My question would rather be: is the democracy of the European Union truly universal?

I accord with the Dictionary (f.e. www.dictionary.com): Democracy is "the government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system".

and with wikipedia.org: "Democracy is a form of government in which all eligible citizens participate equally—either directly or indirectly through elected representatives—in the proposal, development, and creation of laws. It encompasses social, religious, cultural, ethnic and racial equality, justice, and liberty. "

Common on Guillermo! We are grown-ups enough to justify serious issues based on dictionary or wiki's definitions. Would that mean a flat answer like: "Yes, the EU is democratic because it goes according to what the dictionary says".

What about people down there in Greece, or the thousands of Africans jumping over to get to Spain, or the massive production and selling of weapons, or the inequity and poverty in large cities such as Paris, Rome or Madrid… Do this and other similar circumstances fit the wiki definitions? I think they do not.

Dear Balazs and Carlos

I think that on the dictionary definition, the European Union is disproved in the case mentioned above. We (two millon of persons), as citizen of any european country, presented a proposal to be considered in the legislative power of the European Union, using throughly a methology established by the European Union for these procedures, but our proposal was discarded by a veto, without any consideration.

I am convinced that democracy is the best of the political systems when it works.

In the example of the african migrants, the migrants are usually not citizen of any european country, but many citizen may be wishing to invert in the african countries if they were more stables and this inversion may originate a disminusion of the need to migrate. In the issue of the people down in Greece or elsewere, I think that they may be presented as a lack of the democracy because when this people votes they have not any offert of people that symphatizes with their plight. Then they are voting between the bad and the worse. The lack of representativity of "the representants" may be a great injustice and disservice to the ideal democracy.

Dear all,

European Union is democratic, but not to all citizens. Certainly, there are wide groups of population which have other understanding than the main-stream and are not represented and their voice is not heard. Sometimes it is heard, but nothing happens - everything moves according path-dependency trajectory. Certainly European Union is more democratic in economic affairs, but not social affairs. As social security is left for national competencies and jurisdiction. But there are some purely political items which can not push through undemocratic European Union decisions too. The main problem for European Union is to become "real", not "formal" democracy. The same problem of "real", not "formal" democracy refers also to national democracies. New forms of democracy have to be found - and not exactly of parties based parliamentary democracies.It is the only way against exhaustion and tiredness of European democracy and civilization.

Dear Guillermo,

You had a wonderful sentence:

„I am convinced that democracy is the best of the political systems when it works.”

Could you mention a country where democracy does work?

Coming back to the EU, how can be democratic an alliance which tolerates antidemocratic countries among its member states?

Dear All,

I think this thread was started democratically and scientifically with the desire for a definition. A really scientific dispute for a suitable definition can last for ages...

Dear András

I would like to mention many countries where democracy works every day, at every time, but I could not, because there are many imperfections in all our human activity.

For example our governments are very involved with the ideological and economic corporations that financed the election process and manage the Means of Communication, that manipulate to the people by the propaganda. The government use the opinion pools to measure how the propaganda was useful for installing the agenda of the same corporations and when a large proportion of the electors bought a bad idea, the time is ripe for doing a bad innovation.

I know that there are countries where the democracy is yet the more usual method of government, but if we do not fight for preserving it, the democracy may soon become an empty ideal.

We had begun with a high standard and it is a shame to abandon it because It is more easy to get the political system corrupt that to improve it when it was corrupted.

Dear Guillermo,

Agree. As I can see you has no naive views on the operation of the European political systems.

Dear András

I want to express my admiration for the great Constitution adopted recently in your country (Hungary). It was attacked because it defend the life from the beginning to the end, the natural matrimony and the Christian origin of the european civilization. I think that a good democratic constitution have to look for the rights of every one, not only for the rights of the people that can vote or may defend their interest.

This matter is the same behind the European Citizens’ Initiative, “One of Us” from what we are talking about.

People fight for their rights with what they have available. Peasants with the fork, writers with the feather and wealthy people with money. Even in Old Greece only the wealthy group of the population was capable of participating in 'democracy'. Slavery, underage work, corruption, and stoning deaths of politicians - that's history, err? OK, no stoning anymore, nowadays.

Whatever we will understand by 'democratic' in the future definition process here (and elsewhere), we will not see it in EU before we have a full political union. How could it work otherwise? With such diverse countries as France, the UK and Romania it is nearly impossible to create a unified political decision process that doesn't work in a quasi-dictatorial way from the center to the periphery, let alone with participation of all EU citizens.

Can we learn anything from the foundation of the political system of the US and its way of balancing powers among the bigger and smaller states? 

Dear all, 

I think that the European Union will be truly democratic when the EU belongs to the citizens and not ("only") to the members States. They can easily ignore European initiatives in the cooperation politics areas... Usually, they have never shown sufficient forward-looking vision to go beyond national interests in favour of a greater convergence, such as occurs with common policies. Right now, the austerity's strategy seems to be against civil (and Human) rights in Europe and their welfare state.

Best regards. 

Some indicators of the performance of the European Union

Source: Centre for the European Studies. University of Oslo.

