How Do They Have a Say? Citizen versus Business Participation in EU e-consultations

Abstract. The European Union (EU) has long grappled with criticism surrounding its democratic legitimacy, prompting a transition towards more inclusive and participatory policymaking processes. This evolution was facilitated by the use of e-participatory tools in EU policymaking. This paper examines citizen participation in EU e-consultations compared to business associations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Utilising a comprehensive dataset from the "Have Your Say" e-consultation portal from February 2017 to December 2023, comprising over 900,000 inputs, the study observes participation patterns over time and across various policy initiatives and areas. Firstly, the paper explores the variation in citizen participation compared to business associations and NGOs. The findings highlight that citizens provide proportionally less feedback to EU e-consultations than NGOs and business associations. Their feedback is also less complex. Secondly, the paper identifies the policy initiatives and individual calls that attract the most contributions from citizens. Citizens’ responses are mainly driven by topics that may directly impact their daily lives. Our findings shed light on the dynamics of citizen engagement in EU e-consultations and highlight the predominant role of organised interest groups compared to individual citizens. We discuss the implications of these findings for the EU's participatory democracy and suggest avenues for further research to enhance transparency and inclusivity in the e-consultation process.

Keywords: E-consultations, European Union, citizen e-participation, EU policymaking.

Introduction

Vastly criticised over time for its democratic deficit and lack of legitimacy, the European Union (EU) has evolved from an economic union based on intergovernmental bargaining (Hix, 2018) to a much more complex, multi-governance structure with political, social, and cultural dimensions incorporating elements of participatory democracy. This shift can be traced back to the 1990s when the discourses of EU institutions started to mention the need for more participatory policymaking processes more often (Saurugger, 2010). At the time, and still today, the transition towards more inclusive and collaborative approaches to policymaking has been justified by the necessity to overcome these legitimacy and democratic deficits of the EU (Alemanno & Organ, 2020) (Psygkas, 2017).

This transition was mainly driven by the European Commission. During the 1960s and 1970s, public consultations primarily existed in closed-door debates between selected economic actors, business representatives, interest groups, and policymakers (Quittkat & Finke, 2008). Another group involved in the discussion were the experts in different fields (Coen & Richardson, 2009). Those offline public consultations have progressively incorporated a larger audience, sectoral policy networks and civil society organisations (García, 2015). The Commission refers to all these groups as stakeholders (Aldrin & Hubé, 2016). The participation of citizens in EU policymaking started being emphasised in the early 2000s, and it is only with the recent addition of an online dimension to the consultation process that the general public has been enabled to participate frequently as well (Quittkat, 2013). Nowadays, e-consultations are an essential component of the EU's participatory model. However, despite being cherished by the Commission as a critical element of the EU's participatory democracy, there is intense criticism regarding the lack of transparency and inclusivity in the process (Quittkat, 2011). Not only do the specific mechanisms and decision-making processes within these consultations remain primarily opaque, leading to their characterisation as a "black box" (West, 2009), but there is also a lack of comprehensive scholarly overview of the actual consultation and participation patterns over time and their representativeness.

One of the main criticisms of the EU’s e-consultations is its failure to engage citizens in the process, in contrast with organised interest groups. This article addresses the concern that citizens contribute the least to European e-consultations compared to organised groups of stakeholders, mainly business associations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In contrast with most of the studies on this subject, which rely on case studies of specific e-consultation initiatives, the current study adopts a holistic approach by looking at a novel and comprehensive data set from the “Have Your Say” portal, the primary e-consultation mechanism of the European Commission. We analyse over 900,000 publicly available inputs from the portal from February 2017 to December 2023 to observe how the citizen participation pattern differs from that of business associations and non-profit organisations and how it relates to specific policy initiatives and areas.

Specifically, we address a central research question (RQ) that focuses on citizens’ participation in e-consultations versus the participation of business associations and NGOs.

RQ: How does citizens’ participation in EU e-consultation vary from that of business associations and NGOs over time?

Subsequently, we build on that to identify what specific policy initiatives and calls for feedback attract the most contributions from citizens over time.

