Transnational Citizen Participation in Europe

Abstract

The ‘no’ by the French and Dutch people in their 2005 referenda on the European Constitution shook the European Union and its institutions thoroughly. The EU, it was bluntly made clear, suffers from a substantial legitimacy crisis that, apparently, was left untouched even by the proposed strengthening of the supra- and transnational parliamentary dimension in EU Affairs. Consequently, European institutions, notably the European Commission and the European Parliament, sought different avenues to bring the Union closer to its people. Since then, they have promoted several participative plans (Plan D, “Debate Europe”, etc.) inviting civil society associations to organize events aiming at increasing the citizens’ information and involvement in Europe. This has led to the appearance of a large variety of innovative consultative experiments at different geographical levels (local, national, cross-border and pan-European): these include virtual and face-to-face communication, deliberative consultation and polling. Among the most ambitious experiments are the Ideal-EU project, the Europolis project and the European Citizens Consultation project. What these and other examples of public participation share is the idea of exploring, in a highly qualitative way, the priorities and preferences of European citizens, to (re-)connect them with the elite-driven political sphere in Brussels and, more ambitiously, of including lay citizens and civil society organizations in the EU decision-making process. Yet, questions remain: How serious is the political will to institutionalize such new procedures in EU politics? Are the EU consultations sufficiently autonomous to promote a debate with a high deliberative quality? To what extent can such procedures be considered a move forward towards a more participative and democratic Europe? The panel is particularly interested in papers that address these democratic innovations of the EU in an empirical, but normatively informed, way. But also conceptual papers on transnational citizen deliberation are welcome.

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