The political construction and genealogy of the ‘citizen’ turn in the EU: The Conference on the Future of Europe

The paper analyses the ‘citizen’ turn taken by the European Union in terms of democracy and participation. This turn breaks away partially from the ‘participatory turn’ described by Saurugger (2010) in that it decouples ‘citizen participation’ from civil society and the idea of a European public sphere, both in discursive terms as well as in the ensuing political practices. The paper departs from the shift by the European Commission post-Brexit in order to describe the citizen dialogues, the European Citizen Consultations (ECCs) and the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE). The latter initiative consolidates the EU's ‘citizen’ turn through an experimental exercise in which ‘everyday citizens’ are situated at the centre through the European citizen panels. While there are innovative elements, the paper argues that the ‘citizen turn’ does not meaningfully contribute to the emergence of an agonistic European public sphere, as it follows an alternative legitimacy logic that fundamentally deviates from the traditional conceptualisation of the public sphere.