This article is divided into five parts. A brief literature review and theoretical framework follows the introduction. The research design methodology is then presented, followed by results and analysis. We conclude by answering the main research question and highlighting venues for further research.

Literature Review and Theoretical Framework

EU e-consultations

As the growth of digital technologies has made bridging the gap between citizens and governments easier through online tools, an essential component of the EU’s participatory turn is electronic participation or e-participation, which European institutions used to respond to its democratic deficit and legitimacy crisis. Broadly, “e-participation” refers to using information and communication technologies to facilitate, support and enhance public participation in democratic decision-making processes (Macintosh, 2004). This implies using online platforms, tools, and channels to enable citizens to interact with government officials, voice their opinions and concerns, and contribute to governance processes. A dimension of e-participation is e-consultation, understood as a top-down process of citizens’ engagement by the government to gather their contributions for a deliberative process (Whyte & Macintosh, 2002).

In the EU, the driver of e-participation has been the Commission, which has gradually integrated more electronic technologies into its activities, mainly to address the issues of transparency and accountability and to facilitate citizens' empowerment (Chadwick & May, 2003). In this context, a consultation stage was formally introduced in European policymaking, implying consulting stakeholders during the early stages of the EU legislative process (Millard, et al., 2009). Nowadays, stakeholders are consulted when preparing and evaluating policy initiatives.

Implementing online and offline consultations and analysing their results falls on the Commission's specific Directorates (DGs). The process is regulated by the Better Regulation Guidelines (BRG), the policy framework of reference for improving the EU’s legislative process by increasing transparency, enhancing evidence-based policymaking and citizens’ engagement, assessing policy impact, and reducing costs (European Commission, 2021). According to BRG, stakeholder consultations are essential for gathering evidence for policymaking. In this process, involving more citizens with more quality contributions is a priority that shall be achieved mainly through improved communication across member states about citizen participation opportunities (European Commission, 2021).

In practice, e-consultations are deployed through the “Have Your Say” platform, which builds upon a previous online venue used for the same purpose until 2017, called “Your Voice in Europe”. The platform serves as the main entry point for stakeholders such as business associations, industries, civil society organisations, academia, and citizens to provide input and feedback to policies initiated and/or implemented by the Commission. The platform currently hosts the three main mechanisms for stakeholders’ and citizens’ contribution to EU policymaking – the public consultations, the European Citizens’ Initiative, and the Citizens’ Engagement section, launched in 2024. This article focuses on the platform's public consultations section, which gathers public input on policy initiatives through calls for evidence, including open-text feedback opportunities and close-ended survey questionnaires labelled ‘online public consultations’ (Nørbech, 2023). The calls for evidence are available in all EU official languages and allow contributions over a 12-week timespan (European Commission, 2021). The contributions and the results of the e-consultations are usually published on the platform.

The Commission’s online consultation mechanism has been a topic of extensive academic scrutiny, and it is welcomed overall with hope for a more robust participatory democracy in the EU (Dunlop & Radaelli, 2022) (Cărăuşan, 2015). This has been particularly praised as open online consultations are the most inclusive compared to other consultation mechanisms, such as stakeholder conferences or targeted meetings, which are also part of the EU’s consultations toolbox and require a specific invitation to participate (Binderkrantz, Blom-Hansen, & Senninger, 2021). However, criticism has mounted on the representativeness of the participating stakeholders, the inclusivity of the process, and its policy relevancy and impact (Bunea, 2017). In this article, we present and analyse empirical data to contribute to the discussion about stakeholders' representativeness, particularly citizens' participation in online policy consultations launched by the EU.

Citizens’ participation in EU e-consultations versus business associations and NGOs

A common concern is that EU e-consultations do not foster citizen participation (Alemanno, 2022) (Davesa & Shahin, 2019). Interests have traditionally been represented in EU policymaking by organised groups (Saurugger, 2008). Therefore, business associations, civil society organisations, NGOs, and expert elites with access to the EU policymaking process are believed to contribute the most to e-consultations. However, they are not necessarily the most impacted by the EU’s policy initiatives (Dawson, 2016). These concerns are theoretically justified but have not been systematically verified through actual measurements across all the existing public calls for stakeholders’ feedback launched by the EU. This gap in the literature spurred our interest in empirical comparison between citizens’ participation in EU e-consultations and that of business associations or NGOs.

