There are elements of democracy in the EU's institutions: the European Parliament is elected, and the European Council is a committee of elected Prime Ministers of the Member States. However, it is widely agreed across the political spectrum in Britain that these arrangements do not function as an effective democracy, and that they are much less democratic in practice than the national democracies.
Conservative Justice Secretary Michael Gove, in his statement upon joining the Leave campaign wrote
I believe that the decisions which govern all our lives, the laws we must all obey and the taxes we must all pay should be decided by people we choose and who we can throw out if we want change. But our membership of the European Union prevents us being able to change huge swathes of law and stops us being able to choose who makes critical decisions which affect all our lives. Laws which govern citizens in this country are decided by politicians from other nations who we never elected and can’t throw out.
Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP for the South East region, devoted chapter 3 of his 2016 book Why Vote Leave to this lack of democracy. He documented the many cases where the EU has carried on regardless of referendum votes, and has acted directly contrary to clauses in its own treaties.
Without the rule of law, there is no representative government. There may be elections and referendums, but they will be swatted aside if they go the ‘wrong’ way... The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Junker, spelt out the official doctrine with brutal honesty: ‘There can be no democratic choice against the European Treaties.’ [Le Figaro, 28 January 2015]
In 2014 a poll of 12,000 people across the EU conducted by Advanced Market Research found that 91.2 per cent were unable to name any of the European political parties.
For an election to matter, there has to be a meaningful engagement between voters and government. The EU, lacking a shared sense of common national identity, cannot fabricate such an engagement... To put it another way, democracy requires a demos: a unit with which we identify when we use the word ‘we’. Take away the demos and you are left only with the kratos: the power of the state that must compel by force of law what it cannot ask in the name of civic patriotism.
If you care about democracy, buy this book Why Vote Leave and read at least chapter 3. It only costs £6.99
Paul Mason, the left of centre columnist and Economics Editor of Channel Four News, wrote in the Guardian
The leftwing case for Brexit is strategic and clear. The EU is not – and cannot become – a democracy. Instead, it provides the most hospitable ecosystem in the developed world for rentier monopoly corporations, tax-dodging elites and organised crime. It has an executive so powerful it could crush the leftwing government of Greece; a legislature so weak that it cannot effectively determine laws or control its own civil service. A judiciary that, in the Laval and Viking judgments, subordinated workers’ right to strike to an employer’s right do business freely.
The left-wing Labour politician Tony Benn said
My view of the EU has always been not that I am hostile to foreigners but I am in favour of democracy. I think they are building an empire and want us to be part of that empire, and I don't want that. When I saw how the European Union was developing, it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don't like it you can change it.
More recently Steve Hilton, a close friend of David Cameron's and his former Director of Strategy in Number 10, wrote an article in the Daily Mail advocating leaving the EU. He wrote—
my view, based on a pragmatic, non-ideological assessment of how the EU operates, is that as long as we are members, our country cannot be ‘run’. Membership of the EU makes Britain literally un-governable, in the sense that no administration elected by the people can govern the country. A democracy is based on the notion that the people – or their directly-elected representatives – are able to decide issues for themselves. And yet membership of the EU brings with it constraints on everything from employment law to family policy, all determined through distant, centralised processes we hardly understand, let alone control.
in a democracy, the compromises are clear and transparent and can be argued over and influenced by the people who are affected by them. Yet no such possibility exists in the grotesquely unaccountable EU. I don't think even the EU's most fervent supporters would ever claim that it ‘puts power in people's hands’. The whole point of the EU is to take power out of people's hands in pursuit of a greater good. The trouble is, it's not good enough.
These are issues that a reformed EU might address. I could certainly live with an imperfect EU that nevertheless showed some willingness towards dispersing, rather than centralising, power. But it is perfectly obvious to everyone, including Mr Cameron, that no such reorientation will ever be countenanced. the EU after a British vote to stay would be a very different creature from the one we have today. It would be the EU unleashed, freed from the constraints of having to placate the pesky British with their endless complaining and threats to leave. Once they know we will never leave, all our leverage will be gone.
the EU will only ever move in one direction: more centralisation, more bureaucracy, more power shifting further from people’s hands. From that clarity should come an informed decision to leave. To regain control over our country’s destiny, so that a democratically elected government in Britain is free to carry out its mandate, whether that’s Left, Right or Centre.
The moral philosopher Adam Smith wrote that “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices”. He was referring to the fact that businessmen do not like the rigour of competition in the marketplace and often seek to evade it. Politicians are in a market for votes. They likewise find this uncomfortable because it prevents them in government from doing what they would like. Thus there is always a temptation for politicians to try to escape from the contraints of democracy, and the EU provides a means of doing so.
How often have you heard the excuse from your M.P. ‘Unfortunately it's an EU directive and I can't do anything about it’? Thus is responsibility evaded.
Also, if British politicians in government want to do something, and they apprehend that it will be difficult to get the measure through parliament, they have another means of doing it. They can go to Brussels and secretly confect a new regulation or directive in the subcommittees of the European Council. (These committees are not actually secret but nobody pays any attention to them. In particular, the media does not, so you won't hear anything about them until it's too late.) In the case of a regulation, it has direct legal effect in Britain without any involvement of parliament. In the case of a directive, the politican can go back to parliament and say ‘I'm terribly sorry, of course I fought against this measure, but it's an EU directive and now you are obliged by international law to implement it’. In this way parliament is rendered impotent.
The European parliament has so far proved a very ineffective check on these tendencies. One reason for this is that MEPs are chosen by the list system: to get elected you need to be high on the list, and to do that you need to butter up your own political party, not win the acceptance of any voters. This list system is required by EU law. The result is that most MEPs are fully signed up to the EU's core mission of creating a single country called Europe.