The European Union’s Legitimacy Of Multi-level Governance Theory

Now the European Union has shaped into an Economic and Political Interdependent community which has27states. However, the EU still has some problems besides its great achievements, the typical one of them is the legitimacy of the EU which, in some extent, is the source of other problems.The legitimacy of EU is accompanied with the launch of the European integration at the very start, it is not obvious in the1950s to the mid80s because of the permissive consensus between the elites and civilians. With the development of the European integration, the EU begin to interfere the state affairs and the people’s life widely, the problem of legitimacy has become the core issue of European Union politics. The "Prevent War and Protect Peace" is insufficiently support the stability and the development of the EU until1992. The Danish citizen rejected the Maastricht Treaty in1992, this treaty only narrowly was approved in France and evoked a great disagreement in Britain; Holland rejected the Nice Treaty preparing for the enlargement of The East in2002; France and Holland rejected the Constitution Treaty in the referendum in2005. Along with these problems appearing, it aroused the discussion of EU legitimacy among academics in recent years. To some extent, the problem of EU legitimacy stems from the policy making process which keeps away from the public in long time causes an alienation between the public and EU. The public hopes to enhance the transparency and democracy of the decision making of EU and have multiple channels to participate in it so that they can achieve their own interests. Because the EU can’t meet the requirement of the public, the problem of legitimacy is emerging gradually.In other words, lacking of empirical legitimacy is the core legitimacy problem of EU.The text will mainly discuss how the Multi-level Governance Theory increase the legitimacy of EU based on the Common Theory and the Mainstream European Integration Theory of legitimacy to solve the insufficient empirical legitimacy of EU. Compared with traditional theory, Multi-level Governance Theory emphasizes to use different ways and from different levels to increase the legitimacy of EU. It breaks the state-centered perspective and provides us with a new perspective which more comforts to the regime characteristics of EU.