The literature stresses the dominance of business interests over other groups participating in EU consultations (Hermansson, 2016); (Rasmussen & Carroll, 2014); (Persson, 2007). Based on an empirical evaluation of participants in consultations in 2011, Marxsen (2015) concludes that NGOs and citizens are far less present in the EU consultative process than business and industry organisations (Marxsen, 2015). Aichholzer and Rose (2020) make a different claim, stating that civil society has the highest input in e-consultations, although they do not support this claim with data. A more nuanced view from a case study shows the areas where civil society contributes most - environmental policy and migration- and argues that their participation is not improving the quality of the democratic policymaking process (Friedrich, 2007). Moreover, mobilising civil society beyond the “Brussels bubble” is a well-documented, challenging task (Oleart & Bouza, 2018) (Salgado & Demidov, 2018).

Overall, empirical studies on stakeholders’ involvement in EU consultations focus mainly on the offline dimension, with the online dimension being only marginally covered. Furthermore, their conclusions on citizen participation in EU e-consultation are challenging to generalise because they differ in terms of timeframes (Badouard, 2010), policy areas (Nørbech, 2023), the consultation mechanisms analysed (Binderkrantz, Blom-Hansen, Baekgaard, & Serritzlew, 2023) and the selection of entities that implement e-consultations (Arras & Beyers, 2020).

Nevertheless, many researchers believe that citizens are neither aware of nor interested in participating in EU e-consultations, as this requires specialised and/or technical knowledge that most of the population might not have (Van den Abeele, 2015) (Abels, 2009). An example is the area of competition policy, where the extensive use of overly technical language has undermined opportunities for democratic engagement (Cengiz, 2016). Similarly, Ferreti and Lener (2008) notice the gradual decrease in citizen participation in EU e-consultations on GMO regulation, an arguably technical issue requiring specialised expertise. The complexity of the policy proposals of the Commission creates high cognitive burdens, which the public cannot afford (Hurka & Haag, 2020). A contrasting dynamic is observed in copyright policy consultations, in which increasing citizen participation can be observed over time (Vetulani-Cęgiel & Meyer, 2021). Vetulani-Cęgiel and Meyer (2021) explain this phenomenon through the Commission's increasing communication efforts and more substantial commitment to better governance.

To explain differences in participation patterns, scholarship points to the relevance of specific topics for particular stakeholder groups and diverging resource levels among stakeholders (Fink, Ruffing, Burst, & Chinnow, 2021). Indeed, according to the Better Regulation Guidelines, the institutional rules for stakeholder participation in consultations on “Have Your Say” are similar for all categories of stakeholders. Therefore, it seems safe to assume that policy relevance and resource differences are the main factors behind diverging participation patterns. Regarding resources, individual citizens have generally less knowledge, skills, time, and financial resources to participate in e-consultations than organised interest groups. Hence, their contribution would be the lowest. Moreover, they might have less to win from participating than businesses and NGOs, which, although they vary widely in size, economic weight, capacity, and other factors, calculate the cost and benefits of potential consultation participation (Røed & Wøien Hansen, 2018). The cost-benefits can be higher for business associations than other interest groups (Joosen, Haverland, & de Bruijn, 2022). CSOs and NGOs often have fewer resources than businesses, which also implies fewer benefits in the case of participation (Delogu, 2016). Therefore, we expect business associations to contribute more to EU e-consultations than NGOs (as they would have higher participation benefits).

The following sections present the research design, results, analysis, and conclusions.

Research Design

This study performs comprehensive statistical analysis on metadata from 6,579 calls for public feedback linked to the published policy initiatives on the “Have Your Say” platform between February 2017 and December 2023. This includes the analysis of 987,099 public inputs provided by approximately 300,000 users. The data was downloaded from the platform using a web scraper written in Python and developed specifically for this research.

