When most Eurosceptics (who I’ll admit make up a huge part of the population these days) criticise Europe, they have a firm idea of what their problems with the system are. To them, the EU is a vast, sprawling superstate, with an unwieldy and corrupt bureaucracy and an even less efficient executive. Sorry, what? Did you mention a parliament? I had no idea. However, you’d be forgiven for forgetting the parliament as to the average man, (and quite rightly), it is not a very effective parliament. To Eurosceptics, the EU is completely devoid of democracy; unchangeable, unchallengeable. Last Friday we were discussing in a seminar the concept of democratic legitimacy; the idea that democratic governments have legitimacy to govern, given to them by popular vote of the people. EU decision makers seemingly have none.

The reality seems only a little different; and yet very different at the same time. In fact, the EU is far from a superstate. Its supranational institutions are incredibly weak and have little power to affect change at all. The Commission may run the EU, and it certainly drafts laws. But nothing big is decided at this level. No changes to the major tenets of the EU are made here, no big programmes are initiated at this level. No treaties are put into motion by President Juncker, oh no. And if you’re worried about EU bureaucracy, consider the fact that EU institutions employ in total just over 40,000 people, in comparison to the UK Civil Service which in 2015 numbered 439,323, according to the Office of National Statistics. No, the real decision making power lies with the intergovernmental bodies; the European Council. Despite being made up by multiple Heads of State and government, this is the all powerful head of the executive, with the Commission acting as it’s cabinet. It’s the Council that draws up new treaties, in which new directions for the EU are set and new focuses determined. In the individual ministerial councils, specific points of policy are debated and discussed. These are intergovernmental bodies, not supranational ones. They aren’t above the nation states, they are those states’ governments. Yes, I’m sure you’re wondering; what’s the real difference? Well, the electorate can change those governments, in contrast to the fear that the EU Commission is far beyond the voter’s reach. Surely it’s politics 101 – when you’re government is doing something you don’t like, you lobby them, campaign against them, and vote them out. It’s the people’s governments that stand in the way, not some vast super state of unstoppable power.

In particular this is true in Britain; when the time came to elect a new President of the Commission, the old rules were revised and reviewed. It was realised the old system of the European Council appointing a President (see how the intergovernmental bodies held the real power?) was undemocratic, and out of touch. Instead, the rules were revised so that the candidates were nominated by their party, would have to campaign in the parliamentary elections, and the candidate with the largest support in parliament would be nominated by the Council. Except Britain didn’t like this method and decided to interpret the revision as “we still get to choose the president, regardless of the democratically elected body which has no say currently”. Britain got outvoted, and British politicians did not get involved in any of the Commission Presidential election campaigning. Ah, so there’s one of those instances where Britain got outvoted in Brussels. Shame. Now, don’t get me wrong. The EU is a different case. When it comes to the EU, there is certainly a “democratic deficit”. The only democratically elected body in the entire system holds the least power by far. However, as I just explained, this is changing, and democracy is beginning to enter the EU system. Slowly, admittedly, but you know, baby steps and all that.

A further problem is the disconnection between the different electorates. When the EU Parliament is voted on, we don’t vote for the EPP, or the ALDE Group or the S&D Group (I can already hear the perplexed voices wondering who these people are), we vote for our local, state-level parties who form blocs in the European parliament. So there’s one disconnect. Furthermore, we don’t vote as a single European electorate, we vote at the national level for a Federal level legislative, which cuts us off from each other and stops us integrating as an electoral body (I know integration is a dirty word these days but, there’s nothing else that fits here). We could speculate all day as to the reasons why these problems still stand and why ignorance on the matter still currently pervades the EU. In the British case, it seems the British government doesn’t even want to consider that there’s a political sphere to the EU, much less educate the British people on the subject. Another problem is that going down this road could lead to a lot of positive integration (and that’s a really dirty word). As in many cases with the EU, a lot of the people at the top don’t want to recognise that if they actually want to make the institutions work that they’ve put in place, they’re going to have to go a little further. I mean just ask yourself; why the hell are the people with the most power made up of the national governments and completely unaccountable to the European Parliament? With a little education we’d all be asking ourselves that question. Perhaps too many people in the eyes of some.

It is true that for the average man, changing the EU is difficult, seemingly impossible. But that is because the EU electorate is divided and disconnected. By strengthening the democratic institutions of the EU, we have far more to gain, than abandoning the process altogether. And to those who say that this kind of change cannot be done, well, let me tell you sir that it’s already begun.