Conventional narratives of the European Union’s democratic deficit paint a picture of a dysfunctional decision-making system run by elites located in Brussels and Strasbourg: the so-called “European technocrats”. An exclusive club of overpaid civil servants – EU critics claim – feeds an overly complex institutional environment, structured to “please” corporate interests at the expense of ordinary citizens. According to Transparency International, three quarters of declared lobbying meetings of EU institutions concern corporate interests.Footnote 1 Perceived institutional opaqueness is further fuelled by the remoteness of the EU institutions from local communities. This, in turn, contributes to a further decrease of trust in EU policy-making. Of the six “political tribes” that, according to Chatham House and Kantar Public, exist within the EU today, the “Hesitant Europeans”, summed up with the “EU rejecters”, the “Austerity Rebels” and the “Frustrated pro-Europeans”, amount to 68% of the total of the EU population.Footnote 2
Efforts from the EU to innovate regulatory approaches and enhance participation of civic stakeholders have been continuous, and yet unsuccessful for the most part. In a recent essay on technology and global governance, Eyal Benvenisti exemplifies this problem using the so-called “Mega-Regional Agreement”.Footnote 3 Albeit primarily aimed at reducing trade barriers, such agreements often include rules aimed at harmonising regulations, setting environmental standards, protecting intellectual property or limiting state-owned enterprises. In part because of the complexity and variety of issues regulated, and in part because of the strict confidentiality under which these agreements are negotiated, explains Benvenisti, public opinion has a negative perception of Mega Regional agreements. These are criticised for violating principles of accountability, transparency and inclusiveness. It has already happened. The surge of street protests from 2015 to 2017 in Brussels against the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP) was fuelled by the discontent of the general public with the way the EU was addressing the issue.
The issue of democratic legitimacy has been sensitive at each stage of the process of European integration; critical views on EU decision-making, however, have heightened over the last decade. In a time of crisis, (perceived) imbalances accumulate, and political tensions inevitably arise. With an estimated 170 million European governed by populist parties, and low turnouts at European elections (an EU average of 50.95% voted at the 2019 elections), the EU is currently perceived as even more deficient in legitimacy and accountability.
This may explain why scholarly production on the EU democratic deficit has remained steady over the years. Hundreds of books, academic articles, papers, and policy briefs have addressed the topic, proposing a wide range of recipes to refill the EU with democratic values. A simple search on Google scholar returns 342 scholarly pieces published from 2015 to 2019, and containing the words “EU democratic deficit”.
Athanasios Psygkas’s book offers a fresh perspective into the longstanding dilemma of the EU democratic deficit. The author’s claim is straightforward: EU mandates have enhanced the democratic accountability of national regulatory agencies. EU law, maintains the book, has created new “entry points” for stakeholder participation in the operation of national regulators. Not a deficit, but a democratic surplus.
The analysis develops across six chapters, assessing how EU law has influenced telecommunications regulation in three domestic legal systems, namely: United Kingdom, France, and Greece. The dataset built to sustain the analysis is impressive: more than 1,000 public consultations and nearly 8,000 consultation responses, to which are added interviews with agency officials, industry and consumer group representatives in Paris, Athens, Brussels, and London.
The first chapter introduces the reader to what Psygkas names the “deliberative-participatory” model of accountability. The proposed model overcomes the inefficiencies of traditional prototypes of accountability and is used in the following chapters to evaluate the accountability gains that EU law mandates. After elaborating on the institutional and procedural EU mandates that have enhanced the democratic accountability of regulatory agency operations in the Member States (Chapter 2), the book moves to analysing the three country cases. The first case, France, shows the EU contribution to the transformation of the national administrative system, enhancing openness and participation. The case of Greece (Chapter 4) illustrates the need for institutional reforms to complement the introduction of participatory processes. Finally, in the case of UK (Chapter 5) displays again the push provided by EU law towards more participated and open decision-making.
It was not an easy task to approach a widely investigated issue without being repetitive. Not only Psygkas successfully accomplishes this task, but he also manages to sound interesting to a vast audience, ranging from those interested in contemporary democratic pathways, to those attracted by comparative research efforts, and those in search of inspiring reflection on present and future challenges of the EU democratic construct.
