ABSTRACT
Opposite to the above sceptical view of a Paris-based scholar, European
Union (EU) documents and web sites overflow with references to a Eur-
opean civil society, and even the simplest web search with this keyword is
bound to meet with an unmanageable amount of responses. The blunt
question of whether a European civil society really does, or does not, exist does not help to capture the reality of the European polity.
