Sir, - I refer to Vincent Browne's column, "Absence of democracy at the heart of EU" (Opinion, June 20th) and in particular to his comments on the legislative powers of the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.
While the parliamentary democracy of the European Union in respect of EU legislation is not yet complete, it is very much stronger and more extensive than your columnist suggests.
The great bulk of EU legislation (some 80 per cent) is enacted by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers acting jointly and equally under what is known as the co-decision procedure, which was established through the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties.
As regards EU legislative procedures, parliament is emphatically of the view that any movement of policy areas from unanimity to majority voting in the council must be matched pari passu by a corresponding extension of the co-decision procedure. Parliament insists that ultimately all EU legislation (other than that dealing with matters of a constitutional nature) should be enacted by qualified majority vote in council (to avoid deadlock) and by a parallel majority vote in parliament (to ensure democratic legitimacy).
In fairness it must be said that Mr Browne himself makes the point that the way to democratic accountability in the European Union is "to do away with the inter-governmentalism of the EU, which circumvents accountability, and instead to concentrate power in democratically elected institutions such as the European Parliament". - Yours, etc.,
Jim O'Brien, Head of Office, European Parliament Office, Dublin 2.