Is there a democratic deficit in the European Union?
There is a huge democratic deficit in the European Union. I continue to believe that there is much more democratic legitimacy in member states’ Parliaments and that’s where the majority of power should lie and we should be continually reviewing how much power is vested in the European Union, how much in member states. At the moment, in the last few years it’s all been in one direction, from member states to the EU and my view is that we should try to reverse that ratchet and start looking at what powers are not exercised well at the European level and could be better exercised at member state level.
Do European Parliament elections help to resolve the democratic deficit?
The Parliament is actually becoming increasingly powerful and that helps to make up for the democratic deficit but the Parliament is made up of national parties of course and a lot of the European election campaigns are fought essentially on national issues and with very low turn-out, so the issue is not resolved.
Has the Lisbon Treaty improved the nature of the European Union?
As anti-federalists we opposed the creation of the President and Foreign Minister under the Lisbon Treaty, amongst its other measures. It’s important to understand that these are matters decided by treaties between different governments; they are not anything that the European Parliament itself can decide on. We had to approve the treaty, obviously we voted against it. But, ultimately the decision is taken by Prime Ministers, heads of governments and by sovereign national parliaments about what powers should be vested in the European Union and what the treaties should cover, so that wasn’t anything that we could intervene with in the parliament.
Would greater use of referendums help to improve the democratic nature of the European Union?
Yes. We continue to believe that the way the Lisbon Treaty was forced through was wrong. It should have been subject to the referendum. It defies the democratic will of a number of member states who in fact voted against the original version, which was the European constitution. It is effectively the same as the European constitution and of course referendums in France and the Netherlands voted against that. People were never given the chance to vote on the Lisbon treaty except in Ireland and they did vote against it.
