ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the loss of accountability to national parliaments has not been compensated by increased accountability to the European Parliament. The "comitology", the structure of advisory, regulatory, and management committees staffed by national civil servants, is answerable to national governments, not to the Community institutions; European Parliamentary scrutiny is largely excluded from both policymaking and implementation. The best approach to closing the "democratic deficit" would be to create in each member country a committee on Community affairs on which both parliamentarians and national deputies serve, and to extend and strengthen the European Parliament's co-decisionmaking powers. The European Coal and Steel Community, established in 1951, and its successor, the European Economic Community, established by the Treaty of Rome in 1957, required a pooling of sovereignty in certain specific areas among those nation-states that became members. Governments do not sacrifice their powers absolutely. That is why sovereignty has been pooled rather than transferred.
