Participatory Democracy in the EU: Obstinate or Obsolete? College of Europe Policy Brief #9.16, April 2016

Bouza Garcia, Louis (2016) Participatory Democracy in the EU: Obstinate or Obsolete? College of Europe Policy Brief #9.16, April 2016. [Policy Paper]

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Abstract

Executive Summary. The EU is the first supranational organisation to have attempted to use participatory democracy mechanisms to engage its citizens, but these mechanisms have failed to channel the dissatisfaction with the management of the euro crisis. > The institutional attention shifted from an original emphasis on focused dialogue with a reduced number of civil society organisations to an attempt to engage with more actors and use all mechanisms to communicate after the failure of the European Constitutional Treaty in 2005. > Despite some achievements, both approaches have fallen short of ambition. Civil society dialogues have not been able to associate national and individual members of the organisations, whereas new approaches like the European Citizens’ Initiative fail to create sufficient public attention. > Before giving up on participatory mechanisms altogether, the EU could try to establish a stronger relation between direct dialogue with organisations and an evaluation of their role in the European public sphere.

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