Zivilgesellschaftliche Partizipation und Demokratie

Lobbying is a constituent component of the EU’s political system. Every day more than 20,000 lobbyists try to influence the decision-making processes of EU institutions. Until the Treaty of Lisbon, political interest representation was a purely factual phenomenon. With the introduction of Art. 11 of the TEU, it has become an instrument of European constitutional law. This study presents and assesses the theoretically democratic ‘upgrading’ of lobbying the European Union. Using the European legislation process as an example, the author reconstructs the democratic legitimation model with a particular focus on the aforementioned new participatory approach.