European Institutions: more responsibility without more accountability?

While it is far from clear how this unification would work in practice, and how much of the coming construction will still be based on intergovernmentalism, it seems however that the current supranational institutions, such as the Commission and the Parliament, would play an important role, as the already established and legitimate European institutions.
It is precisely for this reason that the debate over the transparency and accountability of the EU institutions is more needed than ever. How can the EU institutions take up more power from the national Governments if the citizens hardly understand how they work and don’t know what’s on their agenda ?

The democratic deficit of the EU institutions is widely known, as the EU-decision making processus so complicated that it makes its understanding difficult even for the experienced Brussels-based professionals, let alone the citizens in member states. The European Commission and the Parliament have tried over the years to compensate for that with numerous information campaigns. However, their bureaucratic-originated necessity of always communicating the message in a “politically correct” and consensual manner has made the information too uninteresting for the people to digest it. As a result, less and less voters participated in the European elections.

EU needs more genuine debates, with politicians discussing the subjects on the EU agenda while they are in still the legislative process, taking sides and proposing alternatives to the current status-quo - just like in the national politics. However, politicians alone will not start to “debate Europe” unless they are incentivized to do so, unless they feel that they have something to gain by engaging in debates.

The civil society and the media are in the best positions to generate incentives for the politicians to communicate EU politics at home, by providing to the public information on political record of those who represent them in Brussels and asking them to explain and justify how their political actions match the needs of their electorate. Only when the political support for MEPs will rely more on their performance in Brussels and Strasbourg, and less on the performance of their parties in national politics, it will be safe to say that EU is a fully-fledged supranational democracy.

Not an easy endeavor, one may say, but definitely necessary if Europeans are keen to unite their destinies to face the challenges of the current global developments.
 

Doru Frantescu is Policy Director at VoteWatch.eu, a Brussels-based EU watchdog organization.

This article is written by Doru Frantescu in his personal capacity and does not necessarily represent the positions of VoteWatch.eu.


Photo credits (c) European Parliament