Delors’ Myth: The Scope and Impact of the Europeanization of Law Production

Since the beginning of the 1990s numerous theoretical and normative debates on European integration and the “democratic” distribution of power among the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, and the European Parliament have entertained scholars, politicians, and opinion leaders alike. The “democracy deficit” concept stems from the hypothesis that EU legislative activities have strengthened the power of governmental actors from the Council of Ministers at the expense of parliaments. While Moravcsik (2004, 2008) argues that these governmental agents are democratically elected agents of their national constituencies, the concerns about a democratic deficit have been reinforced by the progressive extension of qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers since the end of the 1980s: theoretically, the possible exclusion of some governmental agents and the lack of transparency of Council deliberations made their effective control by their domestic parliamentary principals extremely difficult, as members of parliament even lack reliable information on the voting behavior of their governmental agents in the Council (Scharpf 1993; Hix 1999, 2005, Majone 1998; Moravcsik 1994, 2002; Lord 2004; Bartoloni 2005; Follesdal and Hix 2006; Siedentop 2001; Jachtenfuchs 2001; Rittberger and Schimmelfennig 2005; Follesdal and Hix 2006; Olsen 2007; Magnette and Papadopoulos 2008; König 2008).