INSTITUTIONAL RENEWAL OF THE DELIBERATIVE MODEL OF THE POLITICAL PARTICIPATION OF EU CITIZENS

Abstract

The article presents a comprehensive study of the process of institutional renewal of the deliberative model of political participation of citizens of the European Union in the context of determining the prospects for the Union in the face of crises and uncertainty. It is established that this pro- cess was carried out with the help of the mechanisms of the Conference on the Future of Europe, which became an innovative experience that actualized the importance of the instruments of deliberative democracy in the process of developing a common policy focused on overcoming challenges of a variable nature. Russia’s war against Ukraine has funda- mentally changed the external context of the deliberation of the future of European democracy, including the fact that the EU has entered a new phase of discussion about its territorial borders, about the relationship between the expansion and deepening of integration, as well as its ability to integrate new members. Membership applications from Ukraine, Mol- dova and Georgia, and the simultaneous revitalization of the European integration process in the Western Balkans, have opened up new perspectives on the debate about the heterogeneity of the EU and the ability of its members to act in concert.

It is substantiated that the forms of citizens’ participation in the discourse of the future EU assumed a joint search with the European politicians for instruments of democratic legitimacy of the European project and mecha- nisms for citizens to support the common goals and values of the asso- ciation. Features of the organizational procedure of the updated format of the deliberative model of political participation of EU citizens were defined at the level of official documents of the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Council and are reflected in the possibili- ties of four spaces of deliberation: (1) a multilingual digital platform on which citizens shared ideas and made public the collected texts. analyzed and published during the Conference; (2) decentralized activities carried out by citizens and institutions, national, regional and local authorities in EU Member States (online, offline and mixed formats); (3) European Citizens’ Panels, where, taking into account the information provided by citizens through the digital platform, the topics of the Conference were discussed; (4) plenary meetings of the Conference, providing a discussion of the recommendations developed at the national and European policy levels.

It is proved that an important marker of the perception of a new format of

the deliberative model of political participation of EU citizens is the at- titude towards the potential of the Conference, recorded in the results of sociological research. With the need to increase confidence in European institutions of political representation, the high rates of intentions of EU citizens to directly participate in the transnational political process indi- cate that the chances of overcoming the democratic deficit in the EU are growing.