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the Council by their governments, themselves democratically
accountable either to their national Parliaments, or to their
citizens” (Art. 10.1 & 2, TEU). This form of double representation
is seen by many as the main source of democratic legitimacy of the
Union. As the German Federal Constitutional Court has
highlighted, in democratic terms, the EU is derivative of the
Member States (Eriksen & Fossum, 2011: 154). This
double-representation design has citizens represented
directly
in
the European Parliament and
indirectly
by national governments
through the Council. The Treaty of Lisbon, however, fails to
address the persisting concern that dispersing democratic
accountability among the European Parliament (theme of section
III), national executives (theme of section IV), national parliaments
(theme of section V), and EU executives alters
—
often negatively
—
how representative democracy works. At first sight, the direct
(through the EP) and indirect (through the Council and national
parliaments) modes of representation may appear complementary
and mutually reinforcing, reflecting a balance between the
supranational and intergovernmental elements of the EU. The
arrangement leaves the impression that citizens are doubly served
in terms of democratic representation. That impression is
problematic. The question is “whether this complexity is not as
much a source of incoherence as of mutual reinforcement”
(Beetham & Lord, 1998: 127).
To the extent that policy-making at the European level is
dominated by executive actors, European integration has increased
executive power and decreased national parliamentary control.
Unlike typical policy-making at home, national executives enjoy
greater liberty to ignore their parliaments when decisions are made
in Brussels as domestic-executives-turned lawmakers in the Council
are not accountable to the parliament (Follesdal & Hix, 2006:
534). If poorly crafted legislation that slips through the nets of
national democratic scrutiny is corrected by the European
Parliament, then the system of double representation system can be