There is a longstanding debate on the EU's democratic deficit. Recently, the EU has responded to this by, for example, including the idea of participatory democracy in the Lisbon treaty. This corresponds to first experiments with means for citizens' participation that are rooted in the idea of...

The European Union has issued recommendations and benchmarks on the provision of childcare facilities in the member states. In this field Germany is still one of the laggards. In response, federal laws have been adopted in the last few years implementing EU soft law. According to German federal...