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Abstract
In contrast to the international arena, accountability and civil society have until recently attracted little attention in the EU context. Civil society is said to play a decisive role in holding EU authorities to account, but this positive assessment lacks systematic examination. This article clarifies the concept of accountability and civil society and suggests a typology of accountability relations to explore the different roles civil society organisations may play as actors or facilitators of EU accountability. The heuristic use of this analytical approach is demonstrated by drawing on empirical findings from a recently completed research project.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Christina Altides for helpful comments.
Notes
1. The Economist, 23 September 2000, p. 129.
2. Established in 2003 by the American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, NGOWatch examined the rapid growth of civil society groups because they allegedly undermine the sovereignty of constitutional democracies.
5. See, for example, http://www.sphereproject.org
6. Signatories are: ActionAid International, Amnesty International, CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation, Consumers International, Greenpeace International, Oxfam International, the International Save the Children Alliance, Survival International, International Federation Terre des Hommes, Transparency International and World YWCA.
7. The term ‘public interest group’ would be most appropriate when referring to that particular group of CSOs which claims to represent citizens in their general interests or defend basic rights and values. The Civil Society Contact Group (CSCG) uses the term ‘public interests’ to differentiate its membership from that of trade union, business or professional associations. Also the term ‘group’ is more appropriate than ‘organisation’ because some important actors do not qualify as organisations but are alliances without any formal institutions. However, since ‘NGO’ is established in the literature and the respective actors speak of themselves as ‘NGOs’ it is more convenient to stick to this terminology.
8. For the relevance of publicity as core criteria for democratic governance see Hüller and Kohler-Koch (Citation2008).
9. DEMOCIV, ‘Democratising the EU via Civil Society Participation?’ Project funded by the German Research Council (DFG). Apart from publications by the author, publications by Christina Altides, Vanessa Buth, Barbara Finke, Thorsten Hüller, and Christine Quittkat are also based on this project.
10. CONNEX, a ‘Network of Excellence’ on ‘Efficient and Democratic Governance in a Multi-level Europe’ (funded by the EU under the 6th Framework Programme) was organised in thematic oriented Research Groups; the group coordinated by the author was dedicated to ‘Civil Society and Interest Representation in EU Governance’.
11. The research is based on a systematic screening of statutes, work programmes, annual reports, strategic programmes, commissioned studies, publications, website presentations and selected interviews. This approach differs from Louisa Parks (Citation2009), who presents the views NGO actors have on accountability when asked in an interview.
12. The analysis deals with the main institutions in EU decision-making, thus not with the ECJ, and is focused on the Commission.
13. European Parliament resolution on the Commission White Paper on European Governance (COM(2001)428 – C5-0454/2001 – 2001/2181(COS)) point 11(b).
14. Even in this respect the assessment varies: when communicating with their members, most CSOs present such meetings as an asset; in private conversation many say it is for the gallery.
15. See the critical account of the literature on biased interest representation (Eising Citation2008).
16. The Green 10 is an alliance of 10 leading environmental NGOs active at EU level and has no permanent infrastructure but some of their own members are of long standing and are important players in Brussels.
17. The Human Rights and Democracy Network (HRDN) is ‘an informal grouping of NGOs operating at EU level in the broader areas of human rights, democracy and conflict prevention’: http://www.act4europe.org/code/en/about.asp?Page=41&menuPage=41
18. The European Forum for the Arts and Heritage (EFAH) representing the interests of artists and cultural organisations re-launched its organisation only at the beginning of 2008 with a reviewed vision of its objectives and with the new name Culture Action Europe. See EFAH Annual Report 2007: http://www.epha.org/IMG/pdf/EPHA_Annual_Report_20080612_final-2.pdf
19. Members of the European Civil Society Platform on Lifelong Learning (EUCIS-LLL) first came together in 2001 and only after the successful completion of a joint (EU-funded) project in 2004 decided to put their cooperation on a permanent basis: http://www.eucis.net/francais/index.html
20. Personal communication with Anne Hoel, Policy Coordinator, Social Platform, January 2009.
22. The cleavage between industry and environmental interests is well documented in the case of the chemical directive REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) with consumer organisations and trade unions taking an intermediary position (Friedrich Citation2008; Persson Citation2007, Citation2009) and environmentalists and consumers against agro-business in the case of GMO (Dabrowska Citation2007, Citation2008; Ferreti Citation2007; Steffek and Ferreti Citation2009).
24. See the website presentation of the CSCG and the CSCG contribution to the EU budget review consultation 2008: http://www.act4europe.org/code/en/about.asp?Page=255&menu Page=255 and http://ec.europa.eu/budget/reform/library/contributions/ng/20080403_NG_ 7_en.pdf
25. Interview with the representative of a national member organisation of the Social Platform.
26. The latter findings, however, are difficult to generalise because only highly professional CSOs were part of the sample.
27. The issue was the liberalisation of services (see Della Porta Citation2009; Parks Citation2009).