Concepts for the future of the EU and liberal democracy: The vision of young Bulgarians

The objective of this paper is to present and discuss the results of focus groups done with well informed young citizens in Bulgaria within the framework of DebatEU Jean Monnet network, led by Professor Claudia Wiesner, University of Fulda. The participants in the Bulgarian focus groups agree that liberal democracy and the European Union have no alternative. However, they point to a number of problems and outline different directions for the development of the EU and European democracy. What are the future decision makers' conceptions of the development of the EU and the democratic process within the union? What is the gap between European citizens and the European Union? Examining the discussions held in Bulgaria, a typology of concepts for the future of the Union will be proposed and the challenges through liberal democracy and the European Union that young people outline as the main ones will be discussed. We will explore in more detail the following hypothesis: even though they are committed to the idea of democracy, young critically informed citizens in Bulgaria tend to think it is important to maintain strong democracy at the local and the national levels, yet understand the difficulties of accommodating an ambitious conception of democracy within the EU's complex institutional architecture.