Abstract
The reason why I chose the issue of transparency is that I have a personal stake in the matter. Now someone has said that the European Union is really a conspiracy of the initiators. At the time the European Community (or “Community”) was created, we had a totally different political culture, both in the Member States, but certainly in the international field. The European Community concentrated on highly technical matters--economic matters, trade matters, matters that were relevant to the farmers, and the public at large was really not very interested. In general, the concept of democracy was a somewhat different one, so it is understandable that the focus at the time was on the executive and not on the legislative powers. We are now, thirty-five years later, talking about the democratic dimension, about the lack of legitimacy, and national parliaments' attempt to claim back power. They are not trying to claim back power from the European Parliament; they are claiming back something that they lost forty years ago, from their governments. They have woken up to the fact that they cannot recuperate it, just as you cannot undo an omelette once you have broken the eggs. That is the reason why a High Council of national parliamentarians would, in my view, be a bad thing; it would be a very retrograde action.
Recommended Citation
Laurens Jan Brinkhorst,
Transparency in the European Union,
22 Fordham Int'l L.J. S128
(1998).
Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj/vol22/iss6/9