EU’s Raison D’Être: Leadership, Democracy - Or Both? Reflections on G. De Burca and J. Weiler

Abstract

What is at stake when the EU suffers from a legitimacy deficit, and what should be done about it? As always, Gráinne de Búrca and J H H Weiler identify and illuminate central issues of concern. de Búrca adroitly pinpoints a crux of the legitimacy debates in Europe: how to secure sufficient deference to EU decisions by citizens and national authorities. She is surely right to remind us that the EU’s legitimacy neither can nor should be based simply or primarily on democratic process legitimacy. But her pessimism may be premature, and her proposal of the EU as a global actor, whilst attractive, is not yet an obvious part of the solution.