EU Citizen Participation ‘in the Union’s Democratic Life’: A Policy and Legal Analysis

Abstract

There is a striking paradox in EU democracy. The EU is the first jurisdiction to expressly embrace participation as an autonomous, complementary, source of legitimacy. Yet its day-to-day operations remain broadly closed to participation. By building on the extensive scholarship on democracy in the EU, this chapter evaluates the state of EU participatory democracy a decade after its inclusion in the EU treaties, by shedding some light on both its normative and practical realities. Section 2 briefly reconstructs the genesis and evolution of participatory democracy in the EU. Section 3 maps out and systematizes the many participatory mechanisms available to EU citizens—from petitions to the EU Parliament, complaints to the European Ombudsman, to European Citizens’ Initiatives—and illustrates how participatory democracy has been elevated to become one of the foundations of democracy in the EU. Section 4 examines the realities of participation by unveiling how current practices are characterized by unequal access, limited representativeness, and ultimately the disparate influence of participants. Section 5 puts forward some recommendations on how to unleash the democratic potential of EU participatory democracy in light of the Conference on the Future of Europe, an unprecedented, institutionally short-lived democratic exercise, but whose consequences should not be underestimated.