The “Have Your Say” portal enables DGs to launch calls for feedback according to their competency domain at different stages of preparing a policy initiative. The calls for feedback are classified on the portal according to the stage of development of the policy document, such as documents in preparation, calls for evidence, public consultations, draft acts, documents under commission adoption, and suspended/abandoned documents (European Commission, 2024). Data from all these stages was included in the analysis. The calls for feedback have a standardised format, which allowed us to set up a rule-based extraction script that gathered data linked to individual calls and restructured them into a data frame.

When providing feedback on the platform, users must choose the stakeholder category to which they belong. Eleven options are available: academic/research institutions, business associations, company/business, consumer organisations, EU citizens, environmental organisations, non-EU citizens, non-governmental organisations, public authorities, trade unions, and others. Despite self-assigning to a category of stakeholders, users can choose to publish their feedback anonymously. After downloading the data set, user duplicates were removed based on name, surname, and publication ID. The anonymous inputs were included in the study when they had different publication IDs.

The category of stakeholders that we include in the study are business associations, EU citizens, non-governmental organisations, environmental organisations, and consumer organisations. Although the research questions refer only to the first three categories – business associations, citizens, and NGOs- environmental and consumer organisations have the status of not-for-profit. Also, they generally do not defend private interests. Therefore, their contribution was aggregated under the NGO label. Besides, we noticed some stakeholders wrongly self-assigned their category, such as business associations self-identifying as trade unions. However, we made no manual corrections to these categories. Such errors are not systematic and thus not likely to significantly influence the aggregated results presented in this article.

The study's originality consists of the comprehensive analysis of all public consultations deployed since the launch of the new “Have Your Say” platform in 2017. Although our analysis is theoretically informed, we do not aim to explain the temporal or cross-sectional patterns found causally. We merely clarify some assumptions in the literature that appeared unsupported by a complete dataset of all the policy initiatives and calls for feedback available on the “Have Your Say” platform. The content analysis of the e-consultations and public input received is beyond the scope of the study. Also, we do not aim to understand the impact of stakeholders’ involvement in e-consultation. These endeavours will be the focus of future publications. Thus, in the current article, our primary goal is limited to an analysis of how the empirical data that is publicly available supports some of the recurrent concerns about participation patterns in the EU’s e-consultations. We strive to discern descriptive patterns to enrich the literature on EU e-consultations as a phenomenon about which generalisable knowledge is limited.

Results and analysis

Our research question is intended to identify the differences in the participation patterns of citizens, business associations, and NGOs in EU e-consultations. To understand this pattern, we looked at the total number of feedback provided by each category of stakeholders from 2017 to 2023 on the “Have Your Say” portal.

This revealed that, in absolute numbers, most of the feedback on “Have Your Say” is provided by EU citizens. Their input surpasses numerically the one of all other types of stakeholders over the studied timespan. Specifically, there are 739 879 feedbacks provided by EU citizens, 33 757 by business associations and 25 411 submitted by NGOs. However, these absolute numbers obfuscate the daily participation patterns to feedback calls, as citizens’ participation is narrowly centred on a few calls. At the same time, business associations and NGOs respond more systematically to a more extensive range of calls.

More precisely, to make these absolute numbers more meaningful, we weighted them by the total number of potential stakeholders in each category. For EU citizens, the size of their contribution was divided by the total number of EU citizens with voting rights. For the other categories of stakeholders, data was weighted based on the recordings from the EU Transparency Register. Data was considered for 2023 only, as we do not have access to the number of potential stakeholders from previous years. Under this lens, it appears that in relative numbers, the input of European citizens is insignificant compared to any other stakeholder category (Table 1). This finding aligns with existing criticism about the limited contributions of individual citizens to EU e-consultations.

Table 1. Number of contributions by type of stakeholder

Type of stakeholder	Total number of feedbacks since 2017 to 2023	Total number of feedbacks in 2023	Average number of feedbacks per potential number of stakeholders in 2023
Business associations	33 757	5 687	2.246050
European citizens	739 879	38 297	0.000096
NGOs	25 411	3 278	0.955406

Table 1 shows that business associations consistently respond more to the EU’s calls than NGOs. As mentioned in section 2.2, this can be explained by the higher resources available to business associations.

