Organized civil society and democratic legitimacy in the European Union.

Structural limitations in models of representative democracy have enhanced the space for other mechanisms of legitimacy in the European Union, including participatory models in which organized civil society interests are significant players. To some observers, such actors are likely only to aggravate already problematic input legitimacy. A range of less hostile approaches also prevail, from a neutral standpoint through to those sharing the perspective of EU policy practice where such actors are seen as a complementary mechanism of democratic input. Whilst concerns about the impact of asymmetries of power between different types of organised civil society interests arise as potential issues in any democratic setting, a particularly vigorous neo-pluralist regime in which EU institutions actively create and develop as well as empower citizen interest groups effectively mitigate these asymmetries in an EU context, although can give rise to paradoxical tensions of elitism

Electricity liberalization.

Electricity was an obvious candidate in the renewed drive to complete a European Single Market in the Delors years. Despite the energy sector being the first candidate for European integration in 1951, electricity consumption remained, in the mid-1980s, tied to a regional monopoly supplier, resulting in the opinion of the Commission in inflated prices and a lack of innovation. As a key factor in production costs in manufacturing industry, and a contributory factor to every household bill, the electricity supply industry, wholly untouched by market logic, presented a ripe apple for a (then) confident European Commission keen to progress the frontiers of project Europe, and to demonstrate tangible results in European integration by the promise of lower prices arising from the introduction of competition

Trade associations, change and the new activism.

There is a breakdown of trust and a corresponding rise in corrosive cynicism in both corporate activity and in mainstream politics. Trust is the cement in the relationship between institutions and civil society. When trust breaks down, civil society either withdraws from participation, or expresses protest outside the mainstream channels of participation. Risk-related investment falls. Participation in elections declines, and alternative outlets of political expression arise. The press becomes cynical, hostile or negative, and seeks out bad news. Suspicion sets in and irresistible pressures grow for open­ness, transparency and accountability. The information and opportunities so yielded reap a crop of issues upon which cynics make hay, and the Inter­net spills out more and more information, opening up new fronts as it does so. Even potential good news stories are interpreted and reported negatively, and those with news to tell become defensive and/or incommunicative. The downward spiral continues. Company managers and public affairs leaders lose the ability to predict when and from which direction the next missile will be coming their way. These factors help to explain the climate in which brand-name and other companies have found themselves to be targets of activism, sometimes in very isolated positions. The corporate world reveals a tendency to shoot itself in the foot by yielding a clutch of household-name companies whose financial practice scandals have resulted in losses for millions and acute misery for thousands raising wider public interest agenda . Mainstream public interest groups are turned from potential friend into foes, and the everyday citizen becomes a business critic. Polticians respond with agenda with seemingly limitless regulatory frontiers that catch companies on the back foot

The regional offices in Brussels: from 'push and pull' to 'people and place'.

The potential of 'people and place' is assessed as a means to broaden research about regional political actors into key questions about their role in European integration, largely dormant since the European Commission's 2001 White Paper on Governance raised the potential for territorial authorities to bridge EU institutions with territorial civil society. Interviews were conducted with a subset of executives from EU liaison offices performing leading roles in the formation and maintenance of a cluster of cognate networks. A key driver involves differences in their working constraints, assessed by a dual typology of offices in conjunction with literature applied to lobbyists in outreach contexts. A tendency to 'go native' over time, coupled with the opportunities for long-time post holders to control their own working agendas, may lead to activities orientated toward bringing the EU to regions, rather than just promoting their regions in EU institutions

Despite teething problems, the ECI stimulates European-wide debates. EPIN Commentary No. 37/20 March 2017

This commentary maps European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECIs) that have fostered a European-wide debate and finds common characteristics among the campaigns that remained active following the period of collecting signatures. Despite campaigners’ fears that the current problems in implementing the instrument discourage its use, the authors find that the ECIs have contributed to a European public debate with cross-border communication and the exchange of knowledge among networks of actors

The European Citizens' Initiative: the territorial extension of a European political public sphere?

