Opinion by Winona Kamphausen

We already live in a world organised through networks: from social media to global activism. What if the EU worked like that, too? That idea has a name: polycentricity. The next steps in European Integration are often portrayed as either re-nationalisation or federalisation. But polycentricity could be a third possibility as a new way of thinking about how it could organise itself for the next generation.

What Even is Polycentricity?

Polycentricity, simply put, means that an institution has many different centres of decision-making. We can see this already to some degree with the EU: not all decisions are made in Brussels or the national member states. Many come from cities, courts, NGOs or even individuals. Many different actors have autonomy but operate under shared rules. They collaborate, compete and resolve conflicts without needing constant top-down directions.

The Ostroms identify self-governance as a core value, the idea that people and communities help shape the rules that shape them. Basically, you can imagine it as a giant group project organised as a matrix where everyone has a role and power to propose solutions rather than a boss who is leading everything.

Polycentricity vs. Federalism

We often hear that Europe must become a federation or should return power to the member states. Polycentricity challenges the binary. While it can be argued that federalism and polycentricity overlap at many points in a Venn diagram, some features are distinct from each other.

Federalism relies on a clear hierarchy with a central authority. However, polycentricity allows multiple overlapping authorities, works through cooperation and has no ultimate centre of power; rather, it is about a network of centres of power that negotiate with each other. We already have this in the EU; no single actor has full competence.

The EU is already quite well suited for polycentricity because it is too diverse to impose a more centralised federal model, and too integrated to simply devolve everything back to states. In polycentricity, communities remain distinct while still cooperating on big challenges like climate, digital rights, and mobility.

Where the EU is Already Polycentric

The EU already has some polycentric elements in its system:

Multi-level governance: The EU, Member States, regions, and cities all share power. No single actor dominates the entire system.
