The EU representative democracy as an instrument for channelling dissensus: Limits and Potentialities

After recalling the main features of the EU representative democracy in Europe as depicted by Article 10 TEU and their origins, and noticing that neither the word “democracy” nor the word “parliament” was quoted in the original Treaties, this contribution explores the existing mechanisms of representative democracy to determine whether they are sufficient to effectively channel the different forms of dissensus that emerge in EU policymaking. The main argument is that the two existing mechanisms of representative democracy – one based on the European parliament (EP) and the other on national parliaments, which may be involved in instruments of interparliamentary cooperation – are not always able to channel and transmit the many dissenting voices existing in the EU or give them adequate consideration in policy-making processes.