"Representative deliberative participation process" as a future of the representative democracy in the EU?

Within the functioning of the EU, we are currently witnessing a "citizen turn," characterized by efforts to bring citizens closer to EU institutions. This shift represents the EU institutions' response to the existing gap between the EU and European citizens. The "citizen turn" is notably manifested through citizen panels governed by the European Commission or the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE). However, research indicates that these initiatives primarily serve to legitimize pre-existing policy tools, sidelining traditional political intermediaries such as political parties or civic organizations (Oleart 2023), thus bypassing representative democracy. It appears that the European Parliament, as the main transnational representative institution, is also embracing the "citizen turn." This is evident in its resolution from September 2023 (2023/2017(INI)), which calls for the institutionalization of "representative deliberative participation processes." The resolution advocates for the creation of a structured participation mechanism, known as the European Agora, to operate on a yearly basis. This paper aims to explore the inter-relation between representative and participatory democracy through the analysis of what national and EU-level parliamentarians think about increased citizen involvement in public governance. Additionally, it explores how they envision the optimal interconnection of participatory and representative democracy. Specifically, the paper traces and analyzes the legitimation and de-legitimation strategies of national and transnational parliamentarians concerning participatory democracy at the EU level. The recently concluded CoFoE, a transnational experiment in participatory democracy, serves as an attractive case study for exploring these strategies. In this paper, we will conduct a qualitative content analysis of the European Parliament's plenary debates and discussions held during inter-parliamentary committee meetings (ICMs) within the Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) on topics related to the CoFoE spanning from 2020 to 2023. This two-level analysis will allow us to map various (de)legitimation strategies, taking into account factors such as partisan affiliations, nationality, or the level of Euroscepticism.