Is the EU sclerotic by initial design?

The founding of the Conference was controversial and political, the following documents, tell (part of ) the story. Managed Expectations: EU Member States’ Views on the Conference on the Future of Europe, Minna Ålander, Nicolai von Ondarza, Sophia Russack (eds) and The Conference on the Future of Europe, Obstacles and Opportunities to a European Reform Initiative That Goes beyond Crisis Management by Nicolai von Ondarza and Minna Ålander, both of Stiftung Wissenschaft & Politik in Berlin.

The first of these papers, says,

Before her being elected as the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen put the Conference on the agenda in her candidacy speech as an election pledge to the European Parliament (EP), primarily to reform the Spitzenkandidaten principle, which had failed in 2019.

It also speaks of the wikipedia page, I say,

Conference_on_the_Future_of_Europe at Wikipedia is not fantastically informative but has some interesting sources. Was the Conference a Macron/VDL vanity project or that the sclerosis caused by the veto needed resolution before the outstanding six members join? I don;t think Turkey will, or was it just a reaction to Brexit and the removal of the awkward child from the room?

In June 2022, I was shown a video and paper by Marcus Patburg, in which he argues, that reform and renewal sponsored by the institutions of the EU, “ignores that the Europe of governments has exhausted its political credit. A reform negotiated between executives will hardly revitalise the integration project. On the contrary: ‘Today it feels that the long-term future of Europe […] might well depend on the kind of democratic refounding that a popular initiative implies’.”

It reminds me that I wrote this, “I had cause to look at, I have not yet finished the following paper, “The asymmetry of European integration, or why the EU cannot be a ‘social market economy’” or here at Berlin Free University.. written by Dr. Fritz Scharpf, a German Academic who finished his working career as the Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG), in Cologne.” on this wiki, in an article entitled, “Dr Fritz Scharpf”, which as far as I understand argue that a federal constitution with a basic law and separation of powers/independent judiciary cannot develop into a social democracy.

Looking at these formal white papers led me to examine Paul Blokker’s written work; his most recent work seems to be, “Constitutional reform in Europe and recourse to the people” which is available from Research Gate. He says,

This counter trend [of engaging with the populace] is related to democratic innovation and legitimacy as well as the contestation of purely technocratic and legalistic governance, and seems prominent in a number of constitutional reform projects in Europe. In the paper I want to, first, discuss different degrees of sensibility in constitutional theory to forms of inclusion and civic participation in constitutional politics, concisely engaging with the dimensio ns of constitutional subjectivity and forms of collective autonomy. I will search for these dimensions in what I will call legal, political, popular, and democratic understandings of constitutionalism. In a second step, I will turn to a number of recent ex amples of citizen involvement in constitution making in the cases of Iceland, Ireland, and Romania. Finally, I will conclude that the recourse to the people is often more apparent than real, and that only in few instances civic participation in constitutional politics lives up to the requirements set by normative democratic theory.

Ulrike Liebert has aslo written a book,  LIEBERT, Ulrike, GATTIG, Alexander, EVAS, Tatjana (editor/s), Democratising the EU from below? : citizenship, civil society and the public sphere, Farnham : Ashgate, 2013   – https://hdl.handle.net/1814/27537

The Abstract,

For the European Union of the 21st century, the search for sustainable prosperity and stability includes the challenge of reconciling democratic ideals and practices with the construction of a European constitutional order. From the 2001 Laeken Summit to the 2009 Lisbon Treaty and beyond EU leaders have repeatedly set out to bring citizens closer to EU governance by making it more democratic and effective yet several national ratification referendums have shown that publics are divided about whether and why to endorse or veto complex EU reform packages imposed from the top down. Despite these limitations people do effectively engage in the making of a European polity. By initiating national court proceedings active citizens are promoting fundamental European rights in Member States’ practices. As party members they contribute to shaping mass media communication about, and national publics’ understanding of, European political alternatives. As civil society activists citizens help build social networks for contesting certain EU reforms or advocating others. Last but not least, as voters in national and European elections they choose between competing party visions, and national parliamentary stances regarding the role of democratic citizenship. This original contribution to the debate about democratic citizenship vis-à-vis the challenges of economic globalization and European political integration presents critical explorations of different fields of direct, representative, participatory and deliberative democratic citizenship practices that affect the transformation of Europe. This original contribution to the debate about democratic citizenship vis-à-vis the challenges of economic globalization and European political integration presents critical explorations of different fields of direct, representative, participatory and deliberative democratic citizenship practices that affect the transformation of Europe.

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