European Parliament, Legitimation and the Effect of a Weak Electoral Relationship

A post by Josias Senu

Introduction

The legitimation taxonomy of the European Union (EU) is a multifaceted phenomenon that bears fruit to fundamentally different concepts about what legitimacy means.[1] Over recent years, it has led to system-theory approaches that hazily intertwine a legitimacy deficit with a democratic deficit.[2] Although these normative diagnoses of the EU are historically contingent and coextensive, they are not mutually exclusive. In consequence, while the introduction of the co-decision procedure in the Maastricht Treaty and the subsidiarity principle in the Lisbon Treaty were aimed at improving the democratic legitimacy of the EU, the subsequent rise in European technocracy has given rise to a de-politicisation of the EU, with the legitimating and political hegemony of national parliaments cutting into EU institutions like a turbid estuary.

Ultimately, the legitimacy of EU institutions is beholden to the application of democratic standards. Although EU academics such as Majone[3] and Moravcisk[4] reject the notion of a democratic deficit entirely, the overwhelming position of academic discourse about EU legitimacy is that a democratic deficit exists and that it is costly to the state of European integration. An expansion of the European Parliament’s law-making powers might seemingly have minimal impact on the EU’s popularity, but this quandary is subjugated by a wider political context. Hence, this article argues that over time the cumulative effect of a weak electoral connection between the European Parliament and EU citizens is enough to justify being, inter alia, a cause of the EU’s legitimacy deficit.

1. Distance from Voters

The transformation of the European Parliament from a ‘toothless consultation chamber to a powerful legislative institution’ is testament to the ambition of the European integration project.[5] The positive development of co-decision over the last two decades is supported by empirical evidence. Since Maastricht, there have been very few legislative ‘failures’ (in the sense that legislation formally initiated by the Commission has not been adopted). Only seven procedures have ‘failed’ at third reading, with a small number of further proposals being rejected by Parliament in earlier readings.[6] At first, the co-decision procedure (now the ordinary legislative procedure) was in need of politicisation, but the introduction of triologues subsequently bred a legislative culture of compromise and mutual respect.[7] Despite this occurring, there is an imbalance of control over the legislative process between the European Parliament and the Commission, with the European Parliament’s ‘extremely limited’ power to delay within consultations amending only 7.6 per cent of legislative proposals.[8] With limited positive influence within its own legislative competence, the internal politics of the European Parliament with its shifting policy coalitions is certainly worthy of further investigation and tentative eyebrow-raising. However, it is the weak electoral connection between voters and the European Parliament that weakens the legitimacy of the EU. Quite simply, the EU is ‘too distant’ from voters.[9]

It is a key hallmark of democracy, and what gives value to legitimacy, that the institutions of EU citizens reflect their interests or preferences. Sadly, the endogeneity of the electorate’s interests seems to be poorly handled at European level.[10] In particular, it appears that the prospects of re-election and election of an MEP is weighted more heavily against the governing status of the MEP’s national party, the timing of European Parliament elections in the national electoral cycle, and the contextual performance of the national government.[11] What can be said is that in many European countries, European Parliament elections are treated like mid-term US congressional polls, where the election acts as a barometer for how satisfied voters are with the government’s implementation of policy nationally.

In May 2014, turnout at the European Parliament elections was 42.54 per cent, down 20 percentage points since direct elections first began in 1979; in fact, turnout has been declining each election cycle.[12] Although there have been many countries with a history of low electoral turnout rates who have acceded to the EU since its inception (for example, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic), widening the electoral pool to its detriment, the knowledge that most EU voters have no input in the election of the European Parliament unreservedly damages the legitimation process of its political activities. The European Parliament is not only too distant; it may practically not exist for more than 60 per cent of eligible voters. The reasons for low voter-turnout are complicatedly multifarious and dubiously interconnected, but what is overwhelmingly patent is the weak relationship between MEPs and eligible voters. It is best described by Sprungk as a sociological democratic deficit such that there is a lack of common identity within the EU,[13] mainly an inability to perceive common issues due to the positional distinctiveness of the Council and the Commission relative to domestic majoritarian institutions. Ultimately, the EU’s isolated policy regime and the legislative outcomes pursued by technocrats tend to poorly reflect the interests of EU voters, contributing to a decline in citizen participation within the electoral process.

