HANSARD SOCIETY Europe, Democracy and the Economic Crisis: Is It Time to Reconstitute the ‘Assises’?

The proposals for future economic governance of the European Union in response to the current economic crisis raise, once again, important questions about a ‘democratic deficit ’ at the heart of the EU. This article explores how this affects national parliaments and suggests that perhaps the time is ripe for them to pro-actively assert their collective influence by reconstituting the ‘assises ’ (or Confer-ence of the Parliaments) to debate the future direction of democratic accountability in the EU. For over half a century the European project delivered both continental peace and an unmatched period of prosperity and rising living standards. As long as relative socio-economic stability seemed secure, concerns about a ‘democratic deficit ’ at the heart of Europe largely went unheeded. However, the solutions thus far adopted to address the current economic crisis engulfing the continent have once again thrown questions about democratic accountability into sharp relief. There have been many different interpretations of the concept of a ‘democratic deficit ’ (see, for example, Follesdal and Hix, 2006) but in general terms it may b