co-operation with the [European Parliament]. It will seek areasonable way of applying subsidiarity to new legislation and existing instruments, of making Community action more transparent and ... working with [theEP] on a pertinent communication policy.
Since its inception, the European Parliament has stimulated integration and the transition to a European Union based on liberal democratic principles. Its Draft Treaty establishing the European Union remains the benchmark for a new constitution. Institutional change and the alteration in the balance of power between the Commission, the Council of Ministers, and the European Parliament are useful indicators of the transition of the European Community (EC) to a federal union whose flexible parameters remain contested. The European Parliament, as the chief advocate of democracy, efficiency, accountability, and openness in the EC, continues to play a constituent role and to seek means of redressing the EC's democratic deficit, which exists not only in the legislative sphere but also on a horizontal and vertical plane within the union. New legislative practices and the Committee of Regions alone will not close the gap.
Neo-functionalism ascribes a dynamic role to interest groups in the process of integrating pluralist communities. By participating in the policymaking process, interest groups are expected to develop a stake in promoting further integration in order to acquire economic payoffs and additional benefits from maintaining and stimulating the organization through which certain demands can be articulated and goals attained. This implies that in the integration process interest groups have an instrumental role to play in the maintenance of the system; and that by virtue of their participation in the policy-making process of an integrating community they will “learn” about the rewards of such involvement and undergo attitudinal changes inclining them favorably towards the system. Thus, they acquire an interest in seeing the system's perpetuation, and the policy and decision makers acquire an interest in being responsive to interest groups' demands. What is implied overall is that actors' loyalties will shift towards those decision makers in the systems best able to reward them.
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