Politics of European integration

Document Type:Essay

Subject Area:Politics

Document 1

Some of the ways that these institutions may be affected include lack of accountability and transparency, poor decision making and also the inadequate involvement of citizens in policy making (Moravcsik 2002). The level of democratic deficit is determined depending on the procedural democracy aspect which is reflected in the decision making and representation mechanism. With these facts, the idea of democratic deficit is accompanied by distortions in the influence flow ranging from citizens to the government. Thus, there exists a close relationship between democratic deficit and democratic legitimacy. Despite that any government system may suffer from a democratic deficit, the concept has been developed mainly to describe the European Union, which is one of the institutions that are regarded to be supranational.

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According to this policy, a fifth of the total EU population, which is of 500 million, can petition the European Commission to put in place new policy proposals (Piris 2010). This treaty also gives citizens the ability to challenge the way that EU makes decisions. This treaty also has helped in bringing equality to the elected MEPs as all the elected MEPs have to say in EU budget planning and law-making. According to the leading material, EU has achieved economic equality. Through the use of the Lisbon treaty, the 16 member states have a common currency, euro. Argument evaluation Undemocratic is one of the issues that have remained of debate in the state of EU. As far as this is concerned, there is some factors that should be considered when one claims that EU is undemocratic or it's democratically legitimate.

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One of this is its accountability and transparency, member country participation and representation. When evaluated regarding transparency and accountability, EU can be regarded to be undemocratic. Despite the few arguments that have circulated this international organization, EU has still not come out to address these issues of concern. With this understanding, I, therefore, support the fact that democracy deficit do exist in EU. The existence of a democratic deficit in EU As defined above, democratic deficit is a term generally used by citizens who claim that there exist inadequate democracies in EU institutions as well as in their decision-making procedures. According to these people, EU institutions have remained inaccessible due to their complex decision-making systems. For a while now politics involving open contests over political authority together with policy agenda policy has been missing from EU.

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This is proved by the fact that the central issue in the EU agenda was mainly focused on how to come up with the economic as well as a political structure which would favor the entire continent and the member countries of EU. This is because the executive branch of this government plays an essential role in the legislative process. The member states are not equally represented in the European parliament because some countries have more representatives than others. Countries such as Germany, UK, Italy, and France have more representatives than other countries such as Cyprus, Estonia, Malta, and Luxembourg. This is an indication that the member countries have no adequate power of participation in the European Parliament and hence the reason why the leadership is regarded marginalized.

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The power of the European Union is not equal to all member countries. If EU was to be of benefit to all the citizens of the member countries, then it has to isolate its governance from that of the traditional democratic politics. With the fact that the Union is regarded independent, then it is supposed to set up social, economic as well as environmental standards that could favor the entire European community (Hix 2013). This would ensure that there was equality to all the citizens of this Union. The policies would also have set standards for the internal markets if there was no democratic deficit in society. Some of the social, environmental and economic regulations set by EU favor some member citizens more than others.

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