Europe's Hidden Federalism: Federal Experiences of European Integration by Bojan Kovačević

Author:Bojan Kovačević [Kovačević, Bojan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317139003
Google: eT8lDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35194485
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

8Federalism and Democracy in the European Union

Introduction

In this chapter, we discuss the relationship between democracy and federalism in the European Union against the backdrop of the historical experience of the compound polities analysed previously (see Chapter 3). This chapter is divided into two parts.

First, we seek to identify the relationship model that has been established between federalism and democracy in the European Union. The premise is that the experience of the Yugoslav federation is most relevant to understanding the nature of the EU’s democratic deficiency. Just like in Yugoslavia, the process of building a compound European political community took place in the absence of a constitutional demos, contrary to the logic of modern statehood. What the federal process generated for both, however, was an existential crisis. Once the crisis laid bare the structural deficiencies of Monnet’s method of hidden federalisation, a new opportunity for democracy emerged. Yugoslavia was given a similar chance when it became clear that the model of ‘self-governing federalism’ was no longer able to meet the demands of the Yugoslav republics. Having missed the opportunity to democratise itself, Yugoslavia fell apart. For the Union, however, the option of reconciling federalism and democracy is still open. For this reason, it is critical to explore the most influential theoretical ideas about how to democratise the EU, inspired by philosophical concepts and the experiences of successful federations. This is what the latter part of the chapter deals with.

The problem of democracy in the European Union from a federalist point of view

‘No-demos’ thesis: Neither federalism nor democracy in the EU

Carl Schmitt argues that without a people homogenous enough to constitute political unity, neither a federation nor a democracy can exist (see Chapter 6). It was precisely this notion that led the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany to believe that the EU could never develop into a federation or be democratised so long as it lacked a single people aware of its political existence (Cases 2 BvR 2134/92 and 2159/92). In its famous Maastricht decision, the Court maintained that there was no sense of shared collective identity or mutual trust among the citizens of the Union. What is more, the Union lacks the cultural homogeneity to raise citizens’ awareness of belonging to a single political community. Consequently, the EU cannot be a democratic federation, but rather an alliance of sovereign democratic states. In the absence of European demos, little can be done to democratise the EU. What can be done though, is to protect what is already there – democracy within individual member states. National democracy will be safe as long as the states own the Treaties, remaining sovereign over the transfer of governing tasks to the European level of governance, and if the national constitutional courts have the final say over matters of vertical division of powers in the Union. Having determined that the two prerequisites had been met, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany confirmed the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. Nearly two decades later, but with

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