Discussion about Europe: the Democratic Deficit, the new power of the European Parliament and the EU Funding Opportunities in Education 2014-2020

After the rejection of the Reform Treaty in the Irish Referendum and the current debate on the future of Europe, we analysed the concept of the democratic deficit in the European institutions, something that it is still part of the current discussion among the citizens, in particular because the new elections of the European Parliament. We will also underline the main points of the EU Programmes for the 2014-2020 concerning Education and Youth. We wanted to analyse how the perception of a lack of democracy in particular could involve the citizens and in which way the EU institutions have been able to answer this request. Since the time of the "permissive concensus" citizens have started to believe in the necessity to be more involved in the European issues: the 1979 right to vote the European Parliament elections has not been considered enough if the members of the institution that citizens are going to elect, do not have real decision making powers. To understand the development of the phenomenon we needed to present an overview of the modification of the Treaties and what they introduced in comparison with the Rome Treaties. We have also tried to present some personal interpretations of the Qualify Majority Voting and the use of the veto power in the Council, as well as the important attempts of the Lisbon Treaty. This study wants to demonstrate what the possible ways to solve the problems could be, through documents, articles and comments. The end of our research demonstrates that even though they have been many attemps, a democratic deficit gap is still present. The EU Parliament gained the right power because it is the only one institutions elected directly by the citizens. If we consider the electoral polls around Europe and the growth of the parties against Europe, this means that there is sill something to modify in the European institutional system. For example reforming the EU Parliament's electoral system can help its composition not to be just the result of different local elections. It is also important to underline that until some actors, in this case the national and the European Institutions, renounce the fight for the attribuition of power of competences, it is not possible to speak about a solution of the democratic deficit. What we can do now is to underline and study the good positive actions coming from Europe: for each subject related to the EU competences, the European Union offeres programmes for seven years to increase the participation of citizens in their growth. An example is the Education, Youth and Sport Programme with 14.7 billion Euro offers students, teachers and researchers the possibility to pursue their studies in a foreign country or increasing the Vocational Training Experiences.