Politics - Does the European Union have a democratic deficit?

hello and welcome to two minute politics with me mr. McClellan we are going to look at the question as to whether the European Union has a democratic deficit this is a really common accusation leveled of the European Union and therefore we will test the validity of it now this is also a really common question it appears in the pollicis exam and in my experience students don't focus and do too well when it comes to questions on the European Union in fact students tend to steer clear of these questions I do think they believe that they are overly technical in terms of the answer then they have to give when they feel perhaps compelled to answer a question on the European Union they don't do too well at it so hopefully this video and all this content will improve the outcomes for students when it comes to the European Union and in particular looking at the question as to whether it has a democratic deficit now let's begin with a bit of an introductory section by mentioning that the European Economic Community was established by the Treaty of Rome 1957 and the EEC was very much the forerunner of the modern day the European Union which of course we have today now as the name suggests the European Economic Community had an economic intent the six countries which were the original signatories of the Treaty of Rome were intent on binding their economies so as to avoid another major conflict happening on European soil so the six original signatories were France Belgium the Netherlands Luxembourg Italy and also West Germany yes Germany was divided into West and East in those days it was West yearly that was an original signatory of the Treaty of Rome they wanted to become more reliant economically speaking and also to improve their economic outcomes and the side effect of course wants to avoid another world war on European soil to which the European Union has been remarkably successful now the European Economic Community it evolved it changed of course as all these international organizations do the change fell significantly as a result of the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 Maastricht being a city in the Netherlands and really at that point the role of the European Union had become as much political as well as economic and really the Maastricht Treaty enshrined the name change that European Union came into being from the EEC but its role had expanded to become as much political the European Union was getting involved in Home Affairs foreign policy security and justice policy and therefore its power and influence had grow which therefore led greater credence really to the accusation that there was a democratic deficits at the heart of the European projects okay because of this expanded power therefore is there sufficient democratic accountability within the institutions of the European Union and I'll selected the four main institutions of the European Union to focus on when it comes to the charge of democratic deficit within them now you may get a question in the exam which talks about the European Union as a whole it may even reference some of these four main institutions but whatever the statement in the question delivers to you do make sure I would suggest to divide your answer into the component parts those four main institutions of the European Union I think it's a nice way to structure your answer and indeed the level of democratic deficit if one indeed exists in the European Union is different in each of these four institutions so therefore you can see the logic as to why I've selected those four by way of your essay structure now let's look at the four that with a focus on we've got the European Commission we've got the Council of the European Union we've got the European Council not to be confused who said the EU was complex and then the European Parliament's okay so we will look at each of those in turn let's begin with the European Commission this supranational executive body supranational meaning that its power transcends national borders and indeed executive meaning that it executes and enforces laws EU law obviously it is based in Brussels hence the Brussels bashing that goes on particularly with respect to the European Commission it probably bears the brunt of much of the criticism that is directed towards the European Union it is a hugely bureaucratic civil service based in Brussels in point 32,000 people so it is a very complicated institution which tends to lend itself to the accusation that there is a democratic deficit at the heart of the European Union and indeed is not directly elected okay that said I don't know of a civil service that is directly elected and that of course is the points of a civil service and least in comparison to Britain's civil service which the three pillars are independent permanent and not selected okay anonymous in other words okay and so therefore yes there is credibility react to the accusation that there is a democratic deficit within the European Commission but then what civil service has most democratic accountability that's the very essence of a civil service and I don't think the European Commission is much different than that although you could argue that its capacity is much more much greater than all other civil services around the world now when it comes to the electoral elements the elective elements of the European Commission they do exist we've know it's not directly elected that our elected elements within it for example the president of the European Commission is directly elected to serve a five-year term and indeed the election is carried out by the European Parliament which itself is that I rarely elected we will come to the Parman later but they effectively choose the European Commission president who at the time was speaking in 2020 is a lady called person Vonda layin a German citizen who made waves in Han Bella Merkel's government she was elected by the European Parliament to the presidency of the European Commission and it is a job which has significant powers associated with it she is an international politician of significance standing ok moving on from the president who is elected oh by the way she is nominated by the European Council okay so they put her name forward and the Parliament elected her there is democratic measures in place there now the 27 commissioners that make up the European Commission these are selected by each member state of the European Union hence why there are 27 of them okay but again even though the Member States appoints effectively or nominated should say each Commissioner they are elected to a five-year term again by the Parliament again once more the European Parliament is directly elected and they have a say in whether the 27 commissioners are indeed elected themselves okay and incidentally three were rejected in 2019 so this is not a foregone conclusion that just because you are nominated by your Member State to be one of the 27 European commissioners within the European Commission that doesn't mean you will have a job as a given certainly not free were rejected in 2019 okay so again democratic accountability appears to be present even in the civil service of the European Commission in terms of the power of the European Commission it is considered to be a powerful organization it drafts an execute legislation and it handles the budget of the European Union