Parliamentary Discursive Stances Towards the Participatory Tools in EU Policy-Making

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." 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. Although there is growing research about political attitudes and discourses towards participatory democracy (Rangoni et al. 2021), the research remains limited in regard to the EU level. It poses the following research question: What discursive stances do MEPs and national MPs take towards the participatory, deliberative tools in EU policy-making? 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 discourses, taking into account factors such as partisan affiliations, nationality, or the level of Euroscepticism.