ABSTRACT

Democracy is at the heart of Europe's self-understanding, a fact reflected in the EU's constitutional framework. On the contrary, the Union is marked by a democratic deficit, which has become more burdensome as integrationist agendas have become more ambitious. The European Union is constituted by the member states plus the EU's own supranational layer of governance. A political order may be regarded by its subjects as legitimate even if it is not democratic and, conversely, a democratic system of government may still fail for lack of legitimacy. The EU's policy failures have serious consequences for the stability of the Union as a whole. At the European level, the democratic deficit broadly refers to the unrepresentative nature of the EU's governing institutions, particularly the European Commission, and the lack of popular contestation over policies and political leadership. Moreover, since 2010 the democratic deficit has been magnified by the euro crisis in a way that threatens the sustainability of European integration.