The Case of Lisbon Treaty; An Elitist Analysis of the State of Democracy in the EU

Abstract

The gap separating elite and popular opinion on the path and finality of the European Union was never as visible as it became
after the negative referendums on the Constitutional Treaty followed by the introduction of Lisbon Treaty. This paper tries to
analyse this issue in the light of an elitist theory and it is organized as follows: In the first section the problem will be
characterized by means of some theoretical considerations. The following section discusses the key facts from the birth of the
Constitution to the birth of the Lisbon Treaty. It is followed by some facts that show that the Lisbon Treaty maintains almost the
same content as the rejected Constitution, concluding with some final observations. In more specific terms, this essay will
focus on the introduction of Lisbon Treaty after the failure of the European Constitution in the referenda during 2005. The
relevant dynamic is not the formulation of a Treaty per se but the important dynamic that will be discussed relates to the
particularities that associate this specific Treaty. The analysis of the introduction of Lisbon Treaty will be under the light of an
elitist conception of democracy which constitutes the theoretical framework of the paper. The direct link between the theoretical
basis and the Lisbon Treaty as a case study is the process of transition -from the failure of the European Constitution derived
by a referenda -to a new “imposed” Treaty that substantially maintains the same content.
According to this approach, democracy in the EU can be seen mainly as a means to change the governing elites and not as
the rule of the “people”. In relation to this, Lisbon Treaty is just a subsequent elitist project sharpening further the gap between
“people” and the ruling elites.