that there were increasing constraints on domestic autonomy, a particular kind of economic organisation was underpinned by supranational law, and a pattern of decision-making was introduced which strengthened governments in relation to those to whom they were theoretically accountable. Meanwhile the major economic interests developed effective ways of lobbying the Council and Commission, while less well-resourced groups were generally unable to operate on this level. Yet parliaments and electorates still tended to view the interactions between the member states as traditional relations between states in the international system.