A quote from Prof. Roland Vaubel in The Wall Street Journal, 30 July 2007

The European Union’s democratic deficit is notorious. [...] On top of all this, consider last week’s launch of the so-called Intergovernmental Conference to hash out the details of a “Reform Treaty” based on the agreement leaders reached at a summit in June. It’s pretty much the same as the Constitutional Treaty that French and Dutch voters rejected two years ago. [...] The Reform Treaty is nothing but the old draft in a new guise to avoid another round of referendums. And as a result, the EU’s democratic deficit is not narrowing but widening.