A vast topic like this certainly needs to be delineated right at the outset mainly in terms of the task pursued. Indeed, democracy is a concept with a long history and today it shapes itself at many different levels. Unavoidably it must be approached through its essence, the forceful idea which keeps it alive and makes it still today a polemic concept. Its fundamental imprecision needs to be handled cautiously in view also of the difficulties arising from the peculiarities of the context of what is known to be European governance; a stand which makes problematic the very use of the word democracy. All the more so, since in such a complex structure as the European Union, the traditional field of democracy, the national state, survives legally and politically; a historic mark which may encourage for good reasons to maintain the term at some of the different levels depending on the context in which it is meant to function.
The uncontrolled use of the notion of democracy has not been, to our knowledge, challenged thorough a research going beyond its mere operability in the novel context of the European governance, the idea of democracy being an absolute value, a kind of taboo. This is probably why this multivalent concept is gradually overshadowed by terms betraying embarrassment while introducing relativity. Indeed, terms like «democratic values» or «democratic life» (art. 2 and 9 seq. EU(L), art. I-45 seq. CT, respectively) are in standard use already in the founding treaties. In any case, an attempt to employ the concept of democracy with the view to investigate its impact on issues like liberty, security or equality, presupposes defying questions difficult to master: What of democracy at all in the European governance, and for this reason, what of the core of this broad concept?
This paper is geared by the need to measure the ambit of democracy in market societies as unified under the novel system of European governance (Set and Grown elements in European institutions; a previous paper of the university of Athens CHALLENGE team); it serves the purpose of elucidating preliminaries working at the foundations of such governance and values allowing action at an institutional level with an awareness sufficient to safeguard essential aspects of «democracy» which, though not termed as such, are at work at the European level while leaving other aspects of democracy in operation explicitly designated as such and in varying forms within the member States of the Union; both faces of democracy getting into a deep convergence under a well thought out division of functions.
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- Democratic Governance in a Market Society: Socializing Security in the European Union
