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Abstract: This paper focuses on the third sector’s involvement in debates about the future shape of the European Union between 2002 and 2004, with an emphasis on the processes known as the Convention, its Forum and the broader ‘Futurum’ initiative. In contrast to other literature in this area, we take the perspective of third sector policy stakeholders across Europe as well as in Brussels, charting their experiences of engagement and its effects on ways of conceiving of the sector, its agendas and ways of working. We also set out to analyse relationships that are articulated or emerging across levels, using the metaphor of ‘translation’ to stress that this process involves transformation in both directions. Were these actors and organisations caught up in a ‘constitutional momentum’ or ‘hype’ (Pollak, 2004)? What was the importance of their different conceptual, social, political and material resources for the activities of third sector communities? How were agendas ‘translated’ not only within a multi-layered European system, but also across conceptual cleavages or different traditions in particular countries? What alliances were made, how did they develop and with what effect for third sector policy activity more generally? A Brussels level opportunity? Suggestions that some representatives of ‘civil society’ might be directly included on the Convention itself were not fulfilled. Instead the third sector, NGOs and other interested organisations in Brussels had to wait to see how the Convention would work. In the meantime they continued to press their case for more systematic consultation. Though all their hopes for consultation and participation were not realised, a number of ‘listening events’ were arranged which relied heavily on traditions of third sector organisation in Brussels. The experience of the Convention on the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Treaty Convention also encouraged leaders of several NGO umbrellas to create the ‘Civil Society Contact Group’ (CSCG) drawing together organisations working on social issues, environment, development and human rights. In March 2003 this group instituted a campaigning arm, Act4Europe. This was presented as an open ‘network’, which would inform NGOs and associations across Europe about the issues being debated in the Convention that the organisers thought were relevant, and encourage action by suggesting particular strategies. CSCG leaders hoped this would amplify lobbying carried out at local and national levels. Yet responses to the process of drawing up the Treaty varied greatly among the different third sector communities at national and sub-national levels. Third sector experiences across Europe. In many cases third sector policy communities chose not to get involved because of limited resources, or because they did not see the call for ‘civil society’ involvement on the European treaty as relevant for their own concerns. Unsurprisingly national ‘scripts’ or frameworks were reproduced through the demands that were made in relation to the Constitution. Yet it would have been difficult to correctly ‘read off’ third sector activities from existing national or regional situations and policy traditions. Governments responded to the process as a unique event, creating new forums, or ignoring existing ones. Other examples of national engagement often seem best explained by individual or collective policy entrepreneurship based on key people acting across levels or vertical fields. Sometimes involvement with the constitutional process included direct and specific attempts to alter the contents of the draft Treaty, at other times it seemed more ‘demonstrative’, and the audience might as well be national as international. All these activities involved attempts to translate agendas, concepts and ways of working. Sometimes the relevant boundary was national-European, in other cases it was more between different forms of organisation and between formal and informal means of participation. Despite the difficulty of these attempts, and the existence of significant national cleavages and conceptual differences, a degree of alignment was found around support for the Charter of Fundamental Rights, a set of social values and objectives and the idea of civil dialogue or participatory democracy. These were embedded in alliances with other networks including MEPs, socio-economic actors and politicians. Such alliances were particularly helpful in the more informal ‘battle of amendments’ in the final stages of the Convention. Patterns and consequences In building connections across and outside the third sector, it’s actors tested a number of different strategies. Horizontal organisation in institutional terms was neither necessary nor sufficient for the sector to become involved in debates on the future of Europe. However the debates were a location for the development of a number of different attempts at building or exploring horizontality in conceptual terms. Taking this aspect seriously helps us steer a middle path between the unrealistic expectations that academics have often brought to studies of this process and the uncritical rhetoric of third sector organisations themselves. Where third sector groups saw political or cultural capital to be gained they made conscious choices to get involved and there is evidence that in some cases at least they were able to bring about an expression of their interest and of their presence. At the Brussels level such efforts were shaped by the form of the Convention itself: creating and strengthening impulses to find consensus. While this model of participation was very different from the activist response of NGOs and trade unions to some other IGCs, it gained publicity for their ambitions and extended a limited call for involvement in the process (expressed by member states at Laeken, 2001) into a place at the table that was written into the eventual draft presented to the Council of Europe. Nonetheless, if variation was the keynote between countries, it also existed within European, national, even local, third sector communities. Though the Convention’s own story of itself, and academic renderings, have produced visions of a unified ‘civil society’, within which third sector organisations may be submerged, our research indicates the continued diversity of European third sectors and divisions about how far to support the draft now being put to European peoples.

Keywords: Third sector; Europe; policy

Language: English

54 pages, 2005

Note: Available online at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/TSEP/OpenAccessDocuments/12TSEP.pdf

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RePEc:hhh:senior:2005_023

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