ABSTRACT
Public opinion has become a crucial component in EU governance during the last two decades. Once an elite driven phenomenon, EU integration and enlargement now involve interaction between institutions of the Union, member states' governments, and European citizens. Starting with the Maastricht Treaty, some member states' governments resorted to national referenda to decide the fate of new treaties agreed upon at the EU level. With the Maastricht, Nice, and Lisbon treaties, such choice in decision making resulted in initial rejection of the proposed treaties by citizens of some countries and required a second visit, coupled with intense campaigning, to have them accepted by the people. In an attempt to improve participatory democracy by citizens at the EU level, the new Lisbon Treaty introduced the European Citizens' Initiative (Commission, 2007: 20). Accordingly, one million citizens coming from a yet to be determined number of member states could start an initiative. What this means for future enlargement decisions is that a million or so people across the EU could gather signatures to determine the fate of a candidate country. Rather, it further strengthens the hand of those governments that wish to dump their decision on a candidate country's fate into the lap of its own citizens, as is the case of Turkey with the current French and German governments. As such, public opinion is once again becoming a crucial factor in shaping the future of membership in the EU.