2. EU Voter Interests

Moravcisk argues that the EU policy-making process is now more transparent than most domestic systems of government and therefore is easier access to information.[14] Yet Moravcisk appears to treat the technocratic nature of the EU policy-making process with superficiality. Voter interests or preferences are not ‘fixed or purely exogenously determined’,[15] and consequently it does not logically follow that the basic direction of the EU policy agenda will align with the outcomes produced by ‘enlightened technocrats’.[16] Hence, the weak connection between growing domestic politics within the European Parliament and the views of the public has meant that most national parties would rather campaign in European Parliament elections based on their record in office rather than their shifting policy coalitions or the transformational agendas of their MEPs.[17]

Granted, this article critiques whether the EU’s legitimacy deficit is caused by a democratic deficit in the electoral relationship between voters and EU institutions. And consequently, de Jongh and Theuns might posit that the outcome of a political process is still legitimate so long as it continues to meet appropriate procedural standards.[18] If the means by which we achieve democratic legitimacy is by democratic procedure, then legitimacy is not based on whether or not the EU’s political processes reflect the voting interests or preferences of EU citizens, but whether EU citizens can have an equal stake in the procedure by which these processes operate. de Jongh and Theuns correctly demonstrate that it is still democratic ‘if the underlying source of legitimation is the participation of citizens’.[19] Further, Scharpf argues that the output legitimacy of legislatures (i.e. efficient law-making) supersedes any democratic conditions by making the need for such conditions unnecessary.[20]

Yet, like Moravcisk’s argument, there is some level of superficiality to these points: Barrosso’s appointment in 2004 as President of the European Commission demonstrated that changing the vehicle of legitimacy (i.e. in this case, changing the procedure of elections for the European Commission president) does not necessarily translate into filling a lacuna called the ‘legitimacy deficit’.[21] Rather, it is the level and quality of citizen participation that has this ‘filling’ capacity. Input and output legitimacy are not independent variables so that manipulating the effectiveness of the European Parliament will result in increased electoral participation. Hence, at minimum, procedural standards should not understate the value of having an equal as well as an adequate voice.

3. National Parliaments

Fundamentally, EU political processes require citizen participation. It is true that with the expansion of the European Parliament’s law-making powers, there has also been a dramatic rise in the role of lobbyists. On one hand, lobbyists play an important role in helping MEPs understand key issues and through their research assist MEPs redress sectional interests. On the other hand, lobbyists can apply such great pressure, they push MEPs to posit EU policy at the detriment of minority groups. And this side-effect is a reality that sits uncomfortably with Jensen[22] as well as Follesdal and Hix.[23] 

Interestingly, de Jongh and Theuns argue that ‘participative strategies of governance may lack…democratic accountability’.[24] However, perhaps the issue is not trying to assert a level of democratic control over the political process so that its outcomes have greater output efficiency, but rather it is a case of redressing the political agenda so that it is possible to decrease the gap between EU legislative outputs and its democratic legitimacy. And this may be foremost achieved by strengthening the connection between the European Parliament and the views of the public, where national parliaments are treated more like a sibling, than a distant cousin.

Disparagingly, European Parliament increasingly continues to draft law and policy on core issues of national sovereignty which causes the political resignation of national parliamentarians. Moreover, the EU’s early warning mechanism (e.g. green card, yellow card, red card) simply steers the European Parliament away from politics into an area of technocracy, ‘where the Commission’s dominance is virtually untouchable’.[25] And while there is clearly an appetite for political engagement by national parliamentarians against the background of Brexit and the European financial crisis, the Commission often acts as the ‘author and the peer reviewer’ of EU legislation.[26] This creates highly technical EU policy agendas that simply appear to have no clear relevance to the every-day life of an EU citizen. Although Sprungk posits that the Lisbon Treaty has empowered national parliaments in an ‘unprecedented way’ through the codification of previously informal arrangements, ultimately the European Parliament appears to be no more than a gatekeeper, patently in juxtaposition to the general function of an ordinary parliament.

By asking highly majoritarian institutions to conduct the technically tedious task of subsidiarity monitoring, the EU undervalues the ‘political and legitimating potential that national parliaments can proffer’.[27] Consequently, Jančić argues that reforming the input of national parliaments, by perhaps merging the multiplicity of parliamentary forums into a single body to form a consultative body to a particular policy field might bridge the legitimacy deficit that occurs in European Parliament because the process suffers from a chronic lack of politicisation.[28] Whether this proposed way makes a practical difference or results in transient cross-dialogue is deserving of exploration, but at its centre is the crucial understanding that without the strength of eligible voters behind EU institutions, EU decisions become either ‘de facto or de jure beyond disagreement or debate.’[29] Hence, over time, it appears that the cumulative effect of a weak electoral connection between the European Parliament and EU citizens is at the very least a justifiable cause of the EU’s legitimacy deficit.