which comes in at roughly 150 billion euros sounds like an awful lot of money he is an awful lot of money of course however it does represent only 2% of the public spending of all EU Member States so in relatively terms it is rather small in comparison to other budgets within member states you know health and education and all the others okay having said that there are numerous complaints from certain countries of in the European Union and of course this is one of the major complaints delivered from Britain that some countries do better out of the EU budget than others Britain always used to argue or at least Euroskeptics used to argue that it was a net contributor to the EU budget and therefore it would put in more than it would directly get back and it's very difficult to countenance that particular accusation some countries do get less if you like from the EU budget than others okay and the argument by euro files would be of course that Britain would get indirect benefits which are very difficult to measure but really that doesn't hold as much weight when you look at the figures going one way and the amount of money that is coming back to you when the European Commission dishes out the budget into its various pots going to the various Member States men in Euroskeptics felt Britain didn't do too well out of that and there was very little that British people could do about it because of the Democratic deficit at the heart of the European Commission itself now moving on to our next institution we've got the Council of the European Union this was formerly known as the Council of Ministers indeed it is an intergovernmental body figures from the different governments the different member states working together and it is comprised of ministers elected by the states to coordinate policy the Council of the European Union is considered to be the main decision-making body of the European Union and indeed the ministers that sit there where they've been ministers for Agriculture Economic Affairs Home Affairs it does depend upon the topic of discussion at the time when they meet regularly but they are elected they're not directly elected to their plants of the European Union but they must have surely of how to have passed an electoral test within their member states they are ministers that they're likely to be members of parliament or some other elected body within the Member State and therefore they have to pass an electoral test to make it into the Council of the European Union so there is an element of course of democracy there now in terms of the power of the counts of the European Union it shares legislative power and budget approval with the Parliament okay so mainly says you're making body but doesn't pass the laws by itself it shares the lawmaking powers with the direct elected parliament there it is again and indeed he must approve the budget with the Parliament and indeed there's an awful lot of negotiation when it comes to budget approval within the European Union a very contentious topic but that particular approval of the budget is shared by the Council of European Union and the directly elected parliament okay the way which the council the European Union works in practice is that it likes to reach consensus in terms of its decision-making okay it seeks agreement between all the member states of the European Union he does like unanimity with all its decision-making so all states to agree effectively now that seems great in practice but in order to achieve that an awful lot of compromise has to be found and whenever you get compromise you may get too much compromise and therefore some member states and indeed some people may think that their particular wishes their goals their aims that they wanted to achieve have become so watered down with compromise that they're really not worth the paper that they are now written on okay so therefore yeah in theory consensus and total agreement is a good thing but having said that many people many member states on occasion feel that they're not getting really the essence of what they want from meetings of the Council of the European Union that CERN as well when it comes to the most sensitive topics absolutely agreement isaw and state can be so certain policies that maybe the majority of the European the council the European Union wants to pass however unless there is total agreement on certain sensitive topics perhaps on immigration which of course is a major insensitive topic at the heart of the EU at the moment well decisions will be made because states do have a veto when it comes to most decisions that are taken in the Council of the European Union it is done on the basis of qmv qualified majority voting okay so the voting itself is democratic but it is rather complex and it is rather unusual as well this is how it works if you want to get a decision passed by the Council of the European Union fifty-five percent of member states have to agree by my calculations that means fifteen states out of twenty seven must agree to a particular decision and you know that gives an element of a safety net of the smaller member states of the European Union a Luxembourger of Cyprus perhaps who feels that their votes count equally as the bigger players in Italy a France a Germany perhaps so a nice leveling of the playing field there within the EU having said that the bigger players do get to have an element more of influence when it comes to this next provision of qualified majority voting and accept the 55 percent of states to vote in favor of a policy must represent 65 percent of the EU population and therefore you can see the influence of Germany's much greater population saying with Italy same with France holding sway when it comes to that element of Q and V the hope and the intention is though that no state feels ignored no state feels sidelined when it comes to decision making in the Council of the European Union having said that as with any democratic measure no state may get completely body once okay some states may feel that their wishes somewhat forted as a result of q-b also adding greater weight to the accusation that there is a democratic deficit within the Council of the European Union is that it used to carry out its business in secret that has now changed the Lisbon Treaty of 2007 made the Council of the European Union much more transparent and here's a specific example it allowed for the provision of an early warning system whereby national parliaments could comment on some of the proposals of the Council of the European Union and therefore national politicians could therefore have somewhat of a say as the discussion as to what was going on in the Council of the European Union so a nice example there of the democratic accountability these given by the early warning system as he said though the ministers have been the Council of the European Union could just ignore the comments made by national parliaments moving on to the European Council relatively straightforward institution this is in terms of its membership it's the elected heads of government from each of the Member State it meets roughly four times a year and of course they offer strategic direction to the European Union they very much set the agenda they are the elected heads of government from the Member States so lots of democratic accountability there and equally these elected heads of government are of course conscious of