The European citizens initiative and the democratic deficit in the European Union

Abstract

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the European Citizen's Initiative and its repercussions on the notions of legitimacy and the perceived democratic deficit in the European Union. As it is a recent phenomenon, its importance to the academic debate is especially valuable. Firstly, the thesis laid the theoretical groundwork which will help to understand the debate surrounding legitimacy, namely input, output, and throughput legitimacy. It also outlines some of the discussions and justifications of a democratic deficit. Then, three European Citizen's Initiatives were analyzed. Specifically, it dealt with the bureaucracy of the process, how representative each initiative was of the wider European society, its capacity for legislative change, and the type of funding each initiative had access to. These were gauged through an investigation of the experiences of each initiative, with supporting evidence from the initiatives themselves as well as the European Union. In the end, the thesis shows that the ECI contributes to creating a public sphere in which a participatory element of democracy may emerge, thus helping the EU in securing input legitimacy. Throughput legitimacy is also tentatively secured through the ability of an ECI to enter the EU agenda setting stage. However, in falls short in...