The Committee of the Regions and EU Democracy: Closing the Representational Gap in a Multilevel Polity

Full democratic representation requires the performance of three fundamental functions: the organization of political preferences (voice), the making of political decisions (will), and the checking of executive branches (oversight). In the European Union (EU) these functions are fragmented and entrusted to different representative assemblies that operate with different mandates and at different levels (the European Parliament, national parliaments, regional parliaments) or to bodies that collect representatives from these representative assemblies (Committee of the Regions, Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union (COSAC), EU Speakers conferences, European Parliamentary Weeks). The paper will discuss whether the sum of these different types of representation delivers full democratic representation: whether it gives voice to different publics (or demoi), whether it allows for a more participated expression of will, and whether it performs a more effective check on governing institutions. In particular, it will focus on the distinctive contribution that the Committee of the Regions, with its consolidated involvement in all the aspects of EU policymaking, makes to full democratic representation.