EU and Legitimacy - The Challenge of Compatibility: A Danish Case Study

Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy

Danish Institute of International Affairs

Abstract

Since the difficulties of ratifying the Maastricht Treaty legitimacy has topped the EU’s agenda. Departing from the dominating trend in the literature that the EU’s legitimacy problems are largely due to the EU’s inability to develop a common identity, which can compete or even replace national identities, this article shifts the focus to compatibility. The core legitimacy test is whether the EU and its member states – as a multidimensional governance system, in which nation states persist alongside supranational institutions – can develop identities, which are compatible. Based on this approach the article analyses the ratification debate on the Treaty of Amsterdam in one Member State, namely Denmark. Its core conclusion is that it is indeed important to abandon the traditional conceptualisation of EU legitimacy. As the Danish case shows legitimacy can be enhanced if member states are able to (re)construe the EU as being compatible with national identity.

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