The European Union and the re-establishment of democratic authority

Abstract

The European Union is blighted by a style of governance, EU police, which holds that the Union better balances different interests and values than other arenas but which is, in practice, distorted by anti-redistribution and status quo biases. To combat it, this article proposes a principle of European democratic authority that would found EU legal authority and condition domestic legal authority. This principle holds that, to warrant authority, measures should satisfy the values, goods and processes associated with liberal social democracies and the particular democratic commitments Union membership requires: democratic imagination, political belonging and mutual betterment. This principle would be institutionalised by two further principles. Justified disobedience would set out the conditions when EU laws without European democratic authority could be disobeyed. Democratic regard would require all domestic actors to be guided by the European democratic authority principle and to disregard domestic obligations that had failed to address it.