| Abstract: | Abstract Even if the institutions of representative democracy that have developed in the nation‐state context cannot be simply transposed to the European Union, for practical and normative reasons they do provide the main starting point for any reflection on the EU's ‘democratic deficit’. This article draws upon the Constitution prepared by the European Convention to reconstruct the concept of representative democracy in the EU. Drawing on the proposals put forward, it identifies two distinctive challenges that need to be overcome if the concept of representative democracy is to be successfully applied to the EU: the multilevel character of the polity and the shift of the centre of political gravity from legislative to executive politics. The article then examines the extent to which the institutional proposals contained in the Constitution go to meet these two challenges and also highlights some aspects in which these proposals fall short. |
