The role of local government bodies in European policy-making

Since the publication of the White Paper on European governance, COM (2001) 428, the Commission has stressed that ‘people increasingly distrust institutions and politics or are simply not interested in them’, registering the growing gap between the EU and European citizens. In this context, the European institutions have been promoting several initiatives with the aim of facilitating participation in the European decision-making process. The paper will focus on: (1) the relationship between local governance and participation in the European Union; in this frame, the European institutions tried to start a dialogue with local authorities (see the role of the CoR) and the actors of civil society (through both the European Economic and Social Committee and the Transparency Policy); (2) the consequences either in the theoretical field or in practice. On one hand, the initiatives carried out have created the basis for a new model of multi-level governance and ‘participative democracy’; on the other hand the demand for wider participation produces a continuous growth of lobbying by the actors of civil society, whose regulation appears rather difficult notwithstanding the important efforts made through the European Transparency Initiative.