No abstract

At the heart of the growing politicization of the EU lies a concern with how European integration potentially undermines forms of communal self-government linked to established political identities. This concern originates not from the much discussed democratic deficit of EU institutions but from a 'democratic disconnect' between domestic democratic institutions and processes and the decisions made at the EU level by national executives and EU officials. Our contention is that enhancing the role of national parliaments in EU decision-making offers a way to reconnect the integration process with the communal self-rule of the member states. We ground this argument in an account of the normative basis of the EU that we dub 'republican intergovernmentalism'. We argue that national parliaments offer a means for what we term the domestication and normalization of EU policy-making within the democratic processes of the member states. However, these effects will only occur if mainstream domestic parties employ these new parliamentary powers to develop competing EU policies that reflect their core ideological positions and those of their voters. We propose the introduction of a Parliamentary Legislative Initiative as a mechanism to provide an incentive for them to do so.

New modes of governance and, in particular, the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), have attracted considerable and often unduly favourable scholarly attention since 2000. Learning from best practice and increased policy effectiveness are often assumed to be the main outcome of the OMC. In contrast, this contribution seeks to assess the democratic legitimacy of the OMC by using a research design that integrates criteria both from the liberal and the deliberative theories of democracy. In analysing the OMC inclusion and its implementation in France, Germany and at the European level, it is shown that the democratic benchmarks that can be derived from either theory are not met. By way of conclusion, the potential consequences of the obvious democratic deficit of the OMC are discussed briefly.

Constitutional pluralism (CP) and differentiated integration (DI) have been criticised as potentially legitimising democratic backsliding within the EU. Critics contend that effective measures require strengthening the legal authority of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the political authority of the European Commission. We dispute this criticism, which rests on a federal conception of the EU at odds with its confederal features. We argue that the value of democracy for the EU derives from pluralism between as well as within states, thereby justifying CP and DI. While both prove incompatible with democratic backsliding, they challenge the legitimacy of the strong assertions of federal authority some advocate to tackle it. Drawing on CP, we propose four criteria for EU action against backsliding regimes, and suggest processes and penalties that meet them. We liken the latter to ‘value’ DI, whereby backsliding states can be excluded from EU funding and voting rights.

Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have been viewed by many as a means for democratising the EU and for overcoming its widely perceived democratic deficit. At the EU-level, it is mostly European umbrella organisations of CSOs that contribute to EU policy-making. These umbrella organisations ground their legitimacy partly on the claim of being representative of large constituencies. Similarly, the European Commission hopes to increase the legitimacy of its proposals through consultations with European umbrellas and has systematically contributed financially to establishing them in the first place. However, we lack information on how well these umbrellas link to their national members and who is represented through them in EU policy-making. Arguing that active involvement by their constituencies is crucial for the legitimacy of European umbrellas, this article addresses the degree to which national organisations link to their respective European umbrellas. Three types of political representation by CSOs are identified, which are exemplified respectively by organisations active in the fields of agricultural, environmental and anti-poverty policy. The analysis explores the ways CSOs contribute to political representation across different governance levels in the EU, and the various types of representation the related practices embody. Findings show that the umbrella of agricultural groups is much more representative of its constituencies than those of environmental and anti-poverty groups, casting a doubt on the latter's capacity to forcefully contribute to the construction of a European polity.