Democracy and European Union: beyond the dichotomy

The European Union (EU) is facing a democratic deficit, but the debate on how to address it has been caught in a dichotomy that pitches EU democracy as either national or supranational. Considering EU democracy through the nation-state lens, whereby the EU either becomes a nation-state itself or borrows democratic legitimacy from its Member States, obscures the many dilemmas and trade-offs involved in the institutional design and practice of EU democracy. Moving beyond this national-supranational dichotomy thus requires coming to grips with a variety of diverging democratic criteria the EU is facing when pursuing democratisation. The books reviewed in this article have done exactly that. While the books under review approach the challenges of EU democracy from a variety of angles, this review touches upon three major points of discussion: legitimacy, representation and citizenship. It concludes that EU democracy should not be considered as an end-point to be reached, but as a continuous interaction between various and conflicting ideas about the nature of the EU and of democracy. Particularly with a view on the upcoming 2024 European elections, is it thus vital to foster open and public debate on the tensions and dilemmas inherent in (EU) democracy.