Abstract
The problems of the democratic deficit of the EU must be considered in the perspective of the idea of sovereignty and its relation to democratic legitimacy. Legitimate government should represent the will of the people; there are European citizens and nations, but there seems not to exist a European people. Popular sovereignty and democratic representation can have different meanings: a person, an institution, or even a thing can represent something as the embodiment of it, or a person can represent other persons by being their delegate. The first form of representation is immediately connected with legitimacy, while delegation is more a question of organising citizen participation. The two different kinds of representation are connected with two different tasks of the EU Parliament. This results in the suggestion to opt for a double chamber system.
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Notes
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More has been said about these conceptions of sovereignty and representation in: Erp (2000).
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van Erp, H. (2013). Political Legitimacy of the EU in the Perspective of Citizen Participation and Representation. In: Merle, JC. (eds) Spheres of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5998-5_9
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