EU Democracy: What an Endorsement!

One of the surprises of last month’s European Parliament elections was the success of the EU-critical list of the Austrian journalist Hans-Peter Martin. Martin’s “Dr. Martin List” won some 18% of the Austrian vote.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recently ran a review of Martin’s book “The European Trap: The End of Democracy and Prosperity” [Die Europafalle: Das Ende von Demokratie und Wohlstand]. Reviewer Frank Decker accuses Martin of populism and employs a curious argument to support the charge:

It is certainly true that the elite-based structure of the EU may be one of the principal causes for the EU’s vexatious democracy deficit. But it also provides the explanation for the epoch-making progress in the process of [European] integration, which would never have been possible in a fully democratized system of decision-making.