Abstract
The Convention of the the European Council of Laeken in 2001, was put in charge of drafting a new treaty for Europe. The main objective of this draft Treaty was to clearly define: "how to bring citizens closer to the European aim, and to European Institutions, by organizing politics in the European arena according to an enlarged Union, and how to develop the Union into a stable entity and a model for the new world order.
The European Union continues to play an important role in traditional domestic areas of policy making, but many people still see the Union as a distant body, and believe that they have little involvement or influence in it. The only body which represents citizens is the European Parliament, which is by far the weakest in the group. This lack of public accountability in the European Union is known as the "democratic deficit". This term refers to, "the idea that decisions in the EU are in some ways insufficiently representative of, or accountable to, the nations and people of Europe" (Lord, 2001). The examination of the deficit does not only involve a discussion of the role of the European Parliament (EP), but also involves the role of the other institutions and the perception of those institutions by the citizens. Though the democratic deficit of the EU goes back a long way, politicians began to take this issue seriously only from 1992. The ambitious "Maastricht Treaty", aimed at achieving the Economic and Monetary Union and also deepening the political integration that appeared to go beyond the European scope of activities. The Danish voters rejected the treaty, causing turmoil on the currency markets. Thus, the EU tried to fulfill the essential requirements of a modern democracy, in order to silence, or atleast subdue the crisis for more than a decade. However, Critics say that this supranational construction is neither democratic nor legitimate. Despite its efforts, the European Union is still unable to correspond to traditional democracies. This leads us to ask what the democratic deficit is and how it may be resolved. However, it must be specified that the EU is not a nation-state. Thus the feasibility and the relevance of a democratic system at the European level will be questioned in this document. Firstly, it explains how the democratic deficit appeared and what its role is in the institutional functioning of the Union, and in the public opinion. Secondly, shows that the democratic deficit tends to weaken the various sets of reforms and sociological evolutions.