Taking it a step further, we analysed the input each of these three stakeholders' categories provides and, precisely – the length of the feedback they submit regarding the number of characters. A difference in resources would result in more complex input from the business associations, followed by NGOs, and significantly reduced feedback from the citizens. Our findings support this assumption. Business associations answer EU e-consultations with the most extended responses, with a median of about 3700 characters per input. NGO contributions are shorter, at about 2500 characters per response. EU citizens have the shortest responses, at about 200 characters per answer.

Still, it is worth mentioning that citizens’ responses have consistently increased over time and significantly more than the contributions from other types of stakeholders. Year-on-year, the increase in citizens’ contributions has averaged 290% since 2017, while business associations and NGOs have only increased by 64% and 54% per year, respectively.

Moreover, citizens across the EU have different degrees of interest and contributions to EU e-consultations. Citizens of Slovakia, Austria, Slovenia, Latvia and Germany are the most responsive to the EU’s calls (in this descending order). On the opposite side of the spectrum, the least responsive to EU e-consultations are the citizens of Romania, Portugal, Spain, Cyprus and Bulgaria, on the last place.

If we compare these results with those from the literature on another participatory mechanism of the EU, that is, the European Citizen Initiative (ECI), we can suggest that the differences in participation between countries should be linked to mediatization of specific issues at a national level and the mobilisation capacities of NGOs interested or concerned by the policy issue at hand (Weisskircher, 2020); (De Clerck-Sachsse, 2012). Similarly, in the case of “Have Your Say” e-consultations, what seems to be driving citizens’ participation is the specific interest in the issue addressed, which is much narrower than the interest in a particular policy area.

Several calls triggered significantly more contributions from citizens than other stakeholders (Figure 1). Specifically, the highest spike was caused by the consultations on the digital COVID-19 certificate and using the passenger locator form in February and April 2022. In January of the same year, citizens were already contributing at a relatively high rate to a proposal on animal welfare. In June 2022, a directive on the advertising of tobacco products triggered more responses from citizens than from other stakeholders. Other calls that triggered many answers are, in decreasing order of responses, referring to genetically modified products, establishing a digital Euro and the EU’s Forest strategy. According to the “Have Your Say” portal, these calls pertain to policy initiatives in health, food safety, transport, and the environment. Meanwhile, according to our investigation, most other policy initiatives falling under the same topic do not exhibit exceptionally high participation rates from citizens.

Figure 1. Number of contributions per stakeholder category.

Finally, it should also be noted that the range of initiatives that trigger citizens’ input varies in time and differs from those that attract the attention of business associations or NGOs. No significant correlation could be noticed between the feedback calls to which these three categories of stakeholders respond. The strongest correlation of 0.57 exists between the feedback provided by business associations and NGOs (Table 2), which might simply be because the two types of users are replying to an extensive range of calls, as opposed to citizens.

The comparison between the participation patterns of different stakeholders leads us to suggest another explanation for the high response rate of citizens to particular calls for feedback that would go beyond national factors such as mediatisation and the mobilisation capacity of NGOs. Citizens are seemingly concerned about topics which affect them directly, such as COVID-19 travel restrictions, while business associations respond more to topics that directly regulate their activity, such as chemical regulations or reporting obligations. It, therefore, appears that the direct relevance of policy initiatives for specific groups of stakeholders should be evaluated to explain their involvement in e-consultations.

This suggestion is not totally new. Kies (2016) argued that citizens would get involved more quickly in policymaking if an issue impacts their daily lives, is concrete or corresponds to their actual needs (Kies, 2016). Badouard (2013) also mentioned that the more easily comprehensible a policy topic is, and the more directly it affects the citizens, the more likely it is to steer their interest in having a say in it (Badouard, 2013). Nonetheless, further study is needed on these aspects, as it is prima facie hard to find a good proxy measure for “policy relevance” or “policy impact” for European citizens.

Table 2.Correlation between the feedback provided by different types of stakeholders.