A key aim of the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) introduced in 2012 was to promote transnational discussion and deliberation, but there is relatively little analysis of the impact of this feature. We use primary and secondary data collection to examine the legacies left by almost 50 ECI campaigns at the conclusion of their official status, identifying mixed results. Using data drawn from interviews with 22 Citizen Committees, we identify and assess ECI campaigns which have disappeared with little trace of continued networks of communication, and at the other end of the spectrum, we find a notable reach of campaigns into some Central and East European countries, in which a young cohort of post-student campaigners attracted by the use of new technologies for campaigning feature prominently. In recognition of debates about the prospects for EU democratisation which transnational contestation might provide, we identify from continuing campaigns shared features which may provide clues as to the formation of political public spheres across national boundaries

The Transparency Register: a European vanguard of strong lobby regulation?

A recent comparative analysis of the content of lobby regulation schemes published in this journal casts measures developed at European Union (EU) level as the vanguard of a new wave of strong lobby regulation across Europe. Other assessments characterise EU lobby regulation as weak, primarily based on the voluntary nature of a succession of registers of lobbyists, as well as the quality of data within them. We examine these competing perspectives through a focus upon the EU Transparency Register (TR), now exceeding 5500 individual entries. We set the scheme within a transparency for legitimacy pathway and note its differentiation from predecessor instruments by its breadth of scope. We assess the extent of coverage of its core targets through a comparison of the entries in two of its categories (business related and NGOs) with other information sources; we estimate its coverage of the intended population to be approximately three-quarters of business-related organisations and around 60 per cent of NGOs. These are sizeable proportions for a voluntary (albeit incentivised) register, but not sufficient yet to justify the de-facto mandatory claim for it made at its launch in 2011. We then assess the structure of the Register, the incentives to join it and its population in detail. The quality of the data in the TR has progressively improved from the starting point of its predecessor schemes. Nonetheless, there are one-third of all entries in the Register that did not choose European as one of the interests they represent, but instead another territorial level. Although some data quality problems remain, with a fringe of questionable entries, the reliance upon those in the Register to monitor it has driven up standards of data entry among the main lobbying players. Nonetheless, there are faults of design and nomenclature. A key juncture during the registration process involves a choice of category to appear in the Register, affecting the disclosure and presentation of public information. We identify 15 per cent of entries in the NGO category, which could better be re-assigned to other categories. We identify the boundary points from which the data can be put to research use, involving the identification of a European interest represented and use of a Brussels address, which makes the data less prone to outliers. Nonetheless even after this operation there remain problems in aggregating data on some indicators (particularly head counts of lobbyists) because of the extent of the extreme cases. However, some clear pictures emerge from the data; after removing duplicated entries from the Register, and discounting a small number of inappropriate outliers, we present the first such results from it. A key finding is that the differences in reported resources are less than might be expected between business-related organisations and NGOs. One area where there is substantial difference concerns the receipt of European Union (EU) funding for civil society organisations. The EU political system has long had substantial funding regimes in place for NGOs. We are able to provide the most accurate information yet available about the extent of NGO reliance upon EU political institutions. NGOs with a Brussels base representing a European interest and that receive a grant from EU institutions draw an average of 43 per cent of their budget from such sources. Finally, we place the TR within traditions of comparative lobby regulation. This analysis comes ahead of a scheduled review of the scheme by the European Commission and European Parliament during 2013, and at a time when most EU member states have established regulatory instruments or currently have them under active consideration

The European Parliament as a developing legislature: coming of age in trilogues?

This article examines the institutionalization of the European Parliament-as-a-legislature. It draws on the political development scholarship to conceptualize institutionalization and highlight the role of the environment in the development and decay of political institutions. On this premise, we argue that the political significance of the European Parliament (EP) depends on its capacity to develop strong institutions enabling it to 'exist apart' from its environment. We identify the embrace of codecision as a critical moment of the institutionalization of the EP-as-a-legislature and explore the value of the political development perspective in a comparative-historical study of trilogues in the EP. We present a typology of institutionalization of trilogues and argue that a model of generic parliamentary approach to trilogues is taking roots. While substantiating the thesis of the EP as a potentially autonomous institution, our findings also call for research into the resilience and sources of institutional patterns of trilogues

EU interest representation or US-style lobbying?

While the number of interest groups competing for influence at the European level has exploded, the EU policy process is usually described as strikingly apolitical. The initial surge in interest group participation was principally a consequence of the transfer of authority to the EU, and of greater policy activity in the wake of the single market program. Subsequent efforts to integrate interest groups more fully into the policy process reflected an effort to extend democracy. The still-limited scope of EU authority, however, also restricts the successful extension of democracy at the European level