The Democratic Dimension of European Integration

Extract

SINCE 1952, THAT IS SINCE THE SETTING UP OF THE FIRST European Community for Coal and Steel, there have been two views of European integration: the first regards and continues to regard European integration as the removal of state powers from the national administrations in specific sectors. This deliberately restrictive approach, with its overriding concern for efficiency, considers it is enough to limit the activities of national bureaucracies at European level. The view is that to a large extent one can do without the control and safeguard mechanisms which are usually built into the exercise of state power in all our member states. One eminent proponent of this view, Professor Ispen, an expert on German cotstitutional and European law, has described this form of integration, and the European Community it has produced, as an ad hoc association.

The second view is also based on removing the exercise of state power from the national administrations in certain restricted areas. However it is not satisfied with a technocratic and bureaucratic approach but is concerned to preserve hard-won rights in the area of the control and exercise of sovereignty. I am of course thinking here first of all of the democratic element. Those who belong to this school of thought can cite the text of the Treaties establishing the European Communities in support of their view: the Preamble to the ECSC Treaty refers to ’… the basis for a broader and deeper Community among peoples …’. The Preamble to the EEC Treaty speaks of laying ‘the foundations for an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe’.