From technical to democratic justification in the policies and decision-making of the European Union: examples of agricultural policies

In this work, we want to analyze the discourses of justification of European agricultural policies, and in particular under the prism of an ambiguous change between technical and democratic. Indeed, we note that the European Commission uses two rhetorical means to justify these policies: on the one hand, the democratic way in that the rule is decided by legitimate institutions, representing the will of the people; on the other hand, the European Commission motivates its proposals based on technical harmonization or evidence-based data. Placing itself alongside issues of philosophy of law and political philosophy (taking inspiration from Kelsen, Foucault and Haraway), this work will analyze a change in the justifications of European policies, and in particular in agri-food policy. We have these research questions: To what extent has the European Union justified its policies by arguments of a technical and/or democratic nature? Has there been a shift in rhetorical justification from technical to democratic in agricultural policies? Our hypothesis is that the Commission is seeking to assume a more "democratic" role in decision-making, although in practice it plays on two registers rhetorically, motivating its policies sometimes on technical grounds and, in other circumstances, on respect for democratic choice. This shift is not visible in substantive European law or agricultural policy, but is internal to the way in which the institutions seek to find legitimacy for their policies. With a broader picture, Jean-Claude Junker's speech of 15 July 2014 on his wishes for a "more political" Commission illustrates this ambivalence. More recently, it is the Conference on the Future of Europe that offers an interesting case study, where different agri-food European policies would be justified by a democratic desire of the citizen panel. The first part of this paper will try to explain the variations of the discourses, between democracy (political) and technique (scientific) as a major element of justification of the rules. With this angle of approach, we want to bring some elements marking a rhetorical change in European justifications (without change in the substantive EU law). In a second part, we will take case studies to test our hypotheses. We will look at political initiatives in the field of EU food legislation. We will compare the Commission's initiatives for the sustainable and organic food in the Farm to Fork strategy (which we identify as more technical) and the implementation of the recommendations of the Conference on the Future of Europe on healthy and organic food (presented as democratic rhetoric). These two areas will be analyzed according to the sociology of law and discursive analysis, we will compare the justifications of the policies. In our conclusion, we will answer our question stating that there are indeed two justifications that coexist in parallel, but without one having taken over the other. In this way, this work will attempt to provide an internal and parallel reading to understand changes in European agricultural policies without them being assumed by major political statements.