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To summarise this brief tour d'horizon of the White Paper: although the authors tackle each problem in a pragmatic manner, there is not one specific governance concept present in its pages. They definitely do not follow an "ideal" conception of governance consisting of the concept of independent, equally influential actors governing without government. However, the Commission does realise that some kind of public regulation is necessary. Parastatal systems of negotiation with connection neither to the parliamentary system nor a European public create legitimacy problems.54 From a theoretical perspective, the paper can be identified more with the policy-network theories55 than with the classical governance approach coming from the theory of international relations.
The Commission does not realise, however, that as long as it has the exclusive right of initiative, it has to play an important role in the process of politicisation of the Union by an inclusion of political parties. If it does not fulfil this task, it is bound to foster technocratic governance instead of acting for the benefit of the community (Art. 213 § 2 EC). Political parties are a vehicle for generating a European discourse through politicisation. This will help to create a European public, which is an essential precondition for functional multi-level governance.56. Then, there need not be a European "Volk" (people) conceptualised in its classical, state-centred understanding57 but a public of Union citizens, which remains a precondition for whatever kind of constitution. The latter will be more than a dead concept and function only if, to use the vocabulary of Jürgen Habermas, "the democratic process initiated by the constitution exists in reality"58. From this, it follows that politicisation which generates a European public is a condition for a functioning European multi-level constitutional system59 - and thus for the post-Nice process and the future of European governance.
54 Jürgen Habermas, (op. cit. note 52), 427.
55 Renate Mayntz, Politische Steuerung: Aufstieg, Niedergang und Transformation einer Theorie, in: Ibid; Scharpf, Soziale Dynamik und politische Steuerung, (1995), 263; Ibid., Policy-Netzwerke und die Logik von Verhandlungssystemen, in: Kenis/Schneider, (op. cit. note 19), 471. Rainer Pitschas, Europäische Integration als Netzwerkkoordination komplexer Staatsaufgaben, Staatswissenschaften und Staatspraxis (1994), 503 (at 531)
56 For an analysis of this concept cf. Gunnar Folke Schuppert, Demokratische Legitimation jenseits des Nationalstaates. Einige Bemerkungen zum Legitimationsproblem der Europäischen Union, in: Heyde/Schaber, Demokratisches Regieren in Europa ? Zur Legitimation einer europäischen Rechtsordnung, (2000), 65, (at 76).; Cf., Udo Di Fabio, Eine europäische Charta, JZ (2000), 737 (at 739).
57 The Lack of a "people" and a common language is for Dieter Grimm, JZ (1995), 581 (at 587) Braucht Europa eine Verfassung? an indispensable prerequisite for a European Constitution.
58 Jürgen Habermas, Die postnationale Konstellation und die Zukunft der Demokratie, in: ibid., Die postnationale Konstellation, (1998), 91 (at 154): "Verfassung wird erst dann funktionieren, wenn es den durch sie ... angebahnten demokratischen Prozess tatsächlich geben wird."
59 Cf., Pernice,(op. cit. note 8), 164 ; ibid., Die Dritte Gewalt im europäischen Verfassungsverbund, (1996) EuR, 27; ibid/Franz Mayer, De la constitution composée de l'Europe, (2000) RTD (eur.), 631 = WHI-Paper 1/01, http://www.rewi.hu-berlin.de/WHI/papers/whipapers101/paper101.pdf.