Lecture | European Union Seminar
Politicization and democratic control of EU decision-making
- Jeanette Mak (Representative of the Tweede Kamer to the EU)
- Date
- Friday 12 September 2025
- Time
- Serie
- European Union Seminar Series
- Address
-
P.J. Veth
Nonnensteeg 1-3
2311 VJ Leiden - Room
- 1.01
Decision-making in the EU has become highly politicised in both content and process. Every EU file, from technical ones such as ‘How much fertilizer should be in Dutch farms?’ to existential ones about European defence, seems to mobilize unprecedented scrutiny. This is a big contrast to the once ‘permissive consensus’ that combined broad support for the EU with mild disinterest in the details of its policy, but does more scrutiny mean more accountability? And who should the citizens hold accountable for decisions hammered out in the thirteenth hour when the European Parliament is far more ideologically divided than ever, the European Commission has traded its bureaucratic ambitions for political ones, and the consensus in the Council is stymied by the increasingly (geo)political challenges the EU faces?
In this seminar Jeannette Mak representative of the Dutch House of Representatives to the EU, helps us understand the challenges of democratic control of the EU from the perspective of national parliaments.
About the speaker
Jeannette Mak (1970) currently is the parliamentary representative of the Dutch House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer) to the EU, based in Brussels. She informs and advises both sides on actual developments, facilitates meetings and is part of the network of national parliament representatives. Previously, she has worked for both the House of Representatives and the Netherlands Court of Audit on issues of European economic governance and public finance. Jeannette holds a PhD in Political Science from the European University Institute in Florence and earlier worked as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Amsterdam.
