Democracy through strong publics in the European Union?

This article explores the democratizing role of strong publics, which are institutionalized bodies of deliberation and decision-making. Strong publics are important to modem democracy as they subject decision-making to justificatory debate. This article evaluates selected aspects of the institutional nexus of the EU in order to see if they qualify as strong publics. The focus is on comitology, the European Parliament and the Charter Convention. These bodies vary in their status as strong publics, but to various degrees they all inject the logic of impartial justification and reason-giving into the EU system.