Lisbon Treaty will help to bring about a more democratic EU

CONCERNS about democracy within the EU will dominate the debate on the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland.

Unfortunately, those opposing the treaty on ‘democratic’ grounds have failed to move beyond general rhetoric about the democratic deficit of the EU to set out clear and realistic political objectives for its reform.

The real question facing European citizens and their political representatives is what forms of democracy are possible and desirable in a transnational polity like the EU, involving 27 member states and approximately 500 citizens?

The EU has been built by its states over a 50-year period. The preamble to the Lisbon Treaty refers to a “Union of States and of Peoples”.

However, the interests of states and governments have dominated the development of the union since its foundation, and these are not always synonymous with those of citizens. The engagement and participation of citizens in EU processes have tended to be secondary considerations.

The fact that parliamentary ratification has been the main mode of ratification of successive EU treaties means that many citizens feel they have not been directly consulted about the direction or the development of the European project.

Fortunately that has not been the case in Ireland where a popular referendum has been held on every EU treaty since we became a member state.

There are compelling reasons why the issue of democratic reform needs to be addressed by the EU.

In an era when a new paradigm of ‘participatory democracy’ is putting pressure on the more traditional model of ‘representative democracy’, European citizens are less willing to leave the business of political decision-making exclusively to their governments and elected representatives.

National governments will also be very aware of the dangers of the institutions of the EU being seen to have ‘authority without popular consent’. The Lisbon Treaty does take certain important steps in the direction of addressing the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’.

Under Lisbon, the Council of Ministers, which used to meet in closed session to make laws, will now meet in public. The treaty gives national parliaments a formal role in monitoring draft EU legislation and empowers them to show a ‘yellow card’ if one-third of parliaments feel the principle of ‘subsidiarity’ (ie, decision-making at the lowest effective level) is being breached.

The treaty greatly increases the lawmaking powers of the European Parliament. It introduces a citizens’ petition where at least one million people from a significant number of states can petition the EU Commission to draft new legislation in a policy area where the EU has competence.

And the new charter of fundamental rights gives a legal basis to a citizen’s right to access documents from EU institutions and to petition the parliament.

Clearly there are other areas in which democratic reforms should be made in the EU.

One important reform that individual member states could advance outside of any EU treaty is the introduction of mandatory systems of scrutiny and control for their national parliaments. At present the citizens of some member states are fortunate enough to have parliaments that can issue binding opinions on how ministers should vote on policy issues in the Council of Ministers (ie, Denmark, Austria, Finland).

However, other citizens have parliaments that have no powers to insist on any levels of accountability at all. It is reasonable to propose that ministers should receive a mandate from national parliaments in relation to the decisions they take in the Council of Ministers.

These are the kinds of proposals that those concerned about democracy within the EU should be making rather than suggesting that a return to an idealised world of independent nation states is the solution to the many complex political issues faced by countries today. The politics of opposition offers nothing to EU citizens who recognise that the union must continue to develop if it is to respond to the challenges of globalisation.

The Lisbon Treaty will go some way towards advancing the democratisation of the EU. It is worth supporting for that reason.

Senator Deirdre de Búrca

Green Party Spokesperson on EU Affairs

Eglinton Road

Bray

Co Wicklow