somebloke
Although the EU may require new member states to be democracies, the fact remains that the EU itself is not a democracy. The point has been well made that if it applied to join itself it would fail.
It's a supranational body. It's a club. And as far as supranational bodies go, it is more democratic than others by having an elected Parliament, a council made up of ministers from elected national governments and head civil servants appointed by elected national governments.
(Assuming that it that the EU followed its own rules which it in fact doesn't - did you know that bailouts of individual states who got into financial trouble were supposed to be strictly verboten according to the terms of the treaties? This by the way was one of the "safeguards" that was used to reassure Euro-sceptics before the introduction of the Euro.)
The financial crisis has been a game changer for everyone. Before it happened Britain wasn't going to nationalise banks, the US wasn't going to bail out private car manufacturers, and yes - the EU wasn't going to bail out member states.
In this environment, are you seriously going to criticise just one body for performing a certain action when the circumstances warranted it?
The EU is not, was never designed to be, and cannot be, a democracy. To have a democracy you need by definition a demos, a people as in "we the people".
A demos is an electorate of a political unit. It is defined solely by who is eligible to vote.
'Demos' does not have some other sort of magical, etherial property bestowed upon it. Check your dictionary.
Monnet's vision was of supranational entity which would be run by an "enlightened" administrative elite, who would decide for the people what was best for them, and which placed itself above the nation state, which in time was supposed to wither away.
We're a long way from Monnet's vision. Just as in Britain we're a long way from the vision of an electorate being something where only men can vote.
Whenever a member state has a referendum and gives "wrong" answer, it is made to rerun it until it gets the "right" answer, which is then taken as being irrevocable.
It is never a 're-run' - that's a blatantly false statement. In each circumstance where a member nation has rejected a referendum, the terms and conditions of what was voted on have been substantially altered.
A single state without a demos is doomed to fail, as we are seeing with the unrest in Greece and Spain. Meaningful democracy in Greece, Spain and arguably the Republic of Ireland, have been suspended, with EU placemen having been parachuted in to govern them and run their economies.
Each nation's electorate voted for governments that are making cuts. And some of their citizens are exercising their democratic rights by protesting. A limited amount of civil unrest does not equate to the end of democracy.
You can't "pool" sovereignty by the way, any more than you can pool virginity. You can let go of it - let it pass to a higher level, or you can hang onto it.
Of course you can pool sovereignty. It happens all the time. In the Channel Tunnel area, we've got French officials performing border checks on Britain's behalf and on the UK side we get uniformed French police performing law and order duties. Kent Police even have a station in France!
This sharing of sovereignty by British and French police forces acts to mutual advantage, and neither force goes blubbing about any loss of sovereignty.