Is the Democratic deficit a political or institutional problem ?

When the EU was created, there was very little concern given to the democratic deficit, since the principal concern was to build peace within Western Europe. The integration process was very consensual without citizens intervening. But the latter realised it was going much further than they thought during the ratification crisis of the Treaty of Maastricht (1992-1993). They became aware of the gap between supranational competence and democratic representation and the support for the EU and the institutions gradually decreased in spite of the fact that it was to be “an ever closer union among the peoples ofEurope, in which decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen”. When considering the EU on the model of parliamentary democracy, two problems appear: the transfer of the exercise of powers from Parliaments towards the executive and the increase of the bureaucracy. This has occurred in the context of an unseen institutional architecture in which the consensual and interdependent decision-making processes make it hard to credit only one organ for the responsibility of taken decisions. Thus we can wonder whether the democratic deficit is a political i.e. related to the lack of citizen input, or institutional– i.e. related to the operating mode of the EU institutions – problem. The first two parts of this essay will show scholar arguments one has to consider when talking about the democratic deficit: by doing so, we will endeavour to show that even if the institutions could be improved by getting more representative and transparent, the democratic deficit is also a political problem, which could be fixed through better engagement with what the EU does for EU citizens. Nonetheless, this essay will argue that the subjacent problem deals with the EU definition. It remains very vague and thus no one knows how to deal with the democratic deficit.

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