The EU and the Lisbon Treaty: Making a weak democracy weaker

The bigger the political entity, the more important it is to ensure democratic and transparent structures. Being the largest and most powerful supra-national institution, the EU is so undemocratic that even the German EU Commissioner Günter Verheugen admitted: "If the EU were applying for accession here, we would have to evaluate it as 'democratically insufficient'."

• The EU is centralistic / 80% of all new laws come from Brussels
• A weak EU parliament / insufficient separation of powers
• Civil servants with too much power / lacking democratic legitimation
• Non-transparency and secret diplomacy

The Lisbon Treaty will make it worse.

• The Lisbon Treaty creates more centralisation without sufficient democratic control
• Small countries in particular continue to lose influence
• The EU creates its own rules by means of the flexibility clause
• This is possibly the last Irish referendum on European matters
• Military policy without democratic and judicial control
• The Lisbon Treaty is barely understandable

Download Summary (pdf - 2 Seiten - 1 MB)