Introduction

It is a simple irony that if we compared those international organisations that had a significant impact on people's lives around the world, we might conclude that the EU was the most democratic of them all. Of all those regional trading and regulatory regimes that have sprouted around the globe over the last twenty years or more, none can truly match the EU in its democratic credentials. Aspects of transparency and accountability may be replicated in some corners of supra-state governance but there is little to compete with the institutional development of democratic-type structures and practices of the Union. For some the EU even compares well with the realities of ‘political representation, deliberation and output’ experienced in ‘advanced industrial democracies’, although this might not be a commendation.

And yet, ‘European Union’ and ‘democratic government’ are two phrases rarely uttered together positively in the same sentence. Indeed, whenever ‘democracy’ is raised in the context of the EU it struggles to avoid the immediate association of ‘deficit’. One might be forgiven, indeed, for assuming that ‘democratic deficit’ was the condition of Europe forever condemning the Union to illegitimacy. No doubt such a view could be justified by highlighting the lack of institutional commitment to state-like democratic processes evident since the construction of an ‘economic’ rather than political ‘Community’. Alternatively, one could argue that none of the other international regimes one could mention have had such an impact on people's lives as the EU (although no doubt those in the developing world might well argue that the World Bank and the IMF have exercised immense influence over them).