How can we conceptualize and empirically measure political trust and legitimacy beyond the usual survey question “How much trust do you have in the parliament?”? Does the multi-level nature of European representative democracies require an identical level of citizen support at the regional, national and EU levels? How does social polarization on key policy issues of our times –immigration, climate change, and gender inequality– challenge the political trust in, and legitimacy of, democratic political systems? And what can policymakers and civil society do to master these challenges? ActEU aims at finding answers to these questions pursuing two overarching goals: In phase 1, we map and investigate persistent problems of declining trust, legitimacy and representation in Europe with a particular attention to the polarization of societies and the EU’s multi-level structures. Providing an innovative conceptual framework on political attitudes, behavior and representation across Europe, we establish an original empirical infrastructure based on an innovative combination of methods and newly collected quantitative and qualitative empirical data (focus groups, experimental surveys, web scraping). In phase 2, these results will flow directly into the creation of a toolbox of remedial actions to enhance political trust in and legitimacy of European representative democracies. In cooperation with a newly created Civil Society Network, Youth Democracy Labs across 13 European cities and in exchange with political cartoonists “Cartooning for democracy”, we will develop context-sensitive solutions for all polity levels and some of the most polarizing policy areas, and craft tailor-made toolkits for both policymakers and civil society and the educational sector. Finally, we deploy a differentiated dissemination strategy to maximize ActEU’s scientific, policy and societal impact in activating European citizens’ trust and working towards a new era of representative democracy.

In recent years, it has become clear that what is frequently described as post-truth politics will be one of the central challenges facing liberal democracy in the 21st century. This project addresses the implications of this challenge. Drawing on a multi-disciplinary approach, the project will generate a conceptual definition as well as an operationalization and empirical indicators for the analysis of post-truth politics; spell out the ways in which post-truth politics constitutes an existential threat to liberal democracy; analyze the state of play as regards various dimensions of post-truth politics in Europe; and use its own empirical findings regarding the state of play to develop policy recommendations, methods and toolkits as to how best to respond to various expressions of the phenomenon. The project is structured along a temporal and a thematic axis. On the temporal axis, the project will proceed in three consecutive phases, i.e. a methodological-conceptual, an empirical-analytical and a critical-advisory phase. On the thematic axis, the project is divided into nine academic work packages that address central components of post-truth politics from the perspective of preconditions (how such phenomena have come about), expressions (how they manifest themselves in political processes), and potential responses (how their effects can and ought to be mitigated). The project’s academic work packages address post-truth politics from the vantage points of populism, public sphere dynamics and impacts on political culture; the role of technological aspects in fostering the rise of post-truth politics; the twin roles of lack of trust, but at the same time also increased demands for quality journalism; strategic disinformation as an external challenge to liberal democracy; the impacts of regulatory responses to disinformation; and importantly also the role that citizenship education and media literacy can play in mitigating the challenge of post-truth politics.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU has responded by re-engaging with its neighbours. This builds on the assumption that bringing them into the European family of liberal democracies will increase the resilience of the whole European community against external negative interference. Combining insights from a variety of academic fields, RE-ENGAGE will deliver innovative research and concrete advice on how the EU should adapt its foreign policy tools to the current context. Russia’s war against Ukraine has radically altered European security, not only causing extreme civilian suffering in Ukraine, but posing a direct threat to neighbouring countries fearful of the war spreading. Confronted by the direst security crisis in decades, EU policymakers are forced to fundamentally rethink their security policies. Europe has demonstrated unexpected unity and resolve, adopting a series of sanctions against Russia, and increasing national defence spending to better handle potential military threats. This has also led to a revival of EU enlargement process. While this will not improve EU resilience to military threats in the narrow sense, it may counter hybrid warfare, which is the more likely threat faced by the EU and most of its neighbours. The neighbourhood policy and the accession process require urgent adjustment to build strong, resilient neighbourhood states capable of countering external threats, particularly those posed by hybrid warfare. A systematic investigation of how this can be achieved in the current context without compromising the EU’s values and security is therefore needed. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, there have been increasing calls from the EU for a more context-sensitive approach to its neighbours. RE-ENGAGE will assist the EU in determining how best to achieve this goal through an in-depth study of six cases – three in the Western Balkans and three in the Eastern Neighbourhood.

Human Rights Justifications (HRJ) are when States use human rights to justify decisions. Human rights regimes operate on the presumptions that only individual persons can be in possession of human rights. The regulatory gaps occurring when the States use HRJ for their actions are two-fold, one in the regulation of the States’ use of HRJ and one in the individual human rights protection when States use HRJ. This activity is not regulated by any international, regional or national regime. In other words, significant and important gaps in human rights regulations has now been identified, which this project seeks to address. We will develop a theory of HRJ and a process for Systematic Ongoing Civil Society Engagement (ODCSE) as a tool for a gender and intersectional inclusive Civil Society engagement. Through ODCSE, we will identify gaps in human rights regulations and protection, serving as underpinning data for our recommendations to EU in support of a multinational human rights system and promotion of transnational democratic governance. ODCSE will also help us identify geopolitical elements that influence States’ use of HRJ. This will be done through 5 countries: Sweden, Finland, Taiwan, India and Ukraine, through three actions: human rights dialogue, inclusive democratic participations, and protection of human rights defenders, and operationalised through three themes: Covid, Migration and Climate.

The evolution of the EU’s politics and policies has demonstrated that differentiation can no longer be treated as an anomaly in the integration process, posing a key set of questions to academic and policy-makers alike: whether, how much and what form of differentiation is not only compatible with but also conducive to a more effective, cohesive and democratic EU. The project’s name – EU IDEA – Integration and Differentiation for Effectiveness and Accountability – captures these key questions. The basic claim underpinning our proposal is that differentiation is not only necessary to address current challenges more effectively, by making the Union more resilient and responsive to citizens. Differentiation is also desirable, by introducing a useful degree of flexibility in the complex EU machinery, so long as such flexibility is compatible with the core principles of the EU’s constitutionalism and identity, sustainable in terms of governance, and acceptable to EU citizens, Member States and affected third partners. In line with these premises and objectives, EU IDEA will conduct an historical and philosophical investigation of the origins of differentiation, within and outside the EU (WP 1); analyse differentiation – in relation to issues of governance and accountability (WP 2) and narratives on EU constitutionalism and identity (WP 3); investigate the practice of differentiation in key policy areas (WPs 4-5-6) and in light of the prospects for Brexit (WP 7); and assess the political and public preferences at national level (WP 8). The findings of our analysis will be instrumental to defining the criteria – at institutional, policy and societal levels – to assess future scenarios of differentiation as a tool of integration (or disintegration) and to develop policy recommendations for EU and national policy-makers with an aim to a more effective and accountable Union (WP 9).