SOS Europe: Outsourcing Democracy
From the desk of Alexandra Colen on Tue, 2008-11-18 14:27
Are we still living in a democracy? As an elected politician I am probably expected to say that we are. But are we?

Two years ago, in January 2007, Roman Herzog, the former President of the Federal Republic of Germany, caused quite a stir when in an op-ed article (Welt Am Sonntag, 14 January 2007) he wrote that democracy in his country is virtually non-existent since the European Union (EU) has stealthily eaten away all the national parliament’s powers.

Mr. Herzog referred to a report of the German Ministry of Justice which pointed out that between 1999 and 2004, 84% of the legal acts in Germany stemmed from unelected EU institutions in Brussels, with only 16% coming from the German Parliament in Berlin.

Like Germany, Belgium is a EU member. In our parliament, we, too, are called upon almost every week to vote the incorporation into Belgian legislation of so-called “directivesâ€