The EU and its member states find themselves amidst a transnational “poly-crisis,” reflected by multiple and conflating emergencies ranging from economic, migration, and health crises to security crises exacerbated by the ongoing Russian aggression on Ukraine. This situation is permeated by democratic decline creating pressure on national (i.e. parliaments) and supranational (i.e. European Commission) institutions and their capacity to deliver adequately tailored solutions. However, this poly-crisis also represents an “opportunity structure” for these institutions to transform, reform and find new ways of functioning. This panel focuses on these transformations through the analysis of (self/de)legitimation practices of EU institutions and parliamentarians in navigating this “opportunity structure.” Exploring legitimation practices is essential as it helps uncover the hidden ideological underpinnings and societal developments driving the EU's transformation. Specifically, the four papers assembled in this panel investigate the (de/self)legitimation practices with respect to two major transformative events which will surely affect the internal EU governance dynamics in a long run: 1) the unprecedented transnational experiment in deliberative democracy of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) which resulted, inter alia, in the creation of new generation citizens' panels as well as a heated debate around EU treaty changes; 2) the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a result of which the EU has become discursively connected with the notion of “security guarantees.” In this respect, the exploration of the European Commission's self-legitimation practices sheds light on the discursive possibilities of transnational actors in a policy sphere where they lack agenda-setting or decision-making powers. By presenting new empirical findings and methodological insights, the proposed papers offer valuable contribution into the field of EU studies.

The paper analyses the outcome of the Conference as perceived and legitmitated by the organisers, and whether it advanced the cause of EU democracy. In spite of the strong discursive emphasis on the importance of ‘citizens’ in the process, the outcome illustrates a shift in the traditional relation between EU institutions and EU citizens, which is increasingly oriented towards reaching out ‘directly’ to ‘citizens’. The paper describes the public-private institutionalisation of ‘citizen’ participation in the European Commission, and the increasing EU inter-institutional struggle to ‘own’ citizen participation. Last, it analyses the new generation of citizen panels (on food waste, virtual worlds and learning mobility), and concludes by arguing that this type of citizen participation is not ideology-free, and that it mostly reproduces the ideology mobilised by the organising institution, the Commission.

One of the remedies to the evident crisis of representative democracy in Europe is the expansion of participatory approaches to democratic governance. The enhancement of participatory tools such as citizens consultations, participatory budgeting or deliberative mini-publics can be observed in various EU member states as well as at the EU level. At the latter one, this ‘citizen turn’ has materialised through the unprecedented, transnational experiment of deliberative democracy within the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) and recently established new generation citizens panels. While much has been already written about these real-life experiments and political innovations, the developing state of the art is still missing a strategically important perspective on this issue: the representative perspective on the participatory turn.

We know very little about what our representatives – parliamentarians – at the national and EU level, think about the increased citizens involvement in public governance and how they envisage an optimal interconnection of participatory and representative democracy. This knowledge is strategically important at least for two reasons. First, in any democratic system, a genuine interconnection between the participatory and representative democracy is indispensable to achieve the broadest possible extent of input and output legitimacy. Second, the way in which parliamentarians and parties - as pluralistic mediating actors - approach citizen’s participation can have important implications for shaping not only the outcomes of participatory experiments, but also broader democratisation processes within the EU political system.

This paper aims to fill the indicated research gap by tracing and analysing the legitimation and delegitimation strategies of MPs with respect to participatory democracy at the EU level. The recently concluded CoFoE - a transnational experiment in transnational participatory democracy - provides an attractive case study for exploring these strategies. In this paper we will conduct qualitative content analysis of the European Parliament’s plenary debates as well as discussions held during inter-parliamentary committee meetings (ICMs) within the Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) around topics related to the CoFoE spanning from 2020 to 2023. This two-level analysis will allow to map various (de)legitimation strategies taking into account factors such as partisan affiliations, nationality or the level of euroscepticism.

The article provides critical insights into how the European Commission (EC) has been discursively legitimising itself as an actor (and hence also the EU as a polity) within the context of the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Aligning with the panel's focus on EU institutions' (de/self)legitimation amidst transformative agendas, the study explores how the EC has been discursively legitimising itself as an actor within this crisis, thus reflecting on the broader dynamics of EU governance transformation. Drawing upon a Weberian conception of political legitimation as a socially observable and testable activity (Hurrelmann, Gora & Wagner, 2013), the research adopts a top-down approach, examining the practices by which political elites influence the legitimation process (Hall, Lenz & Obydenkova, 2021). Through discursive institutionalism theory (Schmidt, 2008, 2020), it analyzes a comprehensive corpus of tweets from @EU_Commission and @vonderleyen, spanning from February 2022. The study employs a mixed-method approach, integrating qualitative content analysis with the discourse-historical method in discourse studies. This interdisciplinary and multi-perspective analysis not only contributes to understanding the EC's linguistic and discursive strategies but also illuminates the broader context of EU's transformation in facing security crises and democratic challenges.

More than a decade after the last modification of EU primary law, discussions on altering EU treaties are underway within the realm of EU institutions and expert circles. The European Parliament stands as a frontrunner in this endeavor, having exercised its authority by calling heads of state or government to establish a Convention for revising EU Treaties in May 2022, in response to the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE). In a counter move, a group of 13 member states presented a non-paper opposing the initiation of procedures for Treaty change, representing a formidable block of nations whose agreement is pivotal for reform. Yet, the underlying factors influencing support or resistance to Treaty change remain relatively unexplored. This research seeks to examine the strategies of (de)legitimation within the EU Treaty reform discourse in the multilevel parliamentary field. To achieve this, we conduct content analysis of three debates within the European Parliament, along with six national debates in the Czech, Slovak, Polish, Italian, German, and French parliaments. Additionally, we analyze three debates held during inter-parliamentary committee meetings within the Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO). These debates span from 2020 to 2023 and revolve around topics related to the CoFoE. This three-level analysis allows us to map various (de)legitimation strategies, taking into account partisan affiliations and the influence of the specific multilevel parliamentary platform (national, transnational, or inter-parliamentary).