Davor Jancic talks to us about his new edited collection, The Changing Role of Citizens in EU Democratic Governance published by Hart, 2023.
This book discusses the challenges of reforming EU democracy through increased citizen participation beyond elections. It asks fundamental questions such as whether the institutionalisation of citizens in EU public law is a prerequisite for addressing these challenges and the extent to which such institutionalisation is taking place in the EU. To these ends, the contributors analyse the latest institutional initiatives, proposals and practices such as:
Offering reflections on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, this book is a reminder of the importance of the role of citizens in EU governance.
The key motivating factor was the fact that we are witnessing a rise in citizen-oriented democratic experiments to a greater extent than before. While the book focuses on the EU, this rise is evident not only in Europe but also worldwide.
Democracy is a very wide notion and, in the EU, the founding treaties establish that democracy is founded on representative democracy. This means that citizens’ preferences are converted into political and legislative outcomes through elections and the action of elected representatives. However, the EU’s founding treaties also create instruments which enable citizens to participate in EU policy making in a more direct fashion. This is often referred to as participatory democracy, even though the EU treaties do not mention this exact phrase explicitly.
The problem with participatory democracy, despite its nominal appeal of bringing the citizen closer to governance processes, is its predominant lack of influence and weak commitment on the part of the institutions to implement the recommendations collected through numerous forms of citizen participation.
So, this discrepancy between a growing insistence on the importance of citizens as direct actors in the political life of a polity (in this case that of the EU) and the citizens’ marginalisation in decision-making processes in political practice is quite intriguing.
The research project arose out of two small research grants–a University Association of Contemporary European Studies (UACES) Small Event Grant and a grant by the Queen Mary Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (QM IHSS).
“The foregoing analysis of Union citizenship and democracy reveals the rapidly changing institutional position of citizens in EU governance. However, it also unveils a glaring tension between an intensifying discourse of citizen-centred governance and the questionable effectiveness of the existing instruments and practices of citizen participation in bringing about substantive democratic outcomes. The notion of governance by citizens is in reality more accurately described as governance in the name of citizens. The imagery of a collective of European citizens acting together as one transnational agent of democratic revival has been a powerful vehicle for framing the Union’s much needed reform. To address these developments, this book focuses on several innovative aspects of citizen participation in the EU and incorporates reflections on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic where relevant. Its structure reflects the above discussion and is grouped into four thematic parts.
Part I addresses the institutional and constitutional position of citizens in EU public law. After this introductory chapter, citizens are conceptualised as an essential element of the EU democratic settlement in the European politeia (Susanna Cafaro). Arguing that citizens are the ‘big absents’, the Commission’s plans for a closer and more permanent involvement of citizens at the CoFoE are placed in the context of the overarching debate an EU democracy without a state and without a demos. Yet, for the success of participatory endeavours, the constitutional elevation of citizens as political individuals must be accompanied by the protagonism of the civil society. In this respect, the changing opportunity structures for civil society activism in EU participatory democracy are conceptualised through the lenses of interaction, coalition building and competition among civil society groups in the Union (Luis Bouza García).
Part II is devoted to citizenship beyond elections and focuses on the non-electoral political instruments of Union citizenship. The analysis begins with petitions to the EP as a wider but fairly neglected mechanism of non-electoral involvement of citizens at the EU level. The goal is to assess the institutional mechanics of it, appraise its added value and evaluate its current and potential contribution to democratic participation (Henri De Waele). The focus then moves to complaints to the European Ombudsman as the more impactful of the two participatory dimensions of EU political citizenship outlined above. An empirical legal inquiry is conducted into the way in which the Ombudsman utilises strategic inquiries to ensure the fulfilment of the right to good administration and foster a culture of transparency and accountability (Marco Inglese). However, for citizens’ input in EU decision making to be meaningful, transparency and timely access to relevant information is critical. Drawing on recent developments in CJEU case law, the conditions for the exercise of the fundamental right of access to documents in ongoing EU legislative procedures are inspected regarding the politically sensitive stages of the Commission’s proposal-making and trilogue negotiations between the Commission, the Council and the EP (Natasa Athanasiadou).
Part III centres on democracy beyond representation and is divided into two sub-parts.
The first sub-part investigates citizen participation with respect to EU integration as such. This starts with a critical reflection on Macron’s democratic conventions and the Commission’s citizen dialogues (Davor Jancic). This chapter queries their effectiveness in enhancing Union-wide opinion-forming and legitimation, and appraises their utility by discussing their institutional design and their ability to ensure democratic inclusion. Following up on this is an evaluation of the CoFoE (Maaike Geuens). The chapter takes a historical approach by documenting previous similar participatory exercises, and moves on to discuss the Conference’s advantages and disadvantages, examining its potential for enhancing citizen participation. After this, an argument is developed in favour of establishing an EU-level citizens’ assembly that would enjoy the right to produce advisory recommendations for EU institutions (James Organ). This chapter is based on insights from an empirical deliberative experiment and the CoFoE.
The second sub-part addresses citizen participation with respect to EU legislation from the perspective of well-established but evolving agenda-setting and policy-making instruments. The examination starts with the ECI and its 2019 reform. The latter undergoes an in-depth legal investigation to examine its potential to address the disconnect between the EU and the citizenry and respond to the criticisms concerning its legal regime and practical operation (Mario Mendez). However, the next chapter shows that the benefits of the revised ECI legislative framework are relative. Based on recent CJEU case law, it is argued that the participatory capacity of this instrument, and its likelihood to result in EU legislative action, is limited due to it being trapped between a dominant Commission eager to assert its right of legislative initiative and a Court of Justice reluctant to interfere in the political process (Jasmin Hiry). If, nonetheless, the Commission decides that policy action is needed, it may organise pre-legislative public consultations. These are evaluated for their effectiveness in fulfilling the promise of upstream citizen involvement. This is done by dissecting the applicable legal framework and by empirically testing the outcomes of a selection of the consultations completed thus far (Paolo Zicchittu). Finally, as an advisory body with a strong interest in supporting participatory democracy in the EU in both pre-legislative and legislative phases, the EESC is critically evaluated as a platform for developing citizen participation through deliberation and civil society mobilisation (James Organ and Nikos Vogiatzis).
Part IV analyses the some of the pressing challenges and opportunities for citizen participation in the EU. The debate starts with democratic innovation and presents participatory experiments carried out by the Commission’s Joint Research Centre, whose aim is to move beyond tokenistic town hall-style citizen consultations towards co-creation and material deliberation (Paulo Rosa, Thomas Völker and Ângela Guimarães Pereira). This chapter also shows how the Covid-19 pandemic has hampered face-to-face modes of participation and discusses the impact that this can have on the Commission’s future policy-making processes. Building on this, the next chapter addresses the impact of the Covid-19 on democratic participation. It does so by scrutinising the citizens’ attitudes towards the EU and their contributions concerning European democracy on the CoFoE multilingual digital platform (Petar Marković). The concluding chapter summarises the main findings of the book in order to underline how they develop our understanding of the current state of EU democracy and what they teach us about the challenges for its future development (Davor Jancic).”