"Is there a democratic deficit in Europe? Questions and answers from the European Public Space Observatory" is the title of the PCB Seminar that the Research Centre on Citizenship and Civil Society (CISC) will give in the Fèlix Serratosa Hall on 2 March. During the seminar the European project EUROPUB 2001-2004 will be presented. Included in the V European Framework Programme, which will finance this Observatory, the project will collect information and analyse European democracy. Specifically, the project plans to evaluate the extent to which the European structures responsible for decision-making and the practices involved in this process provide effective political responses.

Managed by Liana Giorgi, researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in Social Sciences (ICCR) in Austria, the project includes the participation of nine researchers from diverse disciplines of the social sciences at the Universitat de Barcelona (UB, University of Barcelona). These researchers are directed by Marisol García, sub director of the CISC and professor at the UB Dept. of Sociological theory. The project also involves research centres in Germany, Austria, France, the Czech Republic, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

EUROPUB focuses on the study of civil, social, regional and environmental policies. In addition, it also analyses the structures in European institutions that are designed to address the issue of the entry of right wing parties in some governments of member states and in particular to examine the sanctions imposed on Austria in 2000.

To date, detailed analyses of diverse policies have been completed and indicators have been designed to allow the monitoring of European democracy and the development of a European public space. These indicators will be useful for specialists working on other public policies. With the objective to establish the extent to which these indicators are transferable to other fields, in the present stage of research, experts in immigration policy, health and international business are being consulted.

Finally, EUROPUB has examined whether there is a tendency towards the emergence of a “political class” that is truly European. To perform this study, members of the European Parliament and national parliaments of the countries included in the project have been interviewed.

The project will provide an operative concept of a European public space, a detailed analysis of the existing institutional structures that allow responses to current policies and the monitoring of European democracy through the design of indicators.