Improving consultation to ensure the European Union's democratic legitimacy: from traditional procedural requirements to behavioural insights (European Law Journal)

Consultation is a crucial tool for better regulation, as well as being essential for the accountability and legitimacy of decision-makers. The European minimum requirements for consultation are funda- mental conditions in order to attain these goals. However, they may still not be enough, and consul- tation should also be designed to neutralize or bring out cognitive limitations, both of decision- makers as well as of stakeholders. This paper claims that enriching the better regulation approach with cognitive insights can in fact increase consultation effectiveness and thus become a piece of the puzzle in improving the legitimacy of the European Commission. Moreover, it suggests some techniques to tackle this complexity, which need to be further assessed by ad hoc experiments.