The European Union Legitimacy

  • Abstract:
    The European Union is an organisation considered by all as a sui-generis, or supranational one. From its establishment till now it faced different challenges. One of them is the legitimacy issue which started to be a strong challenger immediately after the Maastricht treaty. At the same time, the debate about it become huge where different scholars explained their thoughts on what changes should be done to the EU in order to make it more legitimate. Consequently, my goal in this paper is to approach the debate on the EU legitimacy, to examine the ideas of some of the well-known scholars whose contribution in this topic is very much appreciated. Also, a great role in this direction plays the new Lisbon treaty which included some changes and a citizen’s initiatives which are considered as a great step forward the legitimacy of the EU. The paper is closed up with a short summary of the Lisbon treaty changes that affect directly the debate on the EU legitimacy.