Paper Titles & Abstracts

The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI), created in 2009, was initially hailed as one of the most important institutional innovations in decades. This novel instrument, which became fully operational last year, purports to bridge the gap between the EU's supranational policymakers on the one hand, and the people-at-large on the other. Already at the stage of its conception though, only scant attention has been paid to national best practices with regard to participative democracy and popular agenda-setting. Consequently, the end result appears riddled with design flaws, and looks set to incite massive disenchantment. The present paper offers a comprehensive critical assessment, combining systematic legal scrutiny with a socio-empirical survey of the first campaigns launched. After outlining the regulatory framework, it engages in a comparative political analysis, distilling key success/fail factors from relevant experiences gathered in various national systems. Moreover, by juxtaposing the proposals registered so far, it tests early assumptions and predictions with regard to the ECI's workings against the most recent insights and developments. As generally emerges from this inquiry, in its current form, the instrument appears ill-suited for fostering inclusiveness, ensuring throughput legitimacy and sparking the creation of a European public space. At the same time, it may be doubted whether a recasting of the pertinent rules would enhance its impact or stimulate its utilisation. Among the adverse factors identified, the pivotal place allotted to the Commission seems as inevitable as it is unhelpful for realising the ECI's potential, and diluting the EU's democratic deficit.