ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a good understanding of the issues involved in representation and democracy in the EU. In the European Union (EU), the relationship between representation and national democracy is particularly challenged, the number of competences that have been transferred, and its densely structured multilevel politics, both of which weaken the ability of national democracies to keep decision-making authority in their hands. Democracy is a value, a right, a procedure, and a set of practices with the purpose of achieving collectively binding decisions. Francis Cheneval and Frank Schimmelfennig argues that the 'emergence of a new form of polity, which requires and generates a concomitant transformation of democracy'. The notion of republican intergovernmentalism, Richard Bellamy shows the benefits of states forming an 'association' of states, he describes the EU, not least to 'guard against the domination of one people by another by preserving the capacity of the associated peoples for representative democracy'.
