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18 | Zoltan Simon not led to any substantial civil society input into policymaking processes, and has consequently failed to bridge the gap between EU institutions and civil society, which is also reflected in the general lack of interest in this instrument (Schweiger 2017, 205). a. The politicisation dilemma Another innovation in the Lisbon Treaty aimed at enhancing the Unions input legitimacy was the so-called Spitzenkandidat process, which was designed to provide European-level political competition with identifiable faces through the nomination by European-level political parties (Europarties) of lead candidates (Spitzenkandidaten) for the post of the next President of the European Commission in the run up to European Parliament elections. This new instrument worked in 2014, but failed in 2019, leading to doubts as to whether it will ever be possible to restore it again. The Spitzenkandidat initiative brings us to a specific segment of ideas for strengthening the EU’s input legitimacy, notably the politicisation of European integration and its polity. Edgar Grande and Swen Hutter define this as the multidimensional phenomenon of increasingly salient and polarised public debate among an expanding range of actors over EU-related matters across European and national political arenas (Grande and Hutter 2016, 8-10). EU scholars usually see this as a reverse trend to integration by stealth, when national political elites perform policymaking in Brussels in a protected bubble remote from public deliberation and scrutiny (e.g. Coman et al. 2020, 16) while legitimacy for any political system can only be constructed through discussion, deliberation, and contestation (Schmidt 2020, 29). The idea of making the EU more political is not new, of course. It was in this spirit that the Maastricht Treaty (1992/93) acknowledged the importance of “political parties at European level” in the early 1990s, and the Amsterdam Treaty (1997/99) made it possible to finance them from the Union’s budget. As a result of this, Europarties have gradually been institutionalised since 2004, followed by the setting up of European-level political foundations, or Eurofoundations, as from 2007. In parallel, new dynamics in the multilevel politicisation of the Union also emerged. At the ‘bottom, EU-related issues have become increasingly salient in national politics; on the bottom-up side, EU actors have become increasingly aware of, and concerned about, public perceptions of their decisions and actions; while at the top level, an intensifying politicisation of interactions between EU institutions can be observed, leading also to a more politicised communication by them (e.g. Schmidt 2020, 69-83). One intention behind the idea of politicising European integration is the aim of creating a real European demos, sharing a European identity shaped in a common European public space with the active participation of European
