Atlas / Claim checks / Is the EU undemocratic
Is the EU undemocratic? The claim, measured
“The European Union is fundamentally undemocratic.”
Measured against Technocratic Centrism and Social Liberalism
Distance is measured across six independent axes, each running from −10 to +10, out of a maximum separation of 49.0. How the scoring works →
Strongest case for the claim
Monetary policy for twenty countries is set by a body no electorate can remove. The Commission proposes legislation and is not directly elected. Fiscal rules and treaty commitments remove whole policy areas from ordinary majority revision. Referendum results have been reversed or ignored.
Strongest case against
The Parliament is directly elected and co-legislates on almost everything. The Council is composed of elected national governments. Every treaty required unanimous ratification by national democratic procedures. Member states can and do leave.
What the coordinates show. Technocratic centrism scores +03 on authority and +08 on scale of decision. Those are different findings. A high scale score means decisions are taken far from the citizen; a high authority score would mean nobody can check them. The atlas separates delegation from concentration deliberately, and most of the EU argument turns out to be about the first while being conducted in the language of the second.
The six measurements
| Axis | Technocratic Centrism | Rawlsian liberalism | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | +05 | +01 | 4 |
| CU · Social and cultural order | −02 | −06 | 4 |
| AU · Organisation of power | +01 | −06 | 7 |
| SC · Scale of decision | +08 | +02 | 6 |
| ID · Rule of membership | −04 | −07 | 3 |
| CH · Method and tempo | −08 | −07 | 1 |
Both cases are stated because the atlas does not settle arguments by assertion. Where the underlying dispute is conceptual rather than factual, that is said plainly rather than resolved.
Full comparisonCheck it yourself
The interactive atlas holds 319 organisations on six independent axes with the evidence for every score. Paste any claim that equates two political things and it will find them and report the measurement.