ABSTRACT
For many years, democratic legitimacy was not an issue within the European Union (EU). Since there were no major questions about its state of democracy, there was no broad debate either. There are at least two reasons for this popular and academic consent. First, there was a sense of shared problems and the EU seemed to be quite effective in dealing with it. The citizens of the member states benefited from ‘Europe’ promoting peace and security and economic growth, making them support and legitimatize the EU, i.e. utilitarian support or ‘government for the people’ (Höreth 1998, 6–7). Second, the logic of legitimacy stemmed from intergovernmental cooperation, based on the principle of unanimity. The legitimate national governments controlled the decision making process, whereas unanimity ensured consensus about the decisions made, ‘leaving the democratic legitimacy at the national level intact’ (Höreth 1999, 252). Democratic legitimacy is thus vested by the indirect participation of EU’s citizens by their legitimate authorities, i.e. ‘borrowed legitimacy’ or ‘government of the people’ (Svetlozar 2004, 6).
