| Summary: | Ever since the beginning of the European project, there was an urgent need to make the EU more citizen-friendly and responsive to the needs of citizens. In view of the deficit of EU democratic legitimacy, supranational institutions saw participation-based democracy as a response to this challenge. This is why, from 2001 onwards, the Commission developed a new communication and information strategy to foster debate and dialogue between EU administrations and Europeans. Within this context, the EU created the Europe Direct information centres (EDIC) which are EU local offices aiming at communicating and promoting participatory politics. This study explores if the EDIC in the Spanish autonomous community of Cantabria pursues participatory democracy and, consequently, if this centre contributes to tackling the crisis of democratic legitimacy in the EU. An interview and surveys are conducted to delve into the experience of the director of the centre and examine the opinion of users with regards to participation, political interest, satisfaction with the service, and so on. The hypothesis underlying this research is that this service has the potential for enhancing the political involvement of the Cantabrian population. The results obtained in this study confirm this assumption and indicate that this service is on the right track to achieve full participation. Besides this, the results reveal that the EDIC can reduce illegitimate practices in the EU. This thesis, therefore, presents the EDIC as a competent centre to locally assist the EU in strengthening the quality of democracy. This thesis stimulates further research and opens up new horizons in the field of European democracy.
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