Between crisis narratives and limited power: Deliberative forums as a way out of the European Parliament’s structural dilemma

Deutsch

By Richard Steinberg

“Deliberative formats could offer the Parliament an opportunity to live up to its self-expectation through means that bypass treaty constraints.”

In times of crisis, democratically elected parliaments often face a structural dilemma: Precisely when swift and visible decisions are called for, the importance of executive arenas grows, and parliament risks being politically sidelined – most recently during the financial and sovereign debt crisis, the pandemic, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, or in the face of rising geopolitical tensions.

The European Parliament is particularly exposed to this dynamic. While it has steadily expanded its competences since its foundation, it still lacks meaningful parliamentary control in many areas. Most notably, it lacks a right of legislative initiative and has only limited budgetary authority. This historically entrenched dilemma between high parliamentary ambitions and limited steering capacity is most acutely visible in times of crisis. How can it be resolved short of treaty reform, which currently appears politically out of reach?

“Crises” strengthen the executive – but not only

The concept of “crisis” is not merely an analytical category. It also functions as a political interpretive framework that generates pressure to act, and at EU level can legitimize both institutional development and a greater concentration of decision-making power. For the European Parliament, crises have historically served as a justification for demands to strengthen its own role and to pursue institutional reform in a federalist direction. At the same time, under time pressure and in the face of complex problems, decision-making processes tend to become more executive-driven, while parliamentary, civil society, and public deliberation lose weight.

This output-oriented logic carries a structural risk: The more decisions are accelerated and taken within small institutional arenas, the greater the danger that democratic participation and public deliberation are pushed to the margins. The recent omnibus procedures offer a telling example. Citing the (supposed) pressure of geopolitical and economic crises, the Commission bundled far-reaching amendments to core sustainability legislation into a single package, bypassing procedural rules on impact assessment and public participation. Even though the Parliament is formally involved, the pace and logic of the process remain executive-driven.

A claim to representation without the power to govern

A historical look at the 1970s shows that this tension is far from new. A succession of economic, political, and institutional crises, including the oil price shocks, gave rise to a broad-based discourse within the European Parliament about a “Crisis of the Community.”

This discourse had paradoxical consequences. On the one hand, it strengthened the Parliament’s institutional self-image across party lines and provided a central argumentative basis for demands for a stronger role as a democratic crisis platform. On the other hand, its political impact remained limited. Despite ambitious reform initiatives, intergovernmental decision-making structures were instead consolidated – most notably through the establishment of the European Council at the 1974 Paris Summit and the development of a common foreign policy framework within European Political Cooperation.

Even at this early stage, the fundamental tension that continues to shape the Parliament’s role today was already apparent: a high claim to democratic representation combined with limited political steering capacity.

A familiar constellation: the Parliament in the long 1970s

The 1970s bear numerous parallels to today’s perceptions of crisis, which are often captured by terms such as “polycrisis,” “multicrisis,” or “permacrisis.” The close discursive connection between crisis and European integration that continues to shape our understanding of the EU to this day first crystallised during this period.

The years from the 1969 Hague Summit to the Single European Act of 1986 were marked by a succession of economic, monetary, social, and institutional crises affecting both the member states and the Community itself. Empirical analyses of the European Parliament’s plenary debates during this period reveal that a cross-party interpretive pattern emerged – a shared discourse of “Community crisis”, that durably structured the Parliament’s self-positioning as a legitimate crisis platform, particularly in contrast to the European Council. While individual crises initially prompted specific policy debates, an overarching crisis discourse gradually took hold over the course of the decade, becoming the dominant interpretive frame for the political presence.

This discourse shaped the Parliament’s self-understanding as an independent actor, defined above all in contrast to the newly established European Council, but also vis-à-vis the Council of Ministers and the Commission. Members of Parliament used crisis narratives across party lines to press for institutional reform, in particular, a strengthening of the Parliament itself. The insufficient legitimacy of intergovernmental decision-making, they argued, had produced a crisis of confidence that could only be addressed by elevating the Parliament to the role of a central democratic crisis-resolution forum.

Effects of the crisis discourse

The frequently invoked image of “productive crises,” however, falls short in the case of the European Parliament. The crisis discourse had its strongest effects internally. It served as a cross-party frame of reference, enabled shared problem interpretations, and strengthened the institutional identity and self-confidence of MEPs. Particularly after the first direct elections in 1979, the Parliament increasingly positioned itself as “the only democratically legitimate institution” at the European level, deliberately deploying crisis narratives to underpin demands for reform and expanded competences.

