This text aims to capture the dominant character of the relationship between democracy and European integration, offering an account of alternative approaches to the origins, nature and development of the "democratic deficit" of the European Union. Its central thesis is that such a "deficit" stems as much from the inadequacy of existing institutional arrangements to meet the requirements of democratic shared-rule, as it does from the absence of a transnational demos, capable of directing its democratic claims to, and via, the central institutions. The author maintains that the more the Union approximates to a politically organized "union of peoples," the greater the possibilities of developing democracy within its structures.