"Foreign policy and democracy in the EU at the turn of the century: Whose demos is it anyway?"

Stavridis, Stelios. (1997) "Foreign policy and democracy in the EU at the turn of the century: Whose demos is it anyway?". In: UNSPECIFIED, Seattle, WA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

European foreign policy is a particularly relevant example of the democratic dilemmas that the EU is facing today as it brings to the fore the most entrenched and emotional elements of public policy. Foreign policy raises clear questions of sovereignty and accountability. As national decision-making in foreign policy issues remain predominant despite 25 years of institutionalised cooperation among the EU member states, it is particularly useful to illustrate the current debate over who controls policy in the EU by a study of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in post-Maastricht Europe. The main argument in this article is that what is really missing from the whole debate is a strong dose of real democracy: what happens until such a demos is created, or more importantly, what happens if such a demos is never created? That is to say, what happens now and in the near future? How do we deal with the fact that there are different, sometimes converging but often diverging, national interests in foreign affairs? This situation cannot be changed by simply changing procedural norms, e.g. by introducing weighted majority voting. To a large extent, this debate is phony because the real question is why the provision for majority voting that already exists in the CFSP for the implementation of Joint Actions has yet to be used.

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