Democratic deficit Totally Explained

Everything about Democratic Deficit totally explained

A democratic deficit is considered to be occurring when ostensibly democratic organizations or institutions (particularly governments) are seen to be falling short of fulfilling the principles of the parliamentary democracy in their practices or operation where representative and linked parliamentary integrity becomes widely discussed. The phrase was coined by UK Member of the European Parliament Bill Newton Dunn in a pamphlet in the 1980s.

European Union

Those who argue that the European Union suffers from a democratic deficit often attribute this to a number of factors:

The Council of the European Union (which notably acts as a co-legislator with the European Parliament on Community legislations) is made up of national ministers and meets in secret when agreeing legislation. As such, there's no parliamentary scrutiny of the Council's legislative decisions at EU level, and many last-minute negotiations are conducted by diplomats.

There is no requirement for national parliaments to scrutinise the performance of their government ministers in the Council, though most do this to some extent as a matter of course.

There are still some policy areas where codecision doesn't apply. In these areas, the European Parliament only has the power to approve or reject proposed legislation, or the right to be consulted before the Council takes its decision.

The European Commission is led by Commissioners who are proposed by national governments and approved by the European Parliament, rather than being directly elected by citizens. Although the Commission has no legislative power, it's essentially the executive of the European Union and is the only body empowered to draft legislative proposals. Many eurosceptics argue that Commissioners wield more power than is justified by their limited democratic mandate. Furthermore, detractors say that they're sometimes politicians who have failed in their native countries and have been "pensioned off" to the Commission, and that they've little control over the thousands of bureaucrats who are regarded as a self-perpetuating oligarchy. Critics of the democratic legitimacy of the EU tend to point to three areas of democratic accountability: representative democracy (European and national Parliamentary involvement); participatory democracy (pluralistic coverage of interests); and deliberative democracy (debates on EU issues between EU citizens). It is important to note the inclusion of national parliamentary involvement in representative democracy, as many would argue that simply by increasing the involvement of the European Parliament (for example in the co-decision legislative procedure, or the 'regulatory procedure with scrutiny' for delegated decision-making) wouldn't suffice since it's insufficiently connected to the peoples of Europe. Instead, some commentators point to an increased role of national parliaments, particularly in legislative procedures, as a means of countering the poor representative democracy within the EU.

Proposed changes under the new constitutional treaty

Successive revisions of the treaties that form the constitution of the European Union have increased the power of the directly-elected European Parliament in an attempt to reduce the perceived democratic deficit.
The proposed Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, if it had been ratified, would have made the following changes in this regard:

It would have extended the power of codecision to virtually all policy areas. This means that Parliament would become an equal legislative partner with the Council for virtually all EU-level decision-making.

It would have required the Council to meet in public when legislating.

It would have ensured that national parliaments receive information about new EU legislative proposals in enough time to mandate ministers on how to vote in the Council.

It would also have given national parliaments a new power to send any proposal back to the Commission for reconsideration if they believe the proposal lies outside the EU's competence (for example if they believe it covers a policy area for which the treaties don't allow EU-level decision-making).

It would have confirmed the principle of subsidiarity as a fundamental principle of the Union.

It would have created a new citizens' right of initiative, obliging the Commission to consider any proposal for legislation that has the support of 1 million EU citizens. However, some commentators argued that the treaty didn't go far enough in reducing the perceived democratic deficit. In particular, they pointed out that:

There would be no change to the principle that EU laws, and the terms of constitution itself, supersede national laws: "The Constitution and law adopted by the institutions of the Union in exercising competences conferred on it'll have primacy over the law of the Member States" . The constitution specifically spelled out that, for those areas of policy where member states share competence with the EU, national governments may act at national level only where they've not already acted through the EU. In other areas, member states confer sole competence on the EU, for example they agree to act only at European level . In any case, the question of whether EU laws can reasonably be described as "national governments acting at EU level", when the European Commission has the sole right to propose those laws, is controversial.

The appointed European Commission would remain the sole initiator of legislative proposals. Other bodies (Parliament, Council, citizens) can only require it to consider drafting a proposal.

Similarly, national parliaments would acquire the right to send a proposal back to the Commission for reconsideration, but there's no explicit requirement for the Commission to make any changes to its proposal as a result. The constitutional treaty failed after a rejection of the draft first by the French voters and days after, the Dutch voters in 2005. Each member state was required to accept the new treaty for it to become legal. Several states, including the United Kingdom, have yet to vote on the proposed document, however once France and the Netherlands vetoed it, there was no point in continuing the process. There are discussions now about whether to scrap the entire constitution or pick and choose from the treaty and create a new one based on those sections.

United Kingdom

Devolution was introduced in 1998 in Scotland and Wales, but not in England.
The European Union and the Labour Party are in favour of devolution to Regions of England, whereas the Conservative Party prefers "English Votes on English Laws". . Some political parties such as the English Democrats Party want a full English parliament.. The Liberal Democrats are currently reviewing their policies on this subject.

Latvia

OSCE mission monitoring the 2006 parliamentary elections mentioned that
In its previous report in 2002, OSCE/ODIHR mission has claimed that
As of 2008, non-citizens of Latvia have no voting rights not only at parliamentary, but also at local and European elections (citizens of other EU member states can vote in these elections).

Further Information

Get more info on 'Democratic Deficit'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://democratic_deficit.totallyexplained.com">Democratic deficit Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.