 Thank Selly for your input. The citizen satisfaction is a subjective measure about this matter. However I am more interested on objective criteria like that that I posted when I first formulated the question. 

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Brückner & contributors,

I believe its a good idea to start with a definition, or at least a working definition and then try to see if the E.U. fits the definition of democracy. This presupposes that definitions are derived, empirically, from actual usage and that usage is itself adjusted to related practices. This is how dictionaries are constructed--by empirical studies of usage. In consequence, definitions have a strong prima facie standing in common sense. 

Having long lived in the E.U., off and on, I am familiar with it, though I am an American citizen. I have always been sympathetic to the E.U. Its definitely has democratic ideals and accomplishments, though there has long been a complaint of a "democracy deficit."  Given its internal cultural, religious and linguistic diversity, it certainly does not fit the traditional European concept of a nation; on those grounds, I suppose, there has long been much internal skepticism of the prospect of European federalism. I often think of the fact that no currency union has long persisted without a political union. For now, at least, it looks like the E.U. is muddling through? 

To me, the E.U. looks like a more or less traditional project of democratic development. It is as though the European (E.U.) heads of government were, jointly, acting as a traditional (royal?) sovereign which gradually, and haltingly grants democratic powers to the E.U. Parliament and its elected officials. But basically, the national governments have not let go of the final and crucial decisions.

I am inclined to a comparison to the U.S., pre-1789, under the Articles of Confederation, which proved to be unworkable and rather toothless. Though the U.S. constitution of 1789 preserved the states, it also limited their powers very significantly; and it declares that the constitution is the highest law of the land. The U.S. states are somewhat like countries, but they lack many traditional attributes of sovereignty. I would say that they are political communities with their own powers and obligations. Of course, they do not have their own armies or navies (though local units of the national guard--reserves--are under the command of the state governor--and can be federalized at the call of the President), and they are forbidden to conduct their own foreign relations or make treaties with foreign powers. 

Though each state is represented equally in the U.S. Senate, it is actually the people of each state who are represented by their U.S. Senators, since they are directly elected from each state. (Earlier, they were selected by the state legislatures.) But the equality of state representation in the Senate implies a concern that the larger and richer states not be in a position to dominate the others either politically or economically. The smaller states, collectively, can veto anything of that sort in the Senate. From this perspective, in the E.U. it is as though the state governors were members of the upper house of the legislature. In addition, the E.U. has weighted voting of the member states in relation to population. Basically, that means that the bigger members have greater power. 

The U.S. is both a nation (a country as we prefer to say) and a federation. The U.S. constitution speaks in the name of "We the people of the United States..." but the states can only be dissolved or have their boundaries changed with their own permission and that of Congress. The states have their own taxing and regulatory powers, and laws within the purview of the states differ from state to state quite significantly. By the 14th amendment, no state may deny the rights or privileges of citizens of the U.S. The federal courts can overturn state legislation if they find it inconsistent with the U.S. constitution.

The E.U. seems to lack for its "We the European people..." moment, as contrasted with its "We the European nations..." moment.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Guillermo,

If democracy is citizens participation, the EU institutions did not hear the voice of citizenship.

Thank you H.G, Mariano and Luis for floating again this topic which should be particular sensible to any community which want to be really human. I hope that the bad politic shown behind the veto to "One of us" would be reverted in a future, but the quality of a society should be sized by the level of our care for the more fragil people. With the general prevalence of abort and eutanasia, the Europe Union is very far from this ideal.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all, 

Readers of this question and thread of discussion may find the following question of interest:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_liberal_democracy_in_decline

It contains some discussion of democracy and related themes. Your thoughtful contributions will be much appreciated.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Colleagues.

I want to share with you the follow up to the campaign "One of Us" which was ignored by the European Commision to which it was oriented:

https://oneofus.eu/2018/04/ndp-court-of-justice-of-the-european-union/

https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/la-corte-suprema-comunitaria-de-la-union-europea-rechaza-una-peticion-ciudadana-en-contra-de-la-version-europea-de-la-politica-de-la-ciudad-de-mexico/

Veto is action of power, not of democracy necessarily. Defense of life is the first human right. Without it there is not any human right.

Here is another aspect of the question about democracy in the European Union. I believe that the European Union would be much more democratic if the principles of subsidiarity and distributism predominated in it:

https://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/distributism-understanding-controversial-alternative-socialism-plutocracy#at_pco=smlwn-1.0&at_si=5cc856837d09668f&at_ab=per-2&at_pos=0&at_tot=1

Here is another example of an antidemocratic European Union meassure against España what motivates a dennounce against its Presidence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsBp_qv98Qg

The European Union as most of the world goverments are very far from been actually democratic. They are a form of oligocracy of billonaries. See for example https://pablomunoziturrieta.com/2020/09/01/discurso-de-robert-kennedy-jr-en-la-marcha-de-berlin/

Sobre el papel cualquier sistema democrático es de una democracia, pero a veces la misma democracia olvida o ignora los principios que sustentan los principios democráticos. Y esto es el grave problema de algunas democracias, que a veces no respetan sus fundamentos y las corrompen.