A Means to an End

Abstract: The aim of this essay is to examine the relationship between the European Commission and civil by focusing on the issue of legitimacy. This study takes a critical stand towards the prevailing view in the debate on the EU’s democratic deficit. This view that centers on that EU institutions, like national parliaments and governments, derive most of their legitimacy from public input, so-called input legitimacy. In accordance with this view civil society was brought forward during the 1990s as the perfect cure for the EU’s democratic deficit. Civil society-input into the policy process was looked on as the way for the Commission to acquire the legitimacy it needed. The actual role given to civil society in many policy processes seems however to belie this conception that civil society input is critical for the Commission’s Legitimacy. In this essay I instead bring forward a theoretical perspective that focuses on output legitimacy as the key for understanding how the Commission’s relationship to civil society. From this perspective output, in the form of a smooth effective integration process, is what brings the Commission legitimacy. This also means that the role of civil society is dependent on how the Commission thinks it can best achieve integration on an issue. This theoretical model is then tested on two policy processes; the Integrated Product Policy and the Emissions Trading Scheme, this comparison illustrates the point that civil society-input and input legitimacy is given priority only when it does not intervene with gathering consent on an issue from member states and when it does not stand in the way of integration.