ABSTRACT
Controlled by economic and political elites in institutionally complex and intransparent forms of policy-making, the European Union (EU) seems to lack popular legitimacy. Institutional crises such as the demise of the Santer Commission in 1999 and the failed referendums about the Constitution in France and the Netherlands in 2005 have led to calls for more participatory supranational democracy. Greater interest and more active involvement of citizens in the politics of the EU, it is argued, could strengthen a collective European identity and lead to the greater transfer of loyalties to the supranational level within the complex EU system of multilevel governance.1 The European Commission has even devised strategies for citizens’ input into the legislative process by email communication.
