This paper focuses on the following five problems regarding the governance of the European Union: Firstly, the continual revisions of the EU's founding Treaties and their impact on the political structure of the European governance, hence being the cause of Dutch European law professor, Matijsen's “continual” frustration; secondly, the traps in the arguments of the so-called “sharing of sovereignty”; thirdly, the supremacy of the High Authority in the ECSC; fourthly, the prevailing trend of the European Parlimament over the European Commission; and lastly, the future structure of the European Governance-presidential system or parliamentary system?
Ironically enough, the “democratic deficit” has intensified in accordance with the success of European integration. This affects the long established relationship between the European Commission and the European Parliament. My analysis of the present European integration is that by the continual revisions of the EU's founding Treaties, European integration is now requesting massive surrender of the sovereign rights from their member states, in spite of the remarks by the political leaders and researchers proclaiming “sharing of sovereignty.” The European Union is leaning toward a federal entity in essence, far beyond the Japanese translated phrase of “Oushu Rengo” which has been used to indicate the EU by the Commission delegation to Tokyo, meaning “a mere association or at most confederation”. However, that translated phrase had been asked to suspend its use and to use “Oushu Domei” through the official written question (E-0138/96) by Glyn Ford (PSE), who was in charge of the relationship with Japan in 1996 by the reasons of its inadequacy and faults.
In my conclusion, the original elitism in the way of promoting European integration shown in the Monnet Method has substantially shifted towards a much more parliamentary controlled style. The question on the future European governance will solely depend on how the European people see the way of reducing the “democratic deficit”. There seems to be two alternatives. One is by the shift towards much more parliamentary controlled administration. The other is with a more independent European Commisson which is directly or indirectly elected by the European citizens as was shown in the Benelux Memorandum.
As indicated by the present scandals of the Commission and the resignation of the Santer's Commission in March 1999, the recent trends between the European Parliament and the Commission in European governance seemingly show us that a parliamentary oriented system at the sacrifice of the roles of the European Commission could prevail in the coming future.

抄録全体を表示