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ABSTRACT
This article asks what role deliberative democracy could play in democratising the EU. Whilst searching for an answer to this question, the article aims to contribute to the post-2008 financial and economic crisis EU democracy debate with a substantial rethinking of the EU-citizen relationship. The article is also critical of the existing democracy models, and in particular the input-output model, that treats citizens’ participation in policymaking (input) and policies’ effects on citizens (output) as separate phenomena. The article aims to contribute to the emergence of a collaborative research agenda between the EU and deliberative democracy scholarships with a view to improving citizen participation in EU policymaking in the light of deliberative democracy. Using the European Commission’s consultation regime as an empirical example, the article shows that it is indeed possible to implement deliberative democracy in the EU.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the financial support of the European Union. This article was presented at the Democracy beyond Elections Conference at Bristol University in March 2017. I am grateful to conference participants and to Mike Gordon, Michelle Farrell and Graham Smith for their feedback on earlier drafts. All errors remain mine.
Notes
1 See Standard Eurobarometer 83, Spring 2015, available at http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb83/eb83_publ_en.pdf.
2 Among others France’s National Front and the Netherlands’s Party for Freedom promised to subject their counties’ EU membership to referandums.
3 See https://stop-ttip.org.
4 See also http://www.participedia.net a database of novel, including deliberative, participatory designs from all around the world.
6 To my knowledge, Smith (Citation2013) is the only scholar openly suggesting that deliberative democracy should be implemented in the EU, without, however, offering concrete reform proposals.
8 54 per cent of BEUC’s budget comes from contributions by its member organisations; 41 per cent of it comes from annual EU grants and the rest comes from several individual projects, see http://www.beuc.org/about-beuc/financial-information; wheras the ANEC budget is financed by the European Union (95 per cent) and EFTA (5 per cent) under Regulation (EU) 1025/2012 on European Standardisation.
9 Interviews with members of Brussels-based consumer organisations, June 2014.
10 Interviews with European Commission DG Comp officials, June 2014.
11 Directive 2014/104/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 November 2014 on certain rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions of the Member States and of the European Union, 5.12.2014 [OJ] L349/1.
12 Study on the Conditions of Claims for damages, http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/actionsdamages/comparative_report_clean_en.pdf.
13 Centre for European Policy Studies (Citation2007).
16 See e.g. opinions of the European Banking Federation, The Confederation of the Swedish Enterprise, The Confederation of Finnish Industries, The Central Chamber of Commerce of Finland, European Chemical Industry Council, the American Chamber of Commerce, Confederation of British Industry, Business Europe, European Mortgage Federation, Euro Commerce, all available at http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/actionsdamages/green_paper_comments.html.
17 See e.g. the opinions of BEUC, Which? and the European Consumer Consultative Group, all available at http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/actionsdamages/green_paper_comments.html.
18 Commission Recommendation of 11 June 2013 on common principles for injunctive and compensatory collective redress mechanisms in the Member States concerning violations of rights granted under Union Law, 26.7.2013 [OJ] L201/60.