Old Wine in New Bottles? The European Commission’s Legitimation Strategies since 2001

The failed constitutional referenda in 2005 as well as the world financial crisis and the subsequent sovereign debt crisis have put the legitimacy of the EU integration project high on the public agenda. These events were accompanied by rising public opposition towards European institutions with public approval ratings falling to a historic low level. The European Commission has reacted to these challenges by engaging in legitimatory measures that explicitly aim at establishing a high level of political support, the most prominent of which are the programs “Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate” (2005), the “Citizens’ Agenda” (2006), the Green Paper on the European Transparency Initiative (2006) and “Debate Europe” (2008). In the wake of these events, scholars were quick to maintain a watershed in the EU’s approach towards legitimacy generation. Yet, the evaluation of these measures starkly varies: some called out a “representative turn” others rather diagnose a “participatory turn” and yet others interpret the EU’s most recent legitimatory efforts as a means to politicize the EU. Has the Commission developed a coherent response to rising public opposition? And in how far do recent legitimation strategies constitute a genuinely new approach to legitimacy? This paper investigates these questions in detail by presenting the empirical results of a systematic discourse analysis of the European Commission’s legitimacy discourse since 2001. Methodologically, the paper proposes to scrutinize the Commission’s legitimacy discourse by applying metaphor analysis. This method provides useful analytical tools that help to disclose the structure of legitimacy discourses and assess continuities and changes.