The Sweet Spot of EU Reform: How to Improve Citizens’ Perceptions of EU Legitimacy

Treib, Oliver; Schäfer, Constantin; Schlipphak, Bernd

Abstract

Democracy has long been contested in Europe as elsewhere, and the democratic experience of the European Union has been mixed. Still, while the Union’s democratic credentials have seen ups and downs, European integration has been built on the promise of democracy: not only should the Member States be founded on democratic principles, but the Union itself should extend these principles to the supranational level and thereby also democratize relations between the Member States and their peoples. The present volume brings together contributions that foreground this democratic promise and ask to what extent the EU has been able to live up to it. It offers a comprehensive overview and assessment of the state of EU democracy and the Union’s potential to forge democracy across borders, while at the same time identifying the areas where this potential remains unfulfilled or perverse effects have occurred. It does so by analysing developments in the foundations of the Union, in its main institutions, and in selected policy domains, such as migration, trade, fiscal and macroeconomic affairs, and the Covid-19 pandemic. In these different ways the volume assesses the transformations the Union has undergone in moving closer to and further away from its democratic promise. Drawing on the results of the Horizon 2020 project RECONNECT (‘Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and the Rule of Law’), the volume offers a new conceptual angle that articulates the promise of EU democracy, which, faced with current developments and contestations of democracy outside and inside the Union, is arguably more pertinent than ever.

Projects the publication originates from