European Union

The European Union has officially tasked Czechia to use revenues from frozen Russian assets to fund the next ammunition supply for Ukraine, Czech Defence Minister Jana Černochová said on Tuesday (20 August).

The European Commission announced on Tuesday (20 August) that import volumes of Ukrainian honey had exceeded the limit fixed in the regulation setting trade benefits for Kyiv, triggering the reintroduction of tariff quotas.

Over the past decade, the European Union has increasingly experimented with novel forms of public engagement, most recently as part of a New Push for European Democracy. A paradigm of deliberative and participatory innovation that envisages unmediated forms of citizen involvement is advocated by a network of political actors, civil society organisations, and academics. The European Commission in particular has sponsored processes that engage (small sets of) citizens in dialogues and mini-publics; institutional competition over a discourse of “citizen centred” democracy has the European Parliament propose a European Agora with citizens “deliberating on the EU’s priorities” on a regular basis. 

An important narrative justifying the salience of such institutional innovations is that Europeans want greater citizen involvement – which pertains to broader claims about shifting expectations towards democratic politics as citizens would seek more individualised and direct forms of participation. Initiatives such as the Conference on the Future of Europe are said to bolster the democratic legitimacy of the EU because participatory and deliberative innovations could answer such a demand. Crucially, this narrative is anchored in statistical evidence: the public resonance of participatory innovations are connected to (very) large majorities of survey respondents supporting notions such that “citizens should have a bigger say in EU decision making” (Bertelsmann; cf. Eurobarometer) – an empirical proposition that also features in domestic contexts such as the first citizens’ assembly of the German Parliament. 

However, political psychology and public opinion scholarship caution us against straightforward interpretations of this kind of survey data – least to infer strong expectations about the legitimation and trust-building value of participatory and deliberative innovations. Both regarding general statements about citizens’ “say” or “voice” as well as responses to specific forms of involvement such as mini-publics (e.g. PEW), it remains unclear what (different groups of) citizens mean when they react to these questions. The issue is exacerbated in the context of public perceptions of the EU which are mediated by ambivalence, misinformation, and the strong role of national frames for opinion formation. 

How do citizens form opinions on participatory innovations? 

Against this background, my research scrutinises the narrative about the public resonance of citizens involvement in the EU and poses the question: how do different groups of EU citizens form opinions about participatory innovations (PIs) such as mini-publics? While there is a growing body of scholarship that seeks to measure the effects or the external legitimacy of PIs, the state of the literature remains ambivalent: not only is there conflicting evidence but consistent findings e.g. about the influence of demographic or political factors are open to various theoretical interpretations. 

To get a better understanding of the way that citizens form opinions about PIs, I develop a qualitative empirical design that utilises (focus) group interviews to gauge the discourse of participants in three Western EU member states. 32 groups of three to four participants (n=120) were sampled in Germany, Ireland, and Italy on the basis of education, residence (urban/rural), and political vote choice (GAL-TAN). To further address methodological limitations of existing studies, video vignettes were developed which introduce a participatory and deliberative decision-making scenario in a realistic way. 

Fieldwork in Italy: group interviews 

The costly fieldwork was kindly supported by a UACES scholarship, which allowed us to host eight group interviews in the North and in the South of Italy. With my co-author, Elena Pro, we recruited participants in Tuscany and Campania and conducted the interviews in Florence and Naples – with further support at the EUI and Parthenope University. 

With a view to the practical requirements of the research design, I could not have realised the project without the additional support from UACES. It was crucial to travel to the field in-person: Outsourcing recruitment and/or moderation would not only have been beyond the budget of my doctoral research but also methodologically risky in that I would have lost significant control over the process. The scholarship subsidised expenses for two one-week field trips in April and July. 

Funding for doctoral research 

I am grateful for the support by UACES, which allowed me to study how Italian citizens form opinions about participatory and deliberative innovations in the EU. Dedicated research and fieldwork grants for doctoral students are scarce, while the possibilities to collect original empirical data as part of a PhD seem greater than in the past. Digital applications and connectivity lower the bar to implementing comprehensive research designs and the UACES grant allows early-career scholars like me to realise them as part of their PhD.

The post Forming opinions about participatory innovations in the EU – fieldwork in Italy, supported by UACES appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The European Commission lowered its proposed tariffs on China-made electric vehicles (EVs) on Tuesday (20 August) and offered one of the clearest signals yet that it was open to resolving the long-running trade dispute through negotiations, in a move that could ease flaring trade tensions between Brussels and Beijing.

Just ten EU countries have submitted their long-term climate action plans to Brussels, with Austria being the most recent, as large countries like Germany and Spain continue to disregard the June 2024 deadline.

President Joe Biden cemented the Democratic Party's elevation of Kamala Harris to lead the fight for the White House against Republican Donald Trump with a convention speech on Monday (19 August).

In today’s edition of the Capitals, find out more about an alleged leftist plot to investigate Meloni's sister, Slovakia's ice hockey team reinstating players competing in the Russian KHL, and so much more.

Nicaragua on Monday (19 August) shuttered 1,500 NGOs, bringing to more than 5,000 the number of such entities scrapped in a crackdown on opponents by President Daniel Ortega.

A European Commission deadline for Hungary to respond to questions about the easing of entry requirements for Russian and Belarusian nationals expired on Monday (19 August).

Cyprus will propose former agriculture minister Costas Kadis as a new EU commissioner, the government in Nicosia announced on Monday (19 August).

Two German warships await orders from Berlin, their commander said, to determine whether next month they will be the first German naval vessels in decades to pass through the Taiwan Strait, drawing a rebuke from Beijing.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday (19 August) his country's assault on Russia's Kursk region showed that Kremlin threats of retaliation were a bluff, and he urged Kyiv's allies to loosen curbs on using foreign-supplied weapons.

The political crisis raging in Bulgaria for over three years is about to turn into a constitutional deadlock after President Rumen Radev refused on Monday to appoint a new caretaker government to hold early parliamentary elections.

Slovakia's Ice Hockey Federation SZLH has announced its squad for the Olympic qualifiers, confirming the return of players from the Russian KHL after a two-year hiatus caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Fresh allegations of a left-wing plot to persuade magistrates to investigate Arianna Meloni, sister of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, have sparked outrage and led to a heated exchange with former prime minister and Italia Viva leader Matteo Renzi.

Poland’s former prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, is vying for the leadership of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, a role currently held by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Polish media reports.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday (19 August) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a US proposal to tackle disagreements blocking a ceasefire deal in Gaza, and urged Hamas to do the same.

Lithuania on Monday (19 August) began construction of a military base, which will accommodate up to 4,000 combat-ready German troops once completed by the end of 2027, in the first permanent foreign deployment for the German military since World War Two.

The European Union is increasingly in the crosshairs of international drug lords, new data from the EU's drugs agency (EMCDDA) shows. Host Giada Santana explores the issue with Euractiv's health editor Catherine Feore and EMCDDA director Alexis Goosdell.

Alain Delon, whose death was announced on Sunday, was a film star whose impact was far beyond his country of France, including in Eastern Europe during the communist era, where he was an icon of Western and European culture writes Georgi Gotev