November 2025
The European Union (EU), as a complex supranational entity, represents a unique political and institutional construct in the contemporary world. Even though it formally promotes the foundational values of democracy, rule of law, freedom, and equality, its functioning reveals a series of inconsistencies that question the real democracy in practice. This analysis starts from an assumption that democratic legitimacy is the key pillar of modern political communities, while the EU, despite its declarations, often exhibits the signs of what political theoreticians call a “democratic deficiency”.
The concept of democratic deficiency describes a situation in which the EU institutions, despite formal rules and procedures, seem distant from the citizens and direct democratic monitoring. This deficiency indeed emerges from a few factors. First, the supranational bodies are losing their direct connection with the citizens, because legitimacy does not come from direct election, which is not the case at a national level. Second, the EU often relies on the so-called output legitimacy, i.e., it justifies its own rule by the achieved results, while the input is the legitimacy, which refers to the definition of the decision-making process and the participation of citizens secondarily. Third, delegation of authority from national to supranational institutions decreases democratic control and makes respecting the responsibility towards the citizens more difficult.
The analysis of the key EU institutions shows specific inconsistencies. The European Parliament (EP), even though the only directly elected body, has limited jurisdiction, especially in the fields of foreign policy, the Eurozone, and budget management. The EP neither has the right to legislative initiative nor the ability to elect and control the executive government like national parliaments. The process of appointing the president of the European Commission, as well as the High Representative for common foreign and security policy, usually managed by the European Council, also raises the question of transparency and democratic legitimacy.
The Eurozone is especially problematic, where economic and financial policies often function through informal bodies, such as the Eurogroup and the European Stabilization Mechanism. Their informal character, the secrecy of their work, and the limited control over the national parliament create a misbalance between the big and the small states, thus violating the principle of equality in decision-making. Similarly, the qualified majority in the EU Council often favors big states, while the small ones are losing the real possibility of blocking or influencing.
The possible solutions to the democratic deficiency vary. The parliamentary approach suggests strengthening the role of national parliaments, but their capacities and efficiency are limited by the complexity of the supranational initiatives. The presidential approach, which would imply a direct election of the president of the European Commission, carries the risk of the big states dominating the process and thus violating the professional neutrality of the EU. The most controversial is the principle of post-parliamentary legitimization, which implies relying on experts and coalitions with lobby groups, which often excludes citizens from the decision-making process and creates an elitist structure of power. The political theoreticians like Simon Hicks suggest a gradual democratization through a clear position and opposition in the European Parliament, political profiling of the European Commission, and complete transparency of the work of the Ministerial Council.
The conclusion is clear: the democratic deficiency of the EU remains an unsolved issue. The technocratic decision-making method and the concentration of power in the hands of the non-elected bureaucrats and trade powers often surpasses the declarative institutions, and the EU did not create an adequate supranational counterpart that would enable true participation of the citizens. In this political construct, the market rules dominate democracy, shaping an entity that, in some aspects, resembles the imperial structure of power.
Author: Danka Popadić, student research