EUROPEAN UNION IN “SEARCHˮ FOR LEGITIMACY

Zoran Čupić

Abstract

The European Union is an unprecedented project in the European space and certainly in international relations. One of the main problems in her study was, and still is, determining her true nature. For the needs of our work, the definition of the European Union as a functional political system was accepted, but not the state. The subject of this paper is the assessment of the democratic quality of the Union, especially from the point of view of its democratic legitimacy. The first part of the paper presents different understandings of the nature of the European Union. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the problem of the “democratic deficit” and different theoretical understandings of that problem. The concluding part of the paper talks about some proposals for solving this problem, noting that in the current situation with the existing contractual architecture of the European Union, this problem is far from being solved.

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