national public opinion having said that when it comes to treaty changes that most contentious of issues at the European Union well many citizens can feel sidelined even by their own Heads of Government whom they well have elected so as an example of the treaties which have reorganized the European Union we've got the Marche strict Treaty of 1990 to see we've got the Amsterdam treaty of 97 we've got niece of 2004 and the Lisbon Treaty of 2007 all of those treaties were designed to reorganize repackage the EU to make it much more effective and efficient in terms of what it does as perhaps as role and influence has expanded it has certainly got larger in terms of the member states now a part of it so therefore you have this reorganization as delivered by treaty change having said that though many ordinary citizens particularly you're a skeptic of course of in various countries feel that they don't really know the detail within these treaties and indeed certain proposals at the heart of these treaties are indeed very controversial no more so than the proposed constitution of the European Union which was indeed rejected in 2004 and 2007 as a resort of national referenda in the Netherlands and indeed in France okay so really the European Union seems to kind of get tree to change John sometimes through the backdoor but having said that even elected Heads of Government may feel accountable to their national metrics when it comes to the most contentious of decisions and I don't think you can get any more contentious than a written codified Constitution a bit like a United States of Europe that was proposed by the Constitution in the early 2000s equally now I think national politicians within the European Council will be very aware of the impact of brexit if people of a particular country don't like the European project well they may force your hand and get you to leave or get the country to leave the European Union has has occurred with brexit in 2016 you could look that the other way of course because brexit has hardly been a seamless transition for the UK in terms of getting out of the European Union okay and then the final an institution that will look at guys is the European Parliament is directly elected in a very democratic method employed portable representation and indeed any p's members of the European Parliament are elected for a five-year term the elections of any piece while they're based on population size so Germany it's 96 semi piece little of Malta only get six but indeed when it comes to any PS and the way then they work they don't tend to stick together based national allegiance they tend to focus on ideological allegiances in case of left-wing Emme peace tend to stick together and vote accordingly and the same is true for right-wing MVPs and everyone else in between if you like okay the biggest problem with the direct election of any piece is that the turnout is incredibly low only 50 percent in 2019 and that's actually rather high in comparison to previous your apena collections and that of course questions of legitimacy of the MEP to make decisions on behalf the power of the open pilot well it approves the budget is a co legislature with the Council of the European Union it can amend Vita but not initiate legislation okay but it does have significant legislative power and indeed the influence of the European Parliament has grown as a result the single European Act 1986 which is effectively another Treaty of the European Union and actually the single European Act increase the power of the European Parliament in so far I could question or allow any piece to question the roles and functions more pertinently of the Council of the European Union in particular okay and actually send back proposals to the Council of the European Union for for further amendments if you like okay so there has been increasing power for the pollen and that's probably EU recognizing that it has been somewhat suspect to the jibe of there being a democratic deficit and a way to kind of counter that criticism it's a give the unquestionably democratic institution at the heart of the EU more power okay again no to counter that argument well he was your MP can you name a single MEP in your country I've always struggled to as a policy teacher and I think many ordinary citizens will be unable indeed to do that and I just would question sometimes who these people are okay and I've found some examples whereby Mussolini's granddaughter who didn't appear renounce fascism based on the research that I conducted she was at any peak and I also find an example of a Holocaust denier insofar as this particular MEP question whether Adolf Hitler knew about the Holocaust okay so there are some interesting characters who are having peace I mean the main point we can make here though is do people know who their MEP is they do appear rather distant from the electorate and then finally guys by way of the conclusion well it's fair to say that this notion of a democratic deficit being at the heart of the year you that does appear to be allowed the voice in terms of that criticism when is the EU being embroiled in a time of crisis and I think it has suffered from that recently with brexit in fact and also the eurozone debt crisis and the migration crisis that followed that so the criticism of democratic deficit does appear to be louder when the EU is going through tough times that has led to the rise of populist politicians nigel farage in the UK context of course almost forcing the hand of David Cameron's Conservative government with the brexit referendum we've got Matteo salvini who was elected to the position of demo Deputy Prime Minister in Italy leader of the somewhat controversial Northern League in Italy and then we've got the president of Hungary Viktor Orban who from his statements is no friend of the European Union although he's not decided to track hungry out of the European Union full of rhetoric but very much a nationalist politician as India I think it's fair to say these guys are okay so the fact that these guys have risen to positions of prominence probably shows you that there is an element of credibility to this particular criticism okay people are buying into that criticism having said that there is democracy within a year we focused on that and also there is a democratic method a directly democratic method in the form of the European citizens initiative and this allows European citizens provided they number one million to actually provoke proposed legislation to the European Commission so a nice example you can throw in there of direct democracy and the heart of the EU ultimately though sovereignty rests with States they can be a member of the EU or they can choose not to be and indeed they set the rules of the game within the EU the buck stops with elected politicians not necessarily with the Commission but with elected heads of state and ministers it does depend on though what your democratic perspective is democracy for one person is different to another person this may not be a model this may not be much democracy with people it may be too much for others it just depends on your perspective and a nice way to finish on that rather philosophical question hopefully that was useful for you thank you very much

Channel: TimmyMac Law & Politics

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Length: 24min 59sec (1499 seconds)

Published: Sun May 10 2020