Type of stakeholder	Business associations	European citizens	NGOs
Business associations	1.0	0.07762	0.57220
European citizens	0.07762	1.0	0.07762
NGOs	0.57220	0.57220	1.0

Conclusions

This article strived to contribute to the limited scholarly overview of European e-consultations and the patterns of participation of the main categories of stakeholders involved therein: EU citizens, business associations and NGOs.

First, we aimed to understand how the patterns of EU citizens' participation in e-consultations vary from those of business associations and NGOs. For this topic, our findings align with the theoretical and political criticism of the EU’s participatory policymaking, emphasising the general public's limited contribution compared with other groups of organised interests. This conclusion does not hold in absolute numbers, as citizens respond the most to EU e-consultations compared to organised interest groups, NGOs and business associations specifically. Nevertheless, it does hold in relative numbers, averaged on the call for feedback basis and pondered by the total size of the initial population of stakeholders. Moreover, EU citizens’ input is centred on specific topics of interest, while NGOs and business associations respond more systematically to calls covering a wider range of subjects.

Additionally, there seems to be an increase in citizens' responses over time. One could argue that this is due to the good intentions of the Commission and the increased efforts to raise awareness about e-participation opportunities in EU policymaking, as stated in the 2021 Better Regulation Guidelines. However, citizens’ participation is still proportionally lower than those from business associations or NGOs. Moreover, business associations provide the most elaborate answers to EU e-consultations, in sharp contrast with citizens, who are very brief in their responses. More sustained efforts to increase citizens' interests, knowledge, and skills concerning the EU policymaking process are needed for significant contributions to be made. Otherwise, citizens’ contributions to e-consultations will remain very inconsistent and topic-dependent.

Second, we outlined the specific calls that trigger most citizens’ responses to EU e-consultations. These calls mostly pertain to policy initiatives in health, food safety, transport, and the environment, which might directly affect citizens' everyday lives. We stress that the interests of citizens for specific calls for feedback over others seem directly linked to the subject of the call rather than a policy area. A consultation that triggered the most reactions from citizens over time and compared with other groups of stakeholders is the COVID-19 regulation. The strong impact of the pandemic on daily life, as well as the exceptional circumstances of lockdowns, might explain this.

The results presented in this article open several venues for future research. Further research is needed to understand the nuances of the policy context behind increased citizens’ online participation in EU consultation. An intriguing venue for research is the effect of mediatisation on citizens' participation in EU e-consultations, which could be addressed to investigate the wide variation of answers between citizens from different EU countries across policy initiatives and specific calls for feedback. Lastly, more research is needed on the impact of citizens’ input on EU policymaking.

References

.Abels, G. (2009). Citizens ‘deliberations and the EU democratic deficit: Is there a model for participatory democracy? Tübinger Arbeitspapiere zur Integrationsforschung (TAIF) No, 1.

Aichholzer, G., & Rose, G. (2020). Experience with digital tools in different types of e-participation. In L. Hennen, I. Van Keulen, I. Korthagen, G. Aichholzer, R. Lindner, & R. Ø. Nielsen, European E-democracy in practice (pp. 93-140). Springer Nature.

Aldrin, P., & Hubé, N. (2016). European Union, A Stakeholders' Democracy. Gouvernement & action publique, 2(2), 125-152.

Alemanno, A. (2022). EU Citizen Participation ‘in the Union’s Democratic Life’: A Policy and Legal Analysis. In The EU Political System After the 2019 European Elections (pp. 23-44). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Alemanno, A., & Organ, J. (2020). The Case for Citizen Participation in the European Union: A Theoretical Perspective on EU Participatory Democracy. In A. Alemanno, & J. (. Organ, Citizen Participation in Democratic Europe: What next for the EU? (pp. 6-19). ECPR Press/Rowman & Littlefield.

Arras, S., & Beyers, J. (2020). Access to European Union agencies: Usual suspects or balanced interest representation in open and closed consultations? JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 58(4), 836-855.

Badouard, R. (2010). Pathways and Obstacles to eParticipation at the European level. JeDEM-eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government, 2(2), 99-110.

Binderkrantz, A. S., Blom-Hansen, J., & Senninger, R. (2021). Countering bias? The EU Commission’s consultation with interest groups. Journal of European Public Policy, 28(4), 469-488.

