Searching for a True ‘EU Demos’: Analysing the Citizens’ Consultations in the Future of Europe Debate

The accumulation of tensions brought by the Euro-crisis, the migration crisis and Brexit have been catalysts for a vibrant debate on a democratic future of the EU, making dividing lines between various member states more visible. It was much debated in the literature that the EU went through several serious legitimacy crises in recent years, with heavy contestation at different levels. In this context, citizens trust in EU’s institutions visibly decreased, reaching historical lows. New narratives aimed at engaging the citizens ‘back’ into the European project were needed, and in this context, at the initiative of the the Juncker Commission, wide consultations were carried out in all Member States, following the launch of “The White Paper on The Future of Europe” (March 2017) involving more than 200,000 participants. Much criticism was raised on how the consultations were organised and on their very limited impact. Thus, the analysis tries to understand how a transnational debate on the future of Europe failed to produce the expected results at the Sibiu Summit in May 2019 (Romania). In the first part we will explore how citizen’s contributions evolved at the level of legal transposition in the main Treaties (from Maastricht to Lisbon). Second, at the theoretical level we will explore the concept of fragmented European Public Sphere from the perspective of citizen engagement at EU level, focusing on the main tools that EU’s institutions used to solve its legitimacy crisis through a transnational dissemination of ideas. Third, we will analyse closely the main phases and procedures employed by the European Commission in organizing the Citizen’s Consultations (based on data offered by the EC Report from April 2019, but also on various opinions of civil society involved in the process at state level). In its conclusions the analysis aims to draw some lessons learnt in the context of the lively debate around the Conference on the Future of Europe – a project announced by the new EC President Ursula von der Leyen in her Political Guidelines, aimed at ‘giving European citizens a greater say on what the European Union does and how it works for them’. As the recent document mentions that the Conference is envisaged to build on past experiences, such as citizens' dialogues, we believe in this context our analysis will offer an in-depth reflection on how previous Citizens Dialogues were organised and how much they allowed for an open, inclusive, transparent and structured debate with citizens of diverse backgrounds and from all walks of life. By looking closely at the specific context of the Future of Europe debate (with a focus on the period between 2017-2019), we believe this is an important moment to investigate how ideas on EU’s legitimacy have circulated transnationally, what was their impact on citizen’s engagement and how national and EU political actors influenced each other.