Original scientific paper
National Public Administrations and the Democratic Deficit of the European Union: A Comitology Conundrum
Dario Čepo
orcid.org/0000-0003-1509-7020
; Chair for Sociology at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Zagreb,Croatia
Abstract
The European Union (EU) is a complex political system
whose institutional framework encompasses representatives
of European citizens, member states, »eurobureaucracy
« (Commission and agencies), national parliamentarians
and members of public administrations. Such a
complex framework is a by-product of reforms the EU has
gone through in order to include stakeholders in its decision-
making process, with the goal of delivering democratically
adopted rules that have legitimacy. The democratic
deficit is a sign that the EU lacks full legitimacy. The paper
aims to show that comitology system is a source of democratic
deficit. It shows the reasons why national public
administrations got involved in the decision-making process,
and the role they have in overseeing the implementation of adopted measures. The paper also gives the reasons
why comitology is a threat to democratic accountability,
pointing to the Council as the main source of that threat.
Finally, it also suggests ways of reducing the democratic
deficit by empowering the representatives of national public
administrations to work transparently.
Keywords
democratic deficit; comitology; European Parliament; European Commission; European Council; executive overreach; national public administrations
Hrčak ID:
130547
URI
Publication date:
15.9.2013.
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