Binderkrantz, A. S., Blom-Hansen, J., Baekgaard, M., & Serritzlew, S. (2023). Stakeholder consultations in the EU Commission: instruments of involvement or legitimacy? Journal of European Public Policy, 30(6), 1142-1162.

Bunea, A. (2017). Designing stakeholder consultations: Reinforcing or alleviating bias in the European Union system of governance? European Journal of Political Research, 56(1), 46-69.

Cărăuşan, M. (2015). Better Regulation A Renewed Impetus of the European Union. Journal of Public Administration, Finance and Law, (08), 114-121.

Cengiz, F. (2016, January 22). The EU policymaking paradox: Citizen participation is a must, but the shaping of policies has become too technical. Retrieved from LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/70756/

Chadwick, A., & May, C. (2003). Interaction between States and Citizens in the Age of the Internet: “e‐Government” in the United States, Britain, and the European Union. Governance, 16(2), 271-300.

Coen, D., & Richardson, J. (2009). Lobbying the European Union: institutions, actors, and issues. OUP Oxford.

Davesa, F., & Shahin, J. (2019). An Architecture for Hybrid Democracy in the EU: when Participation (en) counters Representation. In M. Tanasescu, & C. (. Dupont, The Edges of Political Representation: Mapping, Critiquing, and Pushing the Boundaries (pp. 143-166). Rowman & Littlefield.

Dawson, M. (2016). Better regulation and the future of EU regulatory law and politics. Common Market Law Review, 53(5), 1209 – 1235.

De Clerck-Sachsse, J. (2012). Civil society and democracy in the EU: The paradox of the European citizens’ initiative. . Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 13(3), 299-311.

Delogu, B. (2016). Risk communication and risk dialogue. Risk Analysis and Governance in EU Policy Making and Regulation: An Introductory Guide, 191-205.

Dunlop, C. A., & Radaelli, C. M. (2022). Better regulation in the European Union. In M. Maggetti, F. Di Mascio, & A. (. Natalini, Handbook of Regulatory Authorities (pp. 303-313). Edward Elgar Publishing.

European Commission. (2021, 04 29). Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions COM/2021/219 final. Better Regulation. Joining forces to make better laws. Brussels.

European Commission. (2021, 11 3). Commission Staff Working Document SWD(2021) 305 final. Better Regulation Guidelines. Brussels.

European Commission. (2024). Have Your Say - Public Consultations and Feedback. Retrieved from Welcome to Have your say Public Consultations and Feedback.: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say_en

Ferretti, M. P., & Lener, M. (. (2008). Lay public or experts? e‐Participation in authorization for GMO products in the European Union. Review of Policy Research, 25(6), 507-525.

Fink, S., Ruffing, E., Burst, T., & Chinnow, S. K. (2021). Less complex language, more participation: how consultation documents shape participatory patterns. Interest Groups & Advocacy, 10(3), 199-220.

Friedrich, D. (2007). Old wine in new bottles? The actual and potential contribution of civil society organisations to democratic governance in Europe . RECON Online Working Papers Series 8, RECON .

García, L. B. (2015). he effect of the European citizens’ initiative in the Field of European civil society. In H. Johansson, & S. (. Kalm, EU Civil Society: Patterns of Cooperation, Competition and Conflict (pp. 175-192). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Glogowski, P., & Maurer, A. (2013). The European Citizens' Initiative: Chances, Constraints and Limits. Vienna: Institut für Höhere Studien - Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS).

Hermansson, H. (2016). The European Commission’s environmental stakeholder consultations: Is lobbying success based on what you know, what you own or who you know? Interest Groups & Advocacy 5 , 177-199.

Hix, S. (2018). When optimism fails: Liberal intergovernmentalism and citizen representation. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 56(7), 1595-1613.

Hüller, T. (2010). Playground or democratisation? New participatory procedures at the European Commission. Swiss Political Science Review, 16(1), 77-107.

Hurka, S., & Haag, M. (2020). Policy complexity and legislative duration in the European Union. European Union Politics, 21(1), 87-108.

