Conference Paper

From double to triple legitimacy for the European Union

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Abstract

The paper traces the theories developed concerning the democratic legitimacy of the Union and acknowledges the progress made with the adoption of the theory of double legitimacy, according to which the EU is not merely an international organisation, based only on the will of the ‘high contracting parties’, the states, but a ‘Sympolity’ (Tsatsos) of states and peoples. At the same time, it discards the arguments for assessing the legitimacy of the EU as a regulatory regime whose legitimacy should be assessed exclusively in terms of regulatory results. It purports, however, that the double democratic legitimacy is no longer enough for the present state of Union affairs. At the same time it also challenges the view that the only ‘pure’ democratic legitimacy would be the one flowing from a single ‘European demos’, which would transform the Union into a state. It rather proposes that the suitable ‘democratic’ legitimacy in the present historical and political phase is a triple one, based on states, peoples and citizens alike. Full text: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2349183

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