The democratic deficit in the European Union (EU)

ABSTRACT: Changing the nature of the EU through treaties from economic to political has raised many questions concerning the democratic deficit. The main question is whether there is a democratic deficit in the EU? if so, how could it be reduced? This article addresses the theories of some notable EU Scholars regarding the democratic deficit and analyses their solutions for the issue. The first section examines the concept of democratic deficit in the light of the arguments of Hix, Majone, and Moravcsik. According to Hix, the EU suffers from a lack of accountability, weak parliament, and indirect legitimacy. In contrast, Majone and Moravcsik believe that the EU does not need to be legitimized in a similar way of democratic states because it is considered as a regulatory state. The second section studies the democratic deficit between the redistributive policies where there are winners and losers similar to majoritarian, and regulative policies where there are no losers even if all are not winners. The final section explores the solutions provided by the abovementioned scholars with highlighting the view of Hix. Accordingly, the scholars unanimously agree on the existence of democratic deficits to some extent as the EU acts like both intergovernmental and supranational organisation concurrently.