Referendum challenges to the EU’s policy legitimacy–and how the EU responds

Abstract

Multiple ways of legitimating policy in a multi-level system of states are now creating cross-level challenges to European Union (EU) policies. At the national level referendums are challenging EU policies by claiming that demands arising from a direct democratic ballot have the highest legitimacy. By contrast, the EU legitimates its policies by means of the legal rationality of the policymaking process established by international treaties and confirmed by the representative credentials of the European Parliament and member state governments endorsing its actions in the European Council. Referendums are no longer held to confirm a national government’s decision to become an EU member state. There has been a paradigm shift since 2005; most votes in countries are holding EU referendums have rejected policies approved by their elected representatives. The EU has successfully responded using strategies that involve legal coercion; instrumental calculations; secondary concessions; and avoidance of the risk of a referendum veto through differential integration. However, the legal legitimation of an EU policy without frustration by national referendums does not ensure policy effectiveness.