When citizens’ participation meets parliamentary representation in the EU: towards a framework for analysis

In any democratic system, a genuine interconnection between the participatory and representative elements of (parliamentary) democracy is indispensable to achieve the broadest possible extent of input and output legitimacy. This paper proposes a theoretical and analytical framework to study the interplay between these two democratic dimensions in the context of EU multi-level governance. At a time of declining trust in parliaments, we conceptualize the EU multi-level system as an "opportunity structure" for parliamentarians to reconnect with citizens beyond the electoral connection. Building on existing literature, we combine the notions of parliaments as legitimacy "intermediaries" and parliamentarians as "political entrepreneurs", taking into account that their positions towards citizens’ inclusion in EU governance may indeed vary. We use the recent case study of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) to illustrate this participatory-representative interface, identify the scope conditions for the conference’s effectiveness, but also pinpoint weaknesses in its design. The CoFoE consisted of a Plenary composed of 108 EU citizens, 108 MEPs and 108 national parliamentarians (MPs), as well as 9 thematic Working Groups including the same categories of actors. This institutional design serves as an excellent test-case for analysing and assessing the intermediary role of parliaments, both national and EP, their ownership of the EU integration process and responsiveness towards citizens’ EU-oriented preferences, but also the effectiveness of inter-parliamentary cooperation in a transnational deliberative context. With regard to the CoFoE, the paper casts light on the particular position of the European Parliament as a "host" and national parliaments as the "guests" of the reconnection process, claiming that these imposed roles influenced their strategic engagement and political commitment to the Conference.