A Federal Future for the European Union?

The European Union is not fit for the challenges of the twenty-first century. The many crises of the last decades have shown that European policies need more democratic legitimacy and more effectiveness. In this article it is argued that the gap between the growing political power of the EU and its low democratic legitimacy can be explained by the mechanisms of European governance. These mechanisms favour executive and judicial power to the detriment of parliamentary and societal power. Low democratic legitimacy, in turn, has a negative impact on the effectiveness of European policies. The argument will be developed in three steps. First, the mechanisms of European politics and their consequences for European democracy are described. Secondly, the normative criteria for reforms are developed. And thirdly, a concrete roadmap how to reach a more democratic and more effective EU by combining the Conference on the Future of Europe with a new Convention is outlined. The goal should be a EU that is not a federal state, but a supranational organisation with strong federal structures anchored in its Member States, shaped by the effective participation of citizens and able to transform cultural, economic and political differences into an overall unit.