Representation in the European Union context

The European Union has a democratic vocation, and even if it has embarked on large-scale deliberative democratic exercises such as the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE), the EU’s main democratic mode is representation. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and brief assessment of the range of modes of representation in play in the multilevel EU, with particular emphasis on the EU-level. The assessment must take into consideration that the EU is an institutionally and constitutionally speaking two-tracked construct, with one supranational component (the European Commission-Council-Parliament-Court quadrangle) and one intergovernmental component (the Council and notably the European Council). The former’s mode of representation is stymied party democracy; the latter’s is what I will term institutionalized shape-shifting, since the two main intergovernmental institutions cater to multiple constituencies (European, individual national and collective of national), and adapt behaviour to these (in effect the European Council also plays a central role in sustaining the EU’s two-tracked character). Further, the EU is marked by a strong inter-imbrication of levels of governing where the mode of representation is a fledgling interparliamentary field (connecting the European Parliaments and national parliaments through such arrangements as COSAC). Finally, is the fact that the EU has incorporated non-members (notably the EEA-EFTA states, Iceland, Norway and Lichtenstein) in its internal market and the Schengen system of border controls. The two most relevant modes of representation here are virtual representation and surrogate representation. The paper outlines these modes of representation; shows how and how strongly they are embedded in the EU’s institutional-constitutional makeup; and based on that discusses the broader implications for our thinking about representation and representative democracy European-style. Some modes resemble established democratic modes (stymied party democracy); others are more pathological (institutionalized shape-shifting). Some are aspirational or overly optimistic: virtual representation and interparliamentary field.