The EU and its Citizens

Abstract

Under changes made by Maastricht, the goal of European integration is to create ‘an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen’. Even the most ardent supporters of integration will admit, however, that it has been less a popular movement for change than a process begun and sustained by elites. The average European is given few opportunities to influence the work of the EU institutions, a problem that has become so serious as to earn its own label: the democratic deficit.

One reason for the Commission’s congenital inability to make itself understood is that it is staffed by officials whose careers depend on communicating not with voters but with other officials. So desiccated jargon drives out plain language, even before it passes through the translation mill, which grinds everything into a sort of bureaucratic Esperanto. p]The Economist, 28 July 2001