This thesis sought to identify, if the introduction of the ECI was able to succeed in its mission of reducing the democratic deficit in the EU. This thesis used a comparative case evaluation to examine the design of the ECI and the agenda initiatives instruments of Austria, Spain and Poland. The main research question was:
To what extend is the European Citizens Initiative a solution to the European Union’s democratic deficit?
The ECI was part of a larger set of measures introduced in the Lisbon Treaty to address the democratic deficit. In order to understand what the ECI was trying to accomplish this thesis first sought to explain what the democratic deficit was and which specific aspects of the democratic deficit the ECI was capable of resolving. After this evaluation it was clear that, to successfully solve the democratic deficit the ECI would need to increase civic engagement and make the legislative process more accessible. The second chapter of this thesis concerned with the question if implementing a measure of direct democracy could actually reduce the democratic deficit in the EU. Direct democracy can reduce the democratic deficit and could enhance civic engagement, create a mutual understanding between the EU and its citizens and could provide an opportunity to increase the knowledge of citizens about the EU and its legislative process. After establishing the theoretical framework, I compared the ECI with the selected countries who hold a most similar design to the ECI. Using these countries as a benchmark, I compared the ECI on five elements by the model of Gross & Kaufmann: list of
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exclusions, entry hurdles, time limits, quorum and follow-up to agenda initiative. The comparison shows that the agenda initiative in the examined countries and in the EU is unsuccessful in creating civic engagement and make the legislative process more accessible to citizens. The tool of an agenda initiatives in, Austria, Spain and Poland, has been mostly used by political parties and interest groups to propose legislation. The same trend can be seen in relation to the ECI, where only special interest groups have been able to successfully complete the initiative process. The institutional design of the ECI has even more
complicating factors than in the examined countries.
First, element was the limitations on the subjects to be used in an ECI. The ECI holds more limitations than the examined countries. This inhibits the ECI of reaching its full potential and create enthusiasm and civic engagement among citizens in the member states. The literature of Follesdal & Hix showed that the lack of voter engagement was in part due to voter salience created by a lack of engaging political topics.
The second element of the quorum in the design of the ECI, required the lowest percentage of the population in comparison to the other countries. However, the nature of the ECI requiring signatures from 25 percent of the member states creates a situation where citizens would need a significant amount of funding to successfully complete the process. In addition, the EU has failed to have a uniform set of requirement in each member state, making the collection process even more complicated. These problems with signature collection and funding in the signature collection process confirms the literature, that direct democracy is appealing but not a good tool to be used in continental sized politics (Mendez et al., 2016).
The third element, discussed the follow up to successful legislation. From the 48 initiatives that have been initiated only three were successful in gathering enough signatures. These three signatures has resulted in zero legislative follow-up, too much dismay of the
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initiators. We can also see that the number ECI’s that are being initiated has severely
dropped, in the last two years. There are a significant number of initiatives that fail to become successful either due to a lack of understanding of the procedure and regulations which caused them to be refused. This shows that the EU still has a lot to gain with increasing its political guidance to citizen’s initiatives.
Concluding, the institutional design of the ECI is severely flawed and the EC has not successfully combated these issues. The introduction of the ECI was implemented without the proper political guidance it needs to be a success. This is exemplified by the fact that a significant number of citizens do not even know of its existence. The definition of the democratic deficit is that the EU and its various bodies suffer from a lack of democracy and seem inaccessible to ordinary citizens because their method of operating is so complex. These two main accusations have only been partially addressed. The ECI’s method of operating is still very complicated, and the EU has not become more accessible for citizens. The ECI had a difficult challenge from the beginning to become a solution to the democratic deficit. The measure has been proven unsuccessful in the examined countries and the ECI’s institutional design has even more flaws. The significant lack of political ambition to promote the measure, and lack of political will to follow-up on successful agenda initiatives is an example of this. As argued by Dolenec political guidance is essential for a measure of direct democracy to succeed. The ECI has failed to enhance civic engagement and make the
legislative process more accessible to citizens, therefore it has not succeeded in its mission to become a solution to the democratic deficit.
This is not to say that the ECI cannot be fixed, it still has a lot of room for
improvement. Several measures could be implemented to increase civic engagement and make it more accessible. First, it should allow more ‘political interesting’ topics to become the subject of an ECI. This would reduce the ‘voter salience’ and create more engagement.
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Second, the EU should actively promote the ECI and increase its efforts to guide citizens’ initiatives to enter the signature collection process, making it more accessible. A strong participatory culture would lead, as Schiller argued, to more civic engagement and successful initiatives. Third, is that the signature collection period itself could significantly improve by implementing a universal signature collection process. This would solve part of its
accessibility issues. Fourth, is that the EC should actively guided ECI’s from the beginning towards a more acceptable legislative proposal which will increase its legislative output. As discussed in the literature implementation of direct democracy is key to its success. The guidance by the EC or the promotion would lead to more citizens being involved, educated and could lead to as Gross describes a collective learning process. These changes will be significant steps for the ECI to actually become a solution to the democratic deficit.
Limitations of the study
As mentioned previously, the data used in this thesis is depended on the accuracy and the interpretation of the authors which collected the data in the selected countries. In
particular for the element of legislative follow-up this could be subjective, since the authors do not mention what constitutes legislative follow-up. Second, is that this thesis does not take into account the time period after the selection of the authors. It could be that legislation has changed in the chosen countries in recent years which has led to a different agenda initiative process or outcomes than described in this thesis. The validity of this study is predominantly dependent on the element of legislative follow-up to the initiative. This element is
particularly difficult to compare since the ECI has only been in effect for four years. This touches upon another difficulty of examining a policy measure which success depends in part on the knowledge of citizens on the measure. For the ECI to be successful citizens need to be able to know of its existence and be accustomed to its functioning. Judging a policy measure
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this soon after its implementation before it has been able to become engrained into society, is another limitation of this study.
The ECI needs more time to find its audience and to tweak its institutional design. Therefore it would be interesting to conduct further research on the initiative in another five years. It would also be interesting to study how direct democracy could be implemented more successfully on a continental size and which tool of direct democracy would work best in that setting.
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