The Acratic Union: about democratic weakness of the will in the EU and its member states

Recorded: Monday 14 November 2016, 6.30-8pm at Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE

Speaker: Professor Christoph Möllers is a Professor of Public Law and Jurisprudence at Humboldt University Berlin and Shimizu Visiting Professor at LSE Law.

Respondent: Dr Jan Komárek is Assistant Professor of Law at LSE.
Chair: Professor Niamh Moloney is Professor of Law at LSE.

Making the "European Union" responsible for the social and political crisis in Europe today invokes the question: who is addressed? Sometimes the supranational organs are meant: the European Commission, the European Court of Justice and the European Central Bank. According to widespread critique from the right and the left, they have become increasingly independent from member state democratic politics. But an analysis of the development within the EU since the Treaty of Maastricht shows another picture. Particularly for the European Commission, it is increasingly difficult to define a political profile on new policy areas. Meanwhile, many crises of the European Union, from the euro to its lethal migration policies, are better interpreted as the result of incoherent policy preferences of the member states-and its citizens. While they endorse sectoral Europeanization, they are not ready to accept many of its practical implications, which they blame on the EU. This is also a challenge for democratic theory, because we are dealing with politically problematic-but not necessarily democratically illegitimate-decisions. Therefore, the crisis is not aptly understood as the result of either loose European institutions or a lack of democratic input, but rather as the product of an acratic form of self-government. In this constellation it would be a wrong alternative to have to choose between either a hermetic national concept of democracy or a moral duty to further European integration.

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