ABSTRACT
This chapter presents how controversial political choices in the context of Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) are protested by EU citizens. It underscores that the grassroot problem of CSDP's insufficient legitimacy is that there is no democratic negotiation – to use Tully's words – in its design: because the EU citizens have no direct say in the policy-making process; because their indirect say is compromised due to the transfer from national to supranational polity level; and because even if citizens disapprove of the policy, their requests are hardly ever heard by the political elites and policy-makers. The chapter presents the legitimacy problematique by means of philosophical equations. The democratic deficit in CSDP flows from problems in input and output legitimacy of the policy. The investigator of output legitimacy has to deal with a series of bureaucratic impediments set by the fact that CSDP is an intergovernmental policy whose implementation is gradually institutionalised at the supranational level.