Joosen, R., Haverland, M., & de Bruijn, E. (2022). Shaping EU agencies’ rulemaking: Interest groups, national regulatory agencies and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. Comparative European Politics (20), 411-442.

Macintosh, A. (2004). Characterizing e-participation in policy-making. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2004. (pp. 10-pp.). IEEE.

Marxsen, C. (2015). Open Stakeholder Consultations at the E uropean Level—Voice of the Citizens? European Law Journal, 21(2), 257-280.

Millard, J., Smith, S., Macintosh, A., Efpraxia, D., Panopoulou, E., Tambouris, E., . . . Warren, R. (2009). eParticipation recommendations–focusing on the European level Final. ICT for Government and Public Services: Study and supply of services on the development of eParticipation in the EU. Deliverable D 5.

Nørbech, I. (2023). Does policy context matter for citizen engagement in policymaking? Evidence from the European Commission's public consultation regime. European Union Politics, 25(1), 130-150.

Oleart, A., & Bouza, L. (2018). Democracy at stake: Multipositional actors and politicization in the EU civil society field. CMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 56(4), 870-887.

Persson, T. (2007). Democratizing European chemicals policy: do consultations favour civil society participation? Journal of Civil Society, 3(3), 223-238.

Psygkas, A. (2017). From the" Democratic Deficit" to a" Democratic Surplus": Constructing Administrative Democracy in Europe. Oxford University Press.

Quittkat, C. (2011). The European Commission's online consultations: A success story? JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 49(3), 653-674.

Quittkat, C. (2013). Consultation in daily practice. . In B. Kohler-Koch, & C. Quittkat, e-Mystification of participatory democracy. EU governance and civil society. (pp. 62-84). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Quittkat, C., & Finke, B. (2008). The EU Commission consultation regime. Manheim: CONNEX Report Series, 05.

Rasmussen, A., & Carroll, B. J. (2014). Determinants of upper-class dominance in the heavenly chorus: Lessons from European Union online consultations. British Journal of Political Science, 44(2), 445-459.

Røed, M., & Wøien Hansen, V. (2018). Explaining participation bias in the European commission's online consultations: The struggle for policy gain without too much pain. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 56(6), 1446-1461.

Salgado, R. S., & Demidov, A. (2018). Beyond the Brussels bubble? National civil society organisations in the European Union. Journal of Contemporary European Research, 14(2), 56-67.

Saurugger, S. (2008). Interest Groups and Democracy in the European Union. West European Politics 31 (6), 1274–1291.

Saurugger, S. (2010). The social construction of the participatory turn: The emergence of a norm in the European Union. European journal of political research, 49(4), 471-495.

Van den Abeele, E. (2015). "Better Regulation”: A Bureaucratic Simplification with a Political Agenda. Etui working paper (04).

Vetulani-Cęgiel, A., & Meyer, T. (2021). Power to the people? Evaluating the European Commission’s engagement efforts in EU copyright policy. Journal of European Integration, 43(8), 1025-1043.

Weisskircher, M. (2020). The European citizens’ initiative: Mobilization strategies and consequences. Political Studies, 68(3), 797-815.

West, W. F. (2009). Inside the black box: The development of proposed rules and the limits of procedural controls. Administration & Society, 41(5), 576-599.

Whyte, A., & Macintosh, A. (2002). Analysis and evaluation of e-consultations. E-Service, 2(1), 9-31.

Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EU) 2021/953 on a framework for the issuance, verification and acceptance of interoperable COVID-19 vaccination, test and recovery certificates. EU Digital COVID Certificate to facilitate free movement during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Commission Implementing Decision amending Implementing Decision (EU) 2017/253 as regards alerts triggered by serious cross-border threats to health and for the contact tracing of passengers identified through Passenger Locator Forms.

Revision of EU animal welfare legislation.

Evaluation of the Tobacco Products Directive (2014/40/EU), the Tobacco Advertising Directive (2003/33/EC) and other related tobacco control policies across the EU.

Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the deliberate release, including placing of the market, of plants, and food and feed plant products, obtained by targeted mutagenesis or cisgenesis.

Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the establishment of the digital euro.

Public Consultation on a new EU forest strategy.