Session 1
- Copenhagen Criteria (1993):
o Uphold the rule of law (be a democracy, freedom of press and opinion).
o You need to be able to compete (no more barriers to trade, so you can participate in the
market.
o Accept the principle of acuis communitaire (i.e. be able to integrate EU-regulation into
national, local legislation). Nothing in domestic law that is contrary.
o You have to be European (even though NOT originally in the Copenhagen Criteria) -> Morocco
is the only who, ever, officially got rejected.
Democracy in Europe: the EU and National polities –
Schmidt
“Europeanization”: How do member-states adapt their democracies to the evolving European public
sphere. National leaders hold on to an idea of traditional democracy, which is not possible anymore:
because of EU membership, states had to give up a part of their sovereignty in order to benefit from
the advantages of collective authority.
Legitimacy is the acceptance of an actor as an authority and the willingness to obey them. Concept
around an actor, justified.
The Challenges to National Democracies
EU as a regional state -> the EU is best understood as a regional union of nation-states in which
national differentiation persists alongside regional integration. In this regional state, sovereignty is
shared with its constituent member-states and contingent on internal acceptance and external
recognition; boundaries are variable with regard to policy reach; governance is highly compound as a
result of the dispersion of power, access, and voice. Finally, democracy is fragmented between a
national level that ensure government by and of the people through political participation and
citizen representation and an EU level that involves primarily governance ‘for the people’ and ‘with
the people’ through consultation with organized interests. ensures both ever-increasing regional
integration and ever-continuing national differentiation.
From ‘Indivisible Nation-State Sovereignty to ‘Shared’ Regional
Sovereignty
Nation-states tend to be defined first of all by their sovereignty. Sovereignty, is attributed to states
that have international recognition from other states (‘international law’ sovereignty); autonomy
with regard to the exclusion of external authority from their own territory (‘Westphalian’
sovereignty); control over activities within and across their borders (‘interdependence’ sovereignty);
and exclusive power to organize authority within the polity (‘domestic’ sovereignty).
A Regional State With Variable Boundaries
The variability of policy boundaries may increase with “Enhanced cooperation” which allows a certain
number of member-states to go forward on their own with initiatives as long as the Commission
deems that these do not undermine the functioning of the single market. Notionally, it could mean
the harmonization of welfare state policies for member-states with similar kinds of pension systems;
or of fiscal policies for countries with similar tax systems.
- This sort of differentiated integration or ‘variable geometry’ has not yet gotten terribly far. The
obstacles result from two interconnected objections:
,A Regional State with Highly Compound Governance and Fragmented
Democracy
The EU does not lack democratic legitimacy. This is because the EU has a more highly compound
governance system than any nation-state, with governing authority much more dispersed among
multiple authorities. This makes for a more fragmented democracy in which legitimacy depends on
both EU and national levels.
If legitimacy means legislating in such a way as to safeguard minority rights while responding to the
majority will, then the EU, if anything, governs for the people in a way that better protects against
abused of power than most nation-state democracies (veto right and consensus role (any issue with
high saliency not forced on member-state) and many other arrangements serve to safeguard any
minority rights). As well as many checks and balances (can also undermine effectiveness, as it is hard
to actually create rules).
Lack of by and representation of the people due to a lack of a political space and public sphere of its
own’.
Transnationalizing Democracy - Habermas
The Problem of Trans-nationalizing Democracy
Transnationalization -> the process that aims to create a ‘supranational’ (federal character, but not
exactly the same) democracy, that is, one above the organizational level of a state.
- Contrary to true federations, the EU, as a supranational democracy, shouldn’t have a monopoly
over the legitimate use of force or ultimate decision-making authority. Guidelines, statutes, etc.
are to be implemented by member states. Does the EU enjoy legitimacy, then?
Our era is marked by a growing mismatch between a world society that is becoming increasingly
interdependent at the systemic level and a world of states that remains fragmented. The states are
the only one capable of taking effective action.
