This Sunday, May 25, Spaniards will elect their 54 representatives to the European Parliament, who will be counted among the 751 members of the institution. These elections to be held in all member states of the European Union (EU) offer a good opportunity to reflect on the 'state of the Union' and the challenges it must face if it is to fulfill its promise to create an alliance that is not limited to a common market, but aspires to be a genuinely political union that promotes and honors the principles of freedom staff and association, democracy, the rule of law and subsidiarity.

To become a genuine political union in which the principles of self-government prevail, the EU needs to develop a form of European citizenship and governance that (1) gives the European people the possibility to express their political will and play a meaningful role in determining their collective future; and (2) provides Europeans with reasons to feel personally involved in the future of the Union and to value their role as EU citizens. Otherwise, instead of being a force for social progress and solidarity, it will be reduced to an ademocratic and unrepresentative bureaucracy governing unfree subjects.

So far, the European Union has failed to endow its residents with effective and meaningful citizenship. It has failed miserably to achieve the embodiment of the ideal of representative democracy (genuine representation and accountability to citizens) in its political institutions, which continue to be governed mainly by government-appointed representatives and unelected commissioners who can hardly be said to be accountable in any sense to ordinary citizens. The European Parliament, the only EU institution elected by the people, only has powers for approve and improving laws proposed by the European Commission, not for legislative initiative. Therefore, it does not have the same effectiveness as a national parliament. Moreover, delegates from any member state have a very limited impact on such an assembly, especially when they represent the interests of their own countries and compatriots. For example, if the 54 representatives from Spain were to go to agreement to unite their positions, their voice would hardly be heard in a Parliament with 751 members.

This goal democratic deficit of the European institutions is also confirmed in the perceptions of ordinary Europeans, many of whom do not trust European political leaders and do not value their European citizenship as a way to make themselves heard. Between 1979 and 2009, average voter turnout in the EU fell from a respectable 62% to a disappointing 42%. Turnout in European elections, with a few exceptions, is light years behind turnout in national elections. For example, 75% of Spaniards went to the polls in the 2008 national elections, compared to 45% in the 2009 European elections.

The level of citizens' trust towards the European Union has fallen from 50% in 2004 to 31% in 2013, from agreement with the Eurobarometer published in spring 2013. According to the same survey, 28% of Europeans believe that their opinion counts in the EU, compared to 67% who think the opposite. Finally, only four out of ten citizens then stated that their image of the EU was "positive", while the perception of three out of ten was "neutral" and that of three out of ten, "negative".

All these trends toward apathy and detachment are of real concern because a political regime without a critical mass of active and informed citizens cannot honestly claim to speak on behalf of its people. A population deeply alienated from politics breeds dissidents on the fringes of the political system or passive subjects who obey the rules to avoid jail. An unrepresentative political system is often perceived as illegitimate and can provide an ideological basis for extra-political - and even revolutionary - forms of resistance, as the experiences of Palestine, the Basque Country and Northern Ireland show. I am not justifying armed resistance by non-democratic regimes. What I intend to point out is that the current levels of disaffection of citizens for the EU not only bode ill for the internship of self-government, but could even seriously threaten social stability and public order. 

How can the EU tackle the problem of apathy towards politics and the democratic deficit that plagues its institutions? There are a few strategies it might consider: first, promote comprehensive Education campaigns to inform and motivate Europeans about the value of European citizenship and civic engagement. But those that have been done so far have not stemmed the tide of disaffection with politics. Second, deep and lasting reforms of political institutions could be undertaken to give citizens a greater say in Europe's political future. However, with the sheer size and cultural and linguistic diversity of Europe's population, giving citizens a say in its decision-making processes seems unrealistic.

Finally, the EU could give up its ambition to become a full-fledged political union and devolve into something more akin to an economic treaty than a political entity, delegating the bulk of its political powers to national and regional governments so that they can foster the subject of citizenship and self-government they see fit, at the national and regional levels. But this would mean abandoning the integrative aspirations of the European project as we know it and would require political actors to relinquish a large part of their political power, which would only happen in the most desperate situations.

For the time being, it seems that we should let the European project run its course until the fees of internal disaffection reaches such unsustainable levels that Europe's political elite will be forced to adopt a more autocratic style of governance (which would only succeed in galvanizing and unifying the Euro-dissidents), decentralize the powers currently concentrated in Brussels, or face the possibility of political collapse.