There's a democratic deficit in the EU and Britain's parties don't care

"Unelected bureaucrats", "Brussels Eurocrats" imposing their will on the British people against their wishes. Europe's democratic deficit is well established both academically and in popular culture and it's certainly one of the things that got mentioned most in the study I ran last year when we asked people what they least liked about the EU (alongside immigration).

The idea of "foreign bureaucrats telling us how to run things" is so entrenched that it's a wonder nobody has done anything about it. Why hasn't the European Union decided to do anything so that voters can have their say over what it does?

The answer is that they did. It's just that nobody in Britain seems to care.



When people talk about "unelected bureaucrats", they normally mean the European Commission or the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Sometimes they mean the European Court of Human Rights but that isn't anything to do with the EU so we'll ignore it for now. These two bodies are the only ones that aren't directly elected. The European Council is of course made up of the heads of each member state's government so they are elected. The Council of Ministers is made up of ministers from each of those governments and can therefore also be considered "elected" and of course the European Parliament is directly elected specifically for their European role.
Nobody complains (much) about courts being unelected in Britain so, while this could be an issue, I'm going to take the fact that the ECJ is appointed as being largely uncontentious given how this operates at a national level.

The real sore thumb is the European Commission. This body combines some executive functions with more civil-service style administration so a case could be made that it doesn't need to be elected as national bureaucracies tend not to be. Did anyone elect Jeremy Heywood? Gus O'Donnell? No. We seem to accept that, Yes Minister notwithstanding, it's broadly alright if the cabinet secretary is appointed by the elected prime minister. The European Commission is appointed by the heads of government of the member states, in effect a Europe-wide version of the appointment of the cabinet secretary.

However, the European Commission is the only body that is able to propose EU legislation so is arguably more powerful than most national bureaucracies. It is also not directly bound to serve an elected government as national bureaucracies are. Therefore a more convincing case can be made that the Commission, or at least its president, should be elected democratically.

And that's what's supposed to happen! The Lisbon treaty, which became law in 2009, includes a provision that the European Council must take account of the most recent elections to the European Parliament and that the European Parliament must confirm the final appointment. This was a bit soon for the party groups in the EP to take advantage of it in the 2009 elections but for the 2014 elections they're finally stepping up. The Wikipedia page for the the 2014 European Parliament elections is presented like any other national election with the candidates of each party group in a box on the top right and a clear link suggested between the results of the election and the identity of the next commission president.

The book that got me through the European Union parts of my masters is this one by Simon Hix whose basic argument is that structurally, the EU is actually very democratic. Both parts of its legislature are directly elected vs. a United Kingdom where we have an appointed upper house, hereditary peers and a head of state appointed by God. The problem is that there isn't the European "demos" necessary for European democracy to work. European parliament elections are fought along national lines and as referendums on national governments. The BBC doesn't yet have a European Parliament elections page for 2014 but look at their 2009 page. There's a reference to the EU wide results but all the analysis is on the implications for UK politics.
Having the European Parliament party groups field candidates for commission president, directly tying the election results to the choice of president and attempting to establish it as a de facto elected post, is the first step to addressing the democratic deficit. Surely all the critics of the EU's lack of democratic accountability would embrace the opportunity to address it!

But Britain's political parties are bending over backwards to do nothing.

The European Conservatives and Reform (ECR) group to which the Conservatives belong isn't even fielding a candidate. Neither is the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group of which UKIP are the largest member.
Labour's position is a bit of a fudge; their group, "the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats" (S&D), nominated former European Parliament president Martin Schultz but Labour opposed his nomination and it's unclear whether Labour MEPs would support Schutz or oppose him when it comes to the vote.
Only the Liberal Democrats actually appear to back their group's candidate for commission president, former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, but, as with British politics, the real contest is between Schultz and the candidate of the main centre-right group (the European People's Party, EPP) who chose Jean-Claude Juncker, the former prime minister of Luxembourg. Juncker is exactly the sort of candidate that prompted the Conservatives to leave the EPP in the first place. If the Tories had remained in that group, they might have been able to push another candidate over the top. Instead Juncker may now become commission president and the choice is between two candidates that neither main British party appears comfortable with.

Britain's two biggest political parties, and all three of the likely top 3 parties in the May elections, have effectively removed British voters from the choice of commission president. And then they have the cheek to complain about "unelected bureaucrats".