- Politically undesirable side effects of systemic integration: there is a need for steering that single
nation-states are increasingly unable to meet. Those who sense this loss of political decision-
making power cling even more firmly to the nation-state and its (porous) borders.
- As an alternative to international organizations, that largely escape proper democratic control,
supranational communities that do not replace sovereign states and can satisfy democratic
standards of legitimacy.
How can a supranational polity satisfy the principle of democracy
that so far has only been realized in the nation-state format?
By delegating certain inter-state problems (e.g. European debt crisis) to pseudo-sovereign EU
member states, the power of the EU executive has grown. Because these government could not
handle these issues, the EU had to step in as crisis management -> European executive branch have
extended their scope for action at the cost of national parliaments.
What is democratic self-determination? It means that citizens, who are bound by laws, are only
subject to those laws that they have enacted themselves through democratic processes. These laws
are then legitimized because (1) all citizens were, in principle, included in the process of democratic
decision-making, and (2) because laws were discussed during national parliamentary deliberations.
When democratic states form an alliance, the people have to pool their sovereignties. State’s
equality is subsequently ensured through equal representation of the states and thus the people in a
, particular legislative body (Senate). Not just the governments need to be integrated, but the people
themselves as well.
- In an international law, it guarantees an equal standing of states and governments; but within a
federal state it protects, together with an equal standing of member states, simultaneously the
democratic rights of the peoples of each of the states.
We can learn two things from this development for the comparison with a supranational democracy
(as the EU); (bringing the two competing principles of equality of states and the equality of citizens
into harmony within the framework of a nation-state was the invention of a two-chamber system of
a corresponding division of powers (second chamber -> democratic participation that is indirect, but
of equal weight); (1) For a proper federal state to exist, individual states will have to be made
subordinate to the federal state. This isn’t the case in the European Union; (2) that priority of the
federal level over the individual states expresses the political identity of the people from which all
political authority proceeds: it is in the final analysis the national citizenry as a whole that establishes
and sustains a democratic federal state – not the governments of the several states or their citizens.
Why has European unification stalled? Many reasons, but mostly because of a lack of mutual trust
that citizens of different states would have to show each other as a precondition for their willingness
to adopt a common perspective that transcends national boundaries when making political decisions
on federal issues.
- Still, cultural identification isn’t necessarily required for there to be a state; the concept of the
state is, after all, a legal construction based on political integration (instead of social integration).
Nowadays, there has been a lot of political integration in Europe, even if states’ citizens don’t
want to see this (consider their own state as provider of “all things good”).
- To achieve European-wide political communication, we need a sphere in which the normative
achievements of democratic states are preserved.
o The lack of trust that we presently observe between European nations is not primarily an
expression of self-isolation against foreign nations, but reflects the insistence of self-
conscious citizens of the normative achievements of their respective nation-states -> want
nation-states remaining guarantors of these achievements and not being exposed to the risk
of intrusions by an unfamiliar supranational polity.
o Not necessarily to people/foreigners, but to a superstate.
- The lack of “European people” is not the obstacle to joint political decision-making. European
already share the principles and values of largely overlapping political cultures. What is required
is a European-wide political communication. We need a European public sphere -> not a new
one, the existing national public spheres suffice for this purpose; they only have to open
themselves up sufficiently to each other -> develop trust.
Summary: European citizens have good reasons to pursue two competing goals simultaneously: (1)
they want the Union that has arisen from nation-state to assume the form of a supranational polity
that can act effectively in a democratically legitimate way; (2) they want to embark on this
Transnationalization of democracy only under the proviso that their nation-states, in their role as
future member states, remain guarantors of the already achieved level of justice and freedom. In the
supranational polity, the higher political level should not be able to overwhelm the lower one.
Currently, the EU doesn’t have full legitimacy: the European Parliament should be able to introduce
legislation regarding all policy fields, and the European Commission would have to be answerable to
both the European Parliament and the European Council
