Challenges of integration and participation: civil society organizations from new member states in EU governance 

Duration: 2009 - 2011, contact: Prof. Heiko Pleines
 

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Research question:

The integration of 10 new member states from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) into the EU as part of the 2004 and 2007 enlargements posed new challenges to EU governance, as the number of countries involved has increased considerably. However, the actors coming from the new member states also faced serious challenges as they started to integrate themselves into EU decision-making processes. Whereas state actors from the new member countries have received formal representation and voting rights that safeguard against their marginalization in the political system of the EU, civil society organizations (including not only NGOs but also business associations and trade unions) from the new member states have found it much harder to gain access to EU governance. As many civil society organizations in the new member states work on issues that are now (at least partly) decided at the EU level, participation in EU governance has, nevertheless, become an integral part of their strategy.

An assessment of their actions, therefore, provides a useful building block for analysis of different aspects of EU governance. First, concerning multilevel governance, the civil society organizations from the post-socialist member states are prime examples of weak actors and of the challenges they face. Examining their role in EU governance also helps to assess how nominal representation is related to meaningful participation at the European, national and sub-national levels. Most importantly, in this context, civil society organizations from the new member states were expected (and trained) to support the integration of their countries into the EU. Second, the participation of civil society organizations from new member states at the EU level is the first large-scale test of how open the post-Maastricht governance system is to newcomers. This concerns the openness of EU governance structures including civil society umbrella organizations to an influx of new members, as well as the ability of EU institutions to engage in consultations in the face of a rapid increase in the number of interested parties. Third, the new member states offer interesting cases for an analysis of the impacts of multilevel governance and europeanization on the mission, self-perception and political role of civil society organizations, because they allow relatively clear comparisons between the situation before and after accession. Finally, in a normative sense, deliberative democracy at the EU level might not only demand representation of different societal groups, but also of different geographical macro regions like Central and Eastern Europe.

A German language graduate colloquium on "EU governance and civil society in the context of Eastern enlargement" was attached to the research project in 2010 and 2011.


Publications:

Pleines, Heiko (2012): Representing workers or presenting EU prescriptions? Trade unions from post-socialist Member States in EU multi-level governance, in: Kröger, Sandra / Friedrich, Dawid (eds): The challenge of democratic representation in the European Union, Basingstoke (Palgrave Macmillan), 241-257.

Pleines, Heiko (2011): Weakness as precondition of smooth integration? Representation strategies of functional interest groups from new member states at the EU level, in: Journal of European Integration 33:4, 507-521.

Heiko Pleines: Challenges of integration and participation: civil society organizations from new member states in EU governance, in: Ulrike Liebert, Hans-Jörg Trenz (eds.): The New Politics of European Civil Society, London (Routledge) 2011, pp. 178-194.

Heiko Pleines: Is this the way to Brussels? CEE civil society involvement in EU governance, in: Acta Politica 1-2/2010 (vol. 45), pp.229-246.

Sabine Fischer, Heiko Pleines (eds): Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe, Stuttgart (Ibidem) 2010.

Sabine Fischer, Heiko Pleines (eds): The EU and Central & Eastern Europe. Successes and failures of Europeanization in politics and society, Stuttgart (Ibidem) 2009 .