Emergence of a European Civil Society?

4.3 Emergence of a European Civil Society?

The search for a European civil society (see Schuppert 2001 ) has been motivated by the deepening of European integration, the growing competences of EU institutions, and the debate on the European Union’s democratic deficit which unfolded after the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and was recently accentuated by the failure of the Constitutional Treaty. In 1993, this debate gained momentum by a decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court concerning the scope of the Maastricht Treaty. At that time, the German Constitutional Court argued that the absence of a European ‘demos’, defined as a political and social community endowing a government with legitimate political power, precludes the extension of democratic institutions at the EU level.

I would argue that the court decision drew on a communitarian tradition of thought (see Section 3). It invokes a rather substantial understanding of political community which is based on common history, common language, and common identity as a necessary condition of political community and democracy. It has been argued that this type of community thrives in national political spaces where citizens have clear-cut, historically grown political and cultural identities. But it cannot be adequately conferred to transnational political spaces such as the European Union with the persisting political and cultural peculiarities of its member states (see Kielmansegg 2003 ; Grimm 2001 ; for a critical account of this perspective see Weiler et al. 1995 ).²³

From a procedural point of view, the societal infrastructure of democracy has two components which can be distinguished for analytical reasons: civil society and the ‘lifeworld’. The sense of community and solidarity, which communitarian approaches highlight, is located in the ‘lifeworld’. Civil society is composed of a plurality of associations, organizations, and movements that are anchored in the ‘lifeworld’ and transmit reactions from the ‘lifeworld’ component of society to the public sphere (Habermas 1996 : 367). This approach can, in principle, be transferred to transnational political spaces such as the European Union.²⁴

From a procedural point of view, EU-level democratic institutions and procedures can induce the formation and engagement of a European civil society which is composed by organizations and associations (at different levels of the European multi-level system) focusing on EU affairs. Many authors, who explore civil society and EU governance in empirical case studies, share this point of view because they implicitly assume that the existence of a European polity can spawn the emergence of a European civil society. Depending on the object of investigation and the yardstick employed, empirical findings have led to different assessments concerning the shape and constitution of a ‘European’ civil society.

Alex Warleigh, who can be located in between a communitarian and a procedural understanding of European civil society, has focused on EU-level NGOs and investigated their contribution to the Europeanization of civic skills and competences. He comes to a pessimistic account concerning the socializing functions of civil society organizations (Warleigh 2001 ). Most case studies, however, rather explore the impact of EU institutions on the emergence and shaping of a European civil society. Thus they touch upon the question of agency Warleigh raised in his search for potential engineers of a European civil society (Warleigh 2001 : 621).

Advocates of deliberative democracy have asked if EU institutions initiated public debates on EU issues via civil society participation. They have highlighted the significance of EU legislation as a common point of reference initiating transnational communication and focusing national discourses on EU issues (Trenz 2007 ; Neyer 2000 ). Or they explored if the ‘convention method’ has attracted new civil society organizations to EU-affairs and to what extent it generated a debate among different types of civil society organizations. Proponents of deliberative democracy have come to a more optimistic account of a European civil society when arguing that EU-level constitution-making has opened a space for societal contention and focused the public debate on EU issues (see De Schutter 2002 , or Fossum and Trenz 2006 as presented above).

Stijn Smismans analysed the discourse of civil society as constituted by the European Commission and the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and its impact on the structure of EU-level civil society. He argues that the civil society discourse shaped by the Commission and the EESC favours a functional, output-oriented conception of civil society involvement. This results, according to Stijn Smismans, in a preference for contacts with Brussels-based confederations of associations and stimulates the emergence of large NGO-networks covering a broad range of issues at the EU-level (Smismans 2003 : 491). This specific structure of European civil society explains, among other things, why EU-level NGOs are far too elitist to allow supporters a role in shaping policies and hence fail to assume a Europeanizing function as conceptualized by advocates of active citizenship (Rek 2007 ; Warleigh 2001 ).

Others have explored the impact of EU action on the Europeanization of civil society at the level of member states (see Gasior-Niemiec and Glinski 2007 ; Gray and Statham 2005 ; Cram 2001 ). The Europeanization of civil society in Eastern Europe deserves special attention in this respect, as EU institutions particularly focused on civil society during the accession process. And in fact, Anna Gasior-Niemiec and Piotr Glinski, exploring the Europeanization of civil society in Poland, argue that the increasing reference to civil society in the context of European integration is “justified by the fact that Poland’s accession to the European Union has been conducive to institutional strengthening of civil society actors in a triple sense” (Gasior-Niemiec and Glinski 2007 : 29). The integration process provided opportunities to civil society organizations to enter EU-supported networks, it opened opportunities for funding resulting from Poland’s access to EU structural and community funds, and it initiated procedures which stimulate the partner role of civil society in many Polish policy arenas (Gasior-Niemiec and Glinski 2007 : 29–30). Yet, the authors have doubts if this type of Europeanization results in a “reorientation of civil society actors towards norms and patterns of behaviour classified as European” (Gasior-Niemiec and Glinski 2007 : 45).

Laura Cram’s comparative analysis of women’s organizations in Greece, Ireland and the UK provides insights which support doubts concerning the effectiveness of EU-level action on behaviour and attitudes at the national level. Laura Cram investigated the extent to which EU level action succeeds in ‘bringing Europe closer to the people’ in these member states. She argues that the properties of organizations targeted by EU instruments, the domestic political context, and the role of collective beliefs and values mediate the impact of EU-level action on civil society organizations in member states. However, Laura Cram qualifies the impact of EU institutions on the Europeanization of civil society by highlighting the significance of “banal Europeanism” (Cram 2001 ; see Trenz 2006 ). This means, according to Cram, that individuals start to “enhabit” the EU and “forget to remember that the current situation is not how things always were” (Cram 2001 : 614). Banal Europeanism is the result of effective services provided by EU institutions and may, as Laura Cram argues, contribute more to the Europeanization of civil society than EU level instruments seeking to create a European civil society (Cram 2001 : 614). This, however, is a gradual, long-term process which is levelled by socio-political structures, trends, and events beyond the control of EU institutions.