EU parliamentary democracy: how representative? CEPS Policy Insights No 2019/07, May 2019

Russack, Sophia (2019) EU parliamentary democracy: how representative? CEPS Policy Insights No 2019/07, May 2019. [Policy Paper]

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Abstract

To what extent does the European Parliament really represent EU citizens? This paper first briefly introduces the most crucial characteristics of the EP (with regards to its internal organisation, its rights and tasks, as well as the electoral procedure), and then highlights the most important differences between the EP and its national counterparts: how national parties translate into European groupings; the (dis)connection between the European executive and legislative branches; and electoral (dis)connections. Finally, it investigates the idea for institutional reform introduced to improve the representative character of the EP – the Spitzenkandidaten procedure. It finds that the attempt to transform the EU (as a hybrid sui generis entity) into a full fledged parliamentary system does not make the EP a better representative of the EU electorate.

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