The paper firstly analyses the main reforms of the economic governance adopted by the EU during the current crisis. They established automatic mechanisms of policy-making which reshaped the EU and paralyzed its decision-making capacity in various policy issues (e.g. fiscal policies). This model of automatic governance is made by institutional procedures consist in the implementation of administrative rules without any role for politics and democratic participation.
Secondly, such institutional paradox hence imposes a de facto limit to the political rights of citizens and creates a problem concerning both the resilience of the EU and the quality of the European democracy, because it makes the institutions insensitive to the problems of people. Automatisms make resiliency in Europe not only merely unthinkable, but also materially impossible because they would force the EU to follow the same set of policy priorities without considering problems, interests and needs of the citizens. If rules substitute politics, the policy action will not meet the needs of people nor will be adequate to offer resilient policies to any changes that may occur in the society.
Under the firm conviction that “public discussion is a vehicle of social change and economic progress” (Amartya Sen), the last part of the paper explains some proposals aimed to reform the EU’s governance with new procedures of political participation in order to restore the conditions of resiliency of its Institutions.
