The EU and the Lisbon Treaty: Making a weak democracy weaker

international | eu | opinion/analysis Wednesday June 11, 2008 17:53 by jmstipe20

Background information for the Irish referendum on June 12: The EU today lacks proper democratic procedures. The Lisbon Treaty boosts this lack of democracy making the EU even more remote to its citizens. This is the conclusion of a study by Michael Efler, Percy Vogel, Gerald Häfner, Roman Huber and Felix Wünsche.

Download (pdf - 85 Seiten - 1 MB): http://www.mehr-demokratie.de/fileadmin/pdfarchiv/bund/...t.pdf

Summary

The bigger the political entity, the more important it is to ensure democratic and transparent structures. Being the largest and most powerful supra-national institution, the EU is so undemocratic that even the German EU Commissioner Günter Verheugen admitted: "If the EU were applying for accession here, we would have to evaluate it as 'democratically insufficient'."

* The EU is centralistic / 80% of all new laws come from Brussels
* A weak EU parliament / insufficient separation of powers
* Civil servants with too much power / lacking democratic legitimation
* Non-transparency and secret diplomacy

The Lisbon Treaty will make it worse.

* The Lisbon Treaty creates more centralisation without sufficient democratic control
* Small countries in particular continue to lose influence
* The EU creates its own rules by means of the flexibility clause
* This is possibly the last Irish referendum on European matters
* Military policy without democratic and judicial control
* The Lisbon Treaty is barely understandable

Download Summary (pdf - 2 Seiten - 1 MB): http://www.mehr-demokratie.de/fileadmin/pdfarchiv/bund/...r.pdf