EU Responses to the Democratic Deficit and the Rule of Law Crisis: Is It Time for a (New) European Exceptionalism?

Abstract

The European 'messianic' project was not particularly concerned with democracy or human rights, but rather sought 'legitimacy' in the nobility of its cause. However, when failure struck during the Euro-crisis, many sources of legitimacy suddenly collapsed. Similarly, failure struck the rule of law principle, demonstrating its precariousness and weak source of legitimation. The strong waves of de-europeanisation and the rise of illiberal democracies not only bolster the existing preoccupations of problematic democratic procedures, but further bring into question the continuity of the EU as a supranational entity. Interestingly, the European Union’s answer to these issues furnishes a solution that, on the one hand, focuses on the enhancement of democracy, while focusing the safeguarding of rule of law on the other. Such an enhancement of democracy could be the result of the Conference on the Future of Europe, whereas, the rule of law crisis is meant to be addressed through financial and techno-managerial mechanisms. However, if the first mechanism aims to palliate or even mitigate the democratic deficit, the second one risks further alienating Union citizens by seeing in it another instance of European Union ‘technocracy’. The solution to be foreseen is to reconnect democracy with rule of law as they have always been the foreign implants of European integration. Filling in these empty gaps of political messianism through an outright pairing of democracy and rule of law will rejuvenate the social legitimacy of European exceptionalism.