Every five years, European citizens vote for the only directly-elected EU institution. And every five years, those elections are fought almost entirely as midterm national contests—determined not on the merits of competing pan-European agendas so much as by national party rivalries, driven by domestic cleavages. European Parliament elections are a symptom of what the EU is yet to fully become: a vibrant, bottom-up liberal democracy.

While politics within the Union’s own Member States are replete with vehement public debate, the EU lacks the key criteria of democratic legitimacy that goes beyond merely having elections. Deliberation, civic engagement, and active public scrutiny of governance before and after elections is the cornerstone of what truly makes a government “by the people”. Rather than debating the merits of the EU’s recently proposed ‘Biotech Act’ or reform to its GDPR rules, most ordinary Europeans’ political engagement with the EU end with identifying oneself as Europhilic or Eurosceptic. But rarely is Germany’s legitimacy as a country debated between pro- and anti-German Saxons prior to heading to federal elections—they are too occupied with contemplating debt policy or candidates’ records. For the EU, however, its existence is far too often the main issue on the ballot.

Since its founding, gradual amendments to the EU’s treaties have managed to recreate a legal framework near-identical to a liberal democratic country. Citizenship, elections, an independent judiciary, a parliament, an executive branch, a constitutional (treaty-based) framework, separation of powers… the EU checks every box. Even so, the EU is in dire need of a sober reality check: it fails to meet the standard of a liberal democracy. To the detriment of Europe, the Union lacks what it most needs—a shared sense of European peoplehood.

The Missing European Public Sphere

One people, one power—the basic recipe for democracy, rooted in the Greek notion of a dēmos: a unified people willingly governing a kratos, a ruling power. Without the former, a democratic system is deprived of the very people meant to hold it accountable; a nation-state without a nation; an EU without a willing European people to actively govern it collectively. Judicial supervision and expert-driven policymaking can only go so far if citizens do not debate shared priorities or hold political leaders accountable to their interests.

It is precisely this shared space for deliberation, debate, civic scrutiny, and the formation of public opinion—a transnational pan-European public sphere—that the EU lacks when contrasted with its Member States. The level of mainstreamed parliamentary debates, media coverage, and civic activism is simply incomparable. As a result, it is too often corporate and organised interests, experts detached from concerns of ordinary Europeans, and individual preferences of state leaders at the European Council that drive policy outcomes in Brussels. In turn, polarisation between superficial narratives of ‘elite globalists’ and ‘illiberal populists’ become increasingly a reality.

That the EU lacks a shared sense of peoplehood, however, is not surprising. Founded as a common market for coal and steal, the sovereignty of Member States had always been upheld as the foremost authority driving the European project. With ever more fragmented media, linguistic barriers, and differing national heritages, a shared European identity was left on the back-burner with every successive enlargement. EU membership became increasingly about economic benefit where sovereignty-sensitive policy areas like foreign policy, education, and culture remained exclusively a national competence.

Liberal Democracy Cannot Be Engineered

As Euroscepticism expands alongside the rise of illiberal populism, Brussels’ instinct has been to treat it as an institutional failure. In response, the EU strengthens its executive capacity, further conditioning its funding, bringing rogue Member States to court, and sidelining illiberal leaders. And while these measures should be welcomed to maintain the Union’s integrity, they are paracetamol for a democratic illness needing a healthier immune system. Institutional safeguards help protect democracy; they cannot produce it. It is the citizenry—unconditionally united by a shared set of baseline liberal values—that must organically become the most important safeguard against movements that threaten the system’s democratic cohesion. A shared sense of economic benefit from EU development funds or the Single Market can never replace the democratic legitimacy of a people unreservedly ready to protect the Union’s unity and founding principles.

Absent a vibrant space of public debate and active interest in EU-level governance, the EU’s efforts to strengthen its litigation practices and institutional checks-and-balances risks becoming almost counterintuitive. They become democratic safeguards without genuine democratic ownership.

The EU Needs More Politicisation, Not Less

What does it mean to be anti-Austrian, Franco-philic, pro-Dane, or Italo-sceptic? The question is meaningless. Austrians are too occupied finding policy-solutions to the cost of living just as Danes are too busy debating how much to increase defence spending. But for the EU—equally a place for debating policies—being pro-European or Eurosceptic is too often the primary political divide. What does it mean to be pro- or anti-EU when it comes to deciding how the European Commission should best regulate AI? The question should equally be meaningless.

Politicising EU policy-making is not the erosion of European integration; it is the precondition of democratic legitimacy. Citizens should not just be offered policy outcomes—as is often the case with technocratically-drafted legislation from the European Commission. Citizens should be at the forefront of policy-making—fiercely debating agenda priorities and shaping the EU’s political direction. Of course, a strong and independent judiciary must be there to protect minority interests and civil servants are essential to channel vague ideas into actionable legislation, but it is public debate that should ultimately guide those priorities rather than merely rubber-stamping policy outcomes.

A sense of European peoplehood with a shared political fate will not be engineered with more institutions; it will emerge when Europeans are given something real to disagree about.