‘The EU can only thrive if its democracy thrives’, Ursula von der Leyen confidently claimed in her acceptance speech of the Charlemagne Prize in May 2025. Yet, the Commission President presents the EU in its digital and printed publications as an ordinary union of states. Her contradictory attitude symbolises the EU’s wavering over its identity. As this ambiguity plays into the hands of populists and autocrats, the EU should publicly and consistently profess its commitment to its democracies.

The nature of the beast-conundrum

For decades, the EU and democracy have been portrayed by scholars as irreconcilable concepts. Old-fashioned federalists hold that the emerging polity can only become democratic after it has been transformed into a single European state. Sovereignists are equally adamant that democracy can only flourish at the national level. Their views are underpinned by academics arguing that the prevailing paradigm in international relations precludes organisations of states from functioning democratically.

The two competing ideologies saw their analyses corroborated by the so-called ‘democratic deficit’ which came to epitomise the emerging polity in the early eighties. For the sovereignists of the time, the democratic deficit implied that it was impossible for the EU ever to be democratic. From their side, the federalists claimed that the democratic deficit proved that it was only possible for the EU to become genuinely democratic if the founding states merged into a single European state. In the meantime, neither of the rivalling schools of thought were able to identify the EU as it was. In consequence, politicians started to float far-fetched suggestions. Jacques Delors coined the term UPO (Unidentified Political Object), while one of his successors preferred to describe the polity as an ‘non-imperial empire’. Legal experts and political theorists agreed that the nature of the EU had become a conundrum and that it was most unlikely for the identity of the Union ever to be established.

Pooling sovereignty

Both ideologies reached their conclusions about the nature of the Union on the basis of established theories rather than on a sound analysis of developments ‘on the ground’. They notably failed to account for ‘the determination to lay the foundations for an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’, which the founding states expressed in the preamble to the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Taking into account that the member states reiterated their determination in every treaty afterwards, researchers should have been looking for tokens of the drive towards ever closer union.

The most obvious deviation from the traditional pattern of international relations consisted of the practice of pooling sovereignty. The founding states of the 1951 ECSC shared the exercise of sovereignty in the fields of coal and steel in order to prevent the renewed outbreak of war between them. Having experienced that they could share sovereignty without loosing statehood, they agreed to broaden their experiment to the entire economy. While the aim of the Treaty of Rome was to create an internal market, the Court of Justice found in 1963 that the member states had in fact created an autonomous legal order. The next step was to present themselves in the 1973 Declaration on European Identity as a Union of democratic states. Although they emphasized in the declaration that their Union should become democratic too, critics coined the term ‘democratic deficit’ as a rallying cry for political action.

The drive towards ever closer union

In subsequent years, traditional theorists studying the EU through the lens of the old template continued to quarrel over the question whether specific decisions of the Council were leading to the creation of a European state or to the strengthening of the confederal concept The paradigm change triggered by the drive towards ever closer union, however, remained unnoticed. In fact, the member states substituted a Spinoza-inspired striving towards a bonum commune for the Hobbesian principle that states relate to each other like wolves. Defying old dogma’s, they started to argue that if two or more democratic states agree to share the exercise of sovereignty in ever wider fields with the view to attain common goals, their organisation has to be democratic too. They may not have realised that it would take them almost half a century to realise their goal, but the 2007 Lisbon Treaty seals the EU’s evolution from a union of democratic states to a union of democratic which also constitutes a democracy of its own.

The EU’s model of constitutional democracy

Von der Leyen’s acceptance speech at the Charlemagne ceremony indicates that ‘Brussels’ is beginning to realise that the drive towards ever closer union is resulting in the emergence of the EU as a democratic union of democratic states. This impression is confirmed by the open and candid way in which the Advocate General of the EU Court of Justice talks in her recent Opinion on the Hungarian lgbtq-laws about ‘the EU’s model of constitutional democracy’. The EU should therefore move beyond its traditional ambiguity about the end goal or finalité politique of the Union and profess its commitment to its democracies in unequivocal terms. President Von der Leyen can do so by expressing adherence to the EU27-definition which describes the EU with one word per member states as follows: The European Union is neither a state nor an ordinary international organisation but forms a union of democratic states which also constitutes a democracy of its own.

Prospects for ‘Rejoin’

This new approach throws fresh light on the ongoing debate about Brexit and the possibility for the UK to rejoin the EU. One of the main assets of the Leave-campaign consisted of their ability to depict the EU in the most abhorrent terms as a central European State, as a modern Leviathan or even as the ‘reincarnation of the Fourth Reich’. Most unfortunately, the advocates of Remain were not able to refute these claims as many of them still believed in the federal vocation of the Union. The notion that the Lisbon Treaty constructs the EU as a union of democratic states which also constitutes a democracy of its own, had not yet been acknowledged, let alone accepted. As there is plenty evidence to suggest that the United Kingdom and the European Union share lots of common interests, proponents of Rejoin should explore the opportunities which the democratisation of the EU offers. They should realise and propagate that the EU does not replace national democracy with a European model of governance but that European democracy strengthens the national democracies of the member states. There may be many more prejudices to be dispelled but the main and decisive argument for combatting ‘Leave’ is that the EU is not a European state and that the drive towards ever closer union has reached its destination in the construction of the EU as a union of democratic states which also constitutes a democracy of its own or, in short, in the construction of the EU as a constitutional democracy.