The debate surrounding the existence of a ‘democratic deficit’ in the EU, highlights an on-going concern in the literature that citizens preferences are only weakly connected to the EU’s policy making processes. To date, however, the empirical literature has largely focused on the ‘input’ side of the process, namely the linkage between citizen preferences and party policy positions. This paper seeks to advance our understanding of representation at the ‘output’ side of the process, namely the linkage between citizen preferences and EU legislative outputs. Using data derived from EURLEX to measure policy outputs in the EU (1984-2010) and Eurobarometer surveys to measure voter preferences I explore whether or not there is a link between citizens attitudes towards the EU and the volume of policy produced by the EU. Relevant questions to be addressed include, whether or not policy makers are more responsive to citizens in specific policy areas; whether or not policy makers are more responsive to certain member-states; and whether increasing the powers of the European Parliament over time, have increased the policy responsiveness of the EU.
