Is the EU more democratic than the UK?

It is almost a pronouncement of faith that the EU is less democratic than, for example, the UK, but does this common assertion stand up to scrutiny? Not necessarily so and the current round of talks on reform instituted by the British government informs us a great deal on this issue. To begin with the criticism that the EU’s policy and decision making bodies, the Commission and the Council, are unelected and unaccountable. This is undeniably true, though the ministers are accountable to their own parliaments and ultimately their people. In the UK the executive operates with a large army of unelected civil servants and advisers while the government itself was elected by only a little over 20% of the qualified electorate (taking into account a turnout of little over 65%). It will not be accountable to the electorate until 2020 and Parliament is showing itself remarkably ineffective in this regard. While on the subject of elections, half the UK Parliament is not elected at all. If we look at regional politics, in the UK the Conservative government can hardly be said to represent the national and sub central regions. The government has no seats in Northern Ireland, one in Scotland and a handful in Wales. Similarly it is in a minority in London seats and has about a third of the seats north of Birmingham. By contrast the EU has mechanisms in place – majority or unanimous voting – that ensure that all the nations of Europe can have their say and can influence final decisions. The current deal being negotiated will require the unanimous approval of all member states. Unlike Scotland, no member country will be forced to accept a change it does not like. In a few months Scotland and Wales might be forced to leave the EU against their will. How democratic is that? Turning to the two parliaments, the EU parliament (Increasingly influential incidentally) lacks a majority for the electorate. Different political groupings can influence in the Parliament by joining alliances with others on specific issues. The European executive cannot bulldoze measures through the parliament by using a secure majority. No such thing exists. The result is that consensus politics rules in the EU Parliament. In the UK, by contrast, as long as government has a Commons majority (based on a popular minority) it can almost guarantee that all its legislation will pass virtually unhindered. So the assumption that, if all the UK’s powers are repatriated we will enjoy greater democracy, cannot be sustained. EU democracy remains highly imperfect, but set against the UK’s democratic deficit, it looks rather more attractive.