In contrast to this normative self-positioning, however, actual gains in structural power remained modest. Intergovernmental decision-making structures continued to consolidate. The 1984 Spinelli draft constitution, for instance, found only limited reflection in the Single European Act adopted two years later. The limited impact of parliamentary reform efforts led to growing frustration among MEPs throughout the 1980s.

The structural dilemma today: deliberative formats as a way forward?

This tension between high representational ambitions and limited steering capacity continues to shape the European Parliament’s role today. Key political decisions in recent crises were again primarily prepared in executive and intergovernmental settings. Following the cautious reformist momentum generated by the Conference on the Future of Europe, the window of opportunity for fundamental debates on strengthening the Parliament now appears largely closed. Given the limited possibilities for treaty reform, it is unlikely that the structural dilemma that has persisted since the 1970s can be resolved through new formal competences.

If formal increases in power are off the table, the strategic question becomes what alternative paths to strengthening political relevance remain. Deliberative citizen formats at the European level could play an important role here. The Parliament recognised this as early as 2020, in its resolution on the Conference on the Future of Europe, which envisaged institutionalised deliberative citizen formats as a tool of democratic engagement.

Paradoxically, however, the EU’s new deliberative formats have initially deepened rather than eased the Parliament’s dilemma. The European Citizens’ Panels established after the Conference on the Future of Europe to address key EU initiatives – such as the EU budgetary framework and the tackling hate in society – are primarily anchored in the European Commission. The European Parliament has, for the most part, remained a bystander.

What role can the European Parliament play today?

Deliberative formats could offer the Parliament an opportunity to live up to its self-expectation through means that bypass treaty constraints. With the Youth Citizens’ Assembly on Pollinators, the Parliament has recently taken the initiative itself, launching a deliberative process. Drawing on the experience of the European Citizens’ Panels, 100 young people from all EU member states worked together over three months to develop recommendations on protecting pollinators and on strengthening the ongoing participation of young people in EU decision-making.

Yet the democratic impact of such processes depends less on how they are organised than on how their results are taken up politically. If citizens’ recommendations remain confined to the administrative sphere, they risk becoming mere consultative contributions with limited political consequences. Here, the European Parliament has a dual role to play: as the initiator of deliberative processes on key questions arising from its own legislative work as with the Youth Citizens’ Assembly, and as the binding institutional recipient of the outcomes of deliberative processes initiated by others.

Concretely, this means three things:

• First, the European Parliament should act more consistently as the initiator of deliberative citizen formats. As the directly elected body, it can raise issues that are grounded in its legislative agenda and its connection to European society, setting them independently of executive priorities.
• Second, structured hearings with members of citizens’ forums both those convened by the Commission and those initiated by the Parliament itself should be embedded in the work of the relevant EP committees.
• Third, mandatory statements responding to the outcomes of each forum should be required. Such institutional linkages would anchor European deliberative initiatives more firmly in the political process and tie them to democratic accountability and visibility.

From passive bystander to translation space

Historical experience shows that crisis narratives have strengthened the European Parliament’s sense of institutional identity but have produced only limited expansions of its formal competences. The structural tension between high democratic aspirations and limited institutional steering capacity will probably persist for the foreseeable future.

Unlike in the 1970s, however, there is now a format that offers a structural point of attachment outside the treaties that allows the Parliament to begin living up to its own aspirations. If deliberative processes are systematically incorporated into parliamentary debates and decision-making, the Parliament can become the place where the outcomes of deliberative procedures are not merely heard, but politically translated, openly contested, and democratically accounted for.

In a Union in a state of permanent crisis, the significance of the European Parliament will therefore depend less on further shifts in formal competence than on its ability to make societal debates visible and to carry them into European policy.

Richard Steinberg is a historian and political consultant at ifok GmbH, specialising in citizen participation and deliberative democracy. His book “The European Parliament in Crisis? Perceptions of Crisis and Crisis Discourses in the European Parliament during the Long 1970s” was published in 2025.

Pictures: Youth Citizens’ Assembly on Pollinators: European Union (European Commission) [CC BY 4.0, copyright notice], via EU website; portrait Richard Steinberg: private [all rights reserved].