Conclusion

At the heart of the theoretical debate as to whether the EU’s legitimacy deficit is caused by a democratic deficit – evidenced by the ‘minimal impact’ the expansion of the European Parliament’s law-making powers has had on the EU’s popularity – is that analytical relationship between democracy and legitimacy. Despite being generally accepted, the EU suffering from a democratic deficit is more than just the procedural mechanisms of the political process. It goes to the core of legitimacy when we assess the quality of the inputs into that process. Over time, the European Parliament’s law-making powers were expanded in response to the lack of democratic legitimacy in the European political process. Yet, these responses were merely changing the vehicle of legitimacy, rather than legitimating the outcomes of the process. As the European integration project falters with each crisis that develops, the opaque technocratic nature of the EU’s political process continues to alienate voter interests and preferences. While a greater involvement of national parliaments might go some way to politicising some relevance into EU policy agendas for the median EU citizen, it is only with time that the cumulative effect of a weak electoral connection between the European Parliament and EU citizens can be absolved, and serve as one less reason for the EU’s legitimacy deficit.

References:

[1] Andreas Follesdal, ‘Survey Article: The Legitimacy Deficits of the European Union’ (2006) 14 The Journal of Political Philosophy 441

[2] Vivien Schmidt, ‘Democracy and Legitimacy in the European Union Revisited: Input, Output and ‘Throughput’ (2013) 61 Political Studies 2

[3] Giandomenico Majone, ‘The Rise of the Regulatory State in Europe’ (1994) 17 West European Politics 3

[4] Andrew Moravcsik, ‘In Defence of the ‘Democratic Deficit: Reassessing the Legitimacy of the European Union’ (2002) 40 Journal of Common Market Studies 78

[5] Simon Hix and Bjørn Høyland, ‘Empowerment of the European Parliament’ (2013) 16 Annual Review of Political Science 171, 185

[6] Katrin Huber and Michael Shackleton, ‘Co-decision: A Practitioner’s View from Inside the Parliament’ (2013) 20 Journal of European Public Policy 1040, 1042

[7] ibid [6]

[8] Raya Kardasheva, 'The Power to Delay: The European Parliament's Influence in the Consultation Procedure' (2009) 47 Journal of Common Market Studies

[9] Andrew Follesdal and Simon Hix, ‘Why is there a Democratic Deficit in the EU: A Reply to Moravcsik’ (2006) 44 Journal of Common Market Studies 533, 536

[10] Follesdal and Hix (n 9) [556]

[11] ibid [5]

[12] Franziska Fislage, ‘EU Elections – Where Are the Voters?’ (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung 2015) <http://www.kas.de/wf/doc/kas_40621-544-2-30.pdf?150304143237> accessed 21 March 2018.

[13] Carina Sprungk, ‘A new type of representative democracy? Reconsidering the role of national parliaments in the European Union’ (2013) 35 Journal of European Integration 547

[14] ibid [4]

[15] Follesdal and Hix (n 9) [545]

[16] ibid [15]

[17] ibid [5]

[18] Maurits de Jongh and Tom Theuns, ‘Democratic Legitimacy, Desirability and Deficit in EU Governance’ (2017) 13 Journal of Contemporary European Research 1284

[19] de Jongh and Theuns (n 18) [1294]

[20] Fritz Wilhelm Scharpf, Governing in Europe: effective and democratic? (OUP 2002).

[21] ibid [16]

[22] Thomas Jensen, ‘The Democratic Deficit of the European Union’ (2009) 1 Living Reviews in Democracy 1

[23] ibid [9]

[24] de Jongh and Theuns (n 18) [1287]

[25] D. Jančić, EU Law’s Grand Scheme on National Parliaments: The Third Yellow Card on Posted Workers and the Way Forward (Davor Jančić, 1st edn, OUP 2017) 308

[26] ibid [25]

[27] Jančić (n 25) [306]

[28] ibid [25]

[29] R. Bellamy and S. Kroger, ‘Domesticating the Democratic Deficit? The Role of National Parliaments and Parties in the EU's System of Governance’ (2012) 67 Parliamentary Affairs 437, 452