Abstract
"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule". When the famous British politician W. Churchill made this speech, he pointed out two of the main characteristics of democracy. This form of government may not be the greatest, but it is the best of all the other alternative forms and consists in a universal standard of human society. Besides, in democracy, power is supposed to be held by the people, (demos in Greek,) in order to be legitimate. This legitimacy represents one of the key requirements of democratic regimes, along with the constitutional element. Viewed from this perspective the European Union (EU) seems to be suffering from a "democratic malaise" since the Maastricht ratification crisis. According to Weiler the consensual way of integration used since the creation of the EU did not seem to work anymore and the European citizens began to feel excluded from the EU policy-making.
