Who represents Europe’s citizens – who responds to their needs? The responsiveness of political systems to citizens’ demands is of crucial importance for all considerations on democratic governance, public policy-making, and questions of legitimacy. For nation states this assumption is generally accepted and reason for a lot of scholarly attention. The European Union, instead, while not being a major focus of the debate, is criticized for being undemocratic and lacking the context for representation and responsiveness to succeed. I claim that policy representation in Europe can only be understood when analyzing responsiveness in the multilevel framework of EU and member states’ shared responsibilities as defined by the European treaties. This paper thus examines both levels’ responsiveness to citizens’ major concerns on the basis of EU institutions and member states’ public policy agendas and citizens stated “Most Important Problems”. The main argument is that today’s EU has become responsive to citizens’ demands given that it has the competencies in the relevant policy field and that an issue of cross-national importance is concerned. I argue that the EU can be responsive if one of the following three conditions hold: When (a) all agree, (b) cross-national coalitions form, or (c) one individual country plays a major role. This is most likely to happen in times of crises or external focusing events that no individual country can tackle alone. I test this claim empirically with Eurobarometer data on citizens’ Most Important Problem- survey responses coded into policy areas along the same lines as legislation in individual member states and European Council Conclusions. The findings suggest that the EU’s responsiveness to citizen’s concerns takes up a comparatively bigger share in the multilevel framework than what was previously expected.
