From Regulatory State to a Democratic Default

Abstract For more than half a century E uro elites succeeded in presenting integration as a positive‐sum game, with economic benefits more than compensating for the limitations of supranational democracy. Since the beginning of the euro crisis, however, even the most inattentive citizen of the EU realizes that integration entails serious normative costs as well as some economic benefits. As the crisis intensifies, all proposed ad hoc solutions tend to aggravate the democratic deficit of the U nion. It is not only the citizens that are being excluded from the debate about the future of the eurozone; most national governments are forced to accept solutions proposed by a few leaders representing the major stockholders of the E uropean Central Bank. Thus, the risk of a total normative loss – a default rather than a simple deficit of democracy at the European level – is now quite concrete.