ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the monitoring processes and activities provide the integration in the European Union (EU) with sufficient levels of transparency and accountability to make it the relatively well-governed, deep and sustainable process as it is generally perceived to be. This is a usually neglected aspect of European integration. The chapter attempts to show that the complexity of the integration scheme is to an important extent matched by or at least accompanied by a complex monitoring system. Looking at EU integration through the lens of monitoring actors and actions, reveals also the specificity of the whole integration project and hints at the underlying political culture and historically determined societal equilibria in Europe. The considerable amount of external monitoring, both by state and non-state actors, illustrates further the important degree of social participation in the European integration process, in spite of the widely shared view on the democratic deficit of the European institutions.
