Assembly Required:Institutionalising Representation in the European Communities

The European Union is often said to be run by an unelected elite of technocrats,and to therefore be undemocratic. This criticism is as old as the 1950 SchumanDeclaration, which is why the European Communities came with representativeinstitutions: the European Parliament for representing citizens and theEconomic and Social Committee for representing organised interests. Thisbook follows the European representatives, the members of these institutions,in their attempts to become a democratising counterforce in the EuropeanCommunities during the 1950s and 1960s. It shows that they came out asadvocates of democratic reform from day one, which culminated in the directelection of the European Parliament in 1979. Furthermore, it shows that evenbefore the first European elections, they succeeded in extending their roles farbeyond the limited powers that the European Treaties prescribed for them.The European representatives pioneered democracy at a European scale. Thebig question was what it should look like in practice and what their role was inmaking it happen. Was democracy by definition a grassroots phenomenon orcould supranational institutions bring it to life? Were the citizens and intereststhey represented national or had these citizens and interests, by virtue of theEuropean Communities, become European? In a project that revolved aroundunification, the European representatives thus faced a real dilemma betweenfostering European unity and expressing the diversity that characterised theEuropean political landscape