Europe does not lack power. It lacks responsibility.

From national governments to supranational institutions, boardrooms to bureaucracies, decisions are made daily that affect millions. And yet, ask the average citizen who actually decided to privatise their rail service, greenlight a mega-merger, or rubber-stamp a controversial directive, and you’ll be met with a shrug. Somewhere, a meeting happened. A hand was raised. And life changed — with no one to call, no one to vote out, and no one who seems particularly bothered either way.

This is Europe’s silent crisis: power without accountability. Not tyranny, but evaporation. Not jackboots, but spreadsheets. It is a drift, not a coup — and that’s precisely why it’s so dangerous.

The illusion of control

In theory, Europe is a beacon of democratic governance. Its member states hold regular elections. Parliaments debate policy. There are checks and balances, legal recourse, and independent press. And yet, large swathes of decision-making — especially on the most consequential issues — happen in spaces where democratic scrutiny is either weak, delayed, or deliberately obfuscated.

Consider the Eurogroup: an informal gathering of eurozone finance ministers that wields enormous influence over economic policy, yet operates without minutes, voting records, or formal accountability. Or the European Commission, whose unelected officials draft legislation, negotiate trade deals, and shape the digital future of the continent — often before the public even knows what’s being proposed.

Nationally, things aren’t always better. In France, Macron’s presidency has leaned heavily on executive orders and technocratic advisory councils. In the Netherlands, major policy frameworks — from nitrogen emissions to digital surveillance — are increasingly delegated to taskforces and consultants rather than parliament. Germany’s rotating coalitions, while stable, often prioritise internal dealmaking over transparent debate. And across the continent, judicial reforms, surveillance laws, and public-private partnerships are quietly reshaping governance away from the public eye.

The net result is a strange duality: democratic theatre above, and technocratic plumbing below — the latter increasingly driving the agenda.

Accountability hollowed out

This isn’t simply about who holds office. It’s about who wields influence, who shapes outcomes, and who can be held to account when things go wrong.

Take public services. When a UK rail franchise fails or a Dutch benefits scandal erupts, blame is passed around like a hot potato: ministers point to agencies, agencies to contractors, contractors to opaque EU frameworks. It’s a postmodern accountability game, where no-one resigns because no-one technically made the decision alone.

Or take Big Tech regulation. The EU’s Digital Markets Act is a laudable attempt to rein in monopolies. But enforcement depends on under-resourced regulators, national courts, and transnational committees. Tech giants, meanwhile, fund think tanks, lobby MEPs, and shape standards in Brussels through “multi-stakeholder dialogues” that often exclude the very citizens affected by their platforms.

Even climate policy — supposedly the EU’s crown jewel — suffers from this dynamic. Emissions targets are announced with fanfare, but implementation is devolved to national authorities, private consultants, and trading mechanisms that most voters neither understand nor influence. Accountability dissolves in layers of delegation.

Why it happens

Power without accountability is not always the product of malice. Often, it’s the unintended consequence of complexity.

Modern governance involves trade-offs, risk management, and technical decisions that don’t fit neatly into yes/no ballots. To govern climate, data, or finance, you need expertise. But when expertise becomes self-justifying, when decisions are made for people but never with them, legitimacy withers.

There is also a fear of messiness. Elected officials increasingly outsource difficult choices to “independent commissions” — think pension reforms in Spain or housing policy in Sweden. This creates plausible deniability: the policy wasn’t politically imposed, it was “evidence-based.” Unfortunately, evidence doesn’t vote. Citizens do — and they notice when their role is limited to retroactive consent.

Finally, there’s the Brussels effect: a sprawling regulatory machinery that impacts 450 million lives but feels about as accessible as a medieval court. The EU is often accused of democratic deficits, but the real issue is one of proximity. The average citizen may vote in European elections, but they rarely see how that vote translates into influence. It doesn’t help that national leaders routinely blame “Europe” for decisions they helped shape behind closed doors.

The populist backlash: wrong answers to the right question

In this vacuum of accountability, populists thrive. Not because they offer viable alternatives — they rarely do — but because they name the problem: a feeling of disconnection, of being ruled by forces that cannot be named or challenged.

Whether it’s Wilders, Le Pen, AfD, or Salvini, their success rests not on sophisticated programmes, but on a simple emotional insight: people do not feel heard. They feel managed. And so they rebel — against “the system,” against elites, against anything that smacks of technocracy. Unfortunately, their cures are often worse than the disease.

Where real accountability requires transparency, responsiveness, and pluralism, populism offers only catharsis. It replaces experts with strongmen, checks with loyalty, complexity with slogans. And when the promises fail, the scapegoating begins anew.

Towards accountable power

The solution is not to dismantle institutions, but to rewire them for visibility, participation, and responsiveness.

That means ending decision-by-stealth. Draft legislation, trade deals, and policy directives must be published early, debated openly, and translated into accessible language. Citizens cannot engage with what they don’t see.

It means restoring parliamentary relevance. National assemblies should stop rubber-stamping EU directives and start shaping their input upstream. At the EU level, the European Parliament needs more than symbolic power — especially over the Commission’s agenda.

It means taming the shadow state of consultants, advisory councils, and PPPs. PPPs stands for Public-Private Partnerships — a charming euphemism for what happens when governments decide they can’t (or won’t) deliver certain public services or infrastructure projects on their own, and instead team up with private companies. These actors must be subject to the same transparency, audit, and conflict-of-interest standards as formal institutions.

And it means grounding decisions in lived experience. Citizens’ assemblies, local referenda, participatory budgeting — these aren’t gimmicks. They are the handrails of democracy. Without them, complexity becomes a smokescreen for impunity.

Conclusion: Europe at a fork in the corridor

Europe has spent decades building structures that protect against war, poverty, and environmental collapse. But in the process, it has too often removed decision-making from public view. The result is a form of enlightened drift: rule by framework, oversight by audit, and legitimacy by press release.

This isn’t dystopia. It’s drift. But drift can be just as corrosive as shock.

Power without accountability is not just undemocratic. It is unsustainable. Sooner or later, people notice. And when they do, they don’t always choose wisely. If Europe wants to avoid the false choices of populism and passivity, it must do something radical: trust its citizens. Not with platitudes, but with actual power.

Because if the people don’t feel they rule — someone else will.