ENLIGHTEN’s central contention is that the policy timeframe of crises is crucial when considering how they affect the legitimacy of resulting European input, output and throughput governance processes. It addresses the call’s concern with new modes of integration and their impact on democratic practices through the contrasting lens of fast- and slow-burning crises. This lens is then applied to a range of policy fields that are widely accepted as being critical to both the sustainability of Europe’s continent-wide coordinated governance architecture and the responsiveness of Europe’s continent-wide democratic polity.
Besides a global research work led on legitimacy on EU modes of governance in general, the three following policy fields were chosen because they function as important signifiers of the implementation, effectiveness and legitimacy of the European governance architecture resulting from the recent crises: