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The paper examines the deep causes of the crisis the European Union is going through. The main argument is that the current decision-making mechanism of the EU dominated by the member states is unsustainable and needs to be revised. The ability of member states to block decisions in the crucial EU institutions – the European Council and Council – is a major weakness which makes the decisionmaking process extremely slow and ineffective during crises and external pressures. Three different alternatives for reforms of the EU decision-making are presented which include a transition towards a parliamentarian or a presidential system. These alternatives are evaluated according to their potential to overcome the weaknesses the current system is suffering. The main weakness of a parliamentary system at EU level consists in the risk of instability of the Commission due to the fragmentation in the European parliament. The adoption of a presidential system with a directly elected European President might solve most of the present problems of the EU. This solution however lacks the support of the member states who will take the final decision and only a strong public support may increase the chances for such reforms. Kew words: European Union, Decision-making, Democratic deficit, European Parliament, member states, Presidential system INTRODUCTION When the European Commission released the White Paper on the Future of Europe on 01.03.2017, it set off a long needed debate which will be in the center of the public attention for the coming months and possibly years. The debate was much needed because the European Union passed through several crises in the previous years which proved that its institutions were not well adapted for the challenges of the contemporary globalized world. The discontent of the population culminated in the Brexit vote a year ago but it had also been visible in the previous years, taking into account the mounting popularity of the Eurosceptic parties and the rejection of the European constitution in the referendums in the Netherlands and France in 2005. The present paper explores the weaknesses of the European Union which have paved the way for this gradual negative trend. It is well known that the way the problems are defined strongly affects the possible solutions. So in  *Correspondence to: Boyko Vachev, Department of International Relations, UNWE, Blvd. 8 th December, Sofia 1700. Tel. +359 2 819 53 33. Fax: +359 2 962 39 03 E-mail:b_valchev@hotmail.com the debate over the future of Europe there will be divergent explanations for the EU weaknesses, this paper presenting only some of the possible views. In the second part the paper focuses on possible reforms in the EU that may tackle the problems defined in the first part. THE WEAKNESSES OF THE EU The first very obvious problem is the mounting popularity of the Eurosceptic parties in Europe. This is a phenomenon which affects almost all EU member states in various degrees while being a pressing issue in the UK, France, the Netherlands and Austria. The free movement of people in the EU, immigration from third countries and the effects of globalization have been instrumentalized by the populists from Eurosceptic parties to defend their cause. But what really helps those parties win votes is an obvious asymmetry in the political debates over the role of the EU. In a normal political debate where an opposition party accuses the governing party of bad management or corruption, there will be an immediate and passionate defense from the accused side. The opposition will have a lot more trouble to convince an unbiased observer. In the political debates over the EU accusations from Eurosceptic parties against

Eu weaknesses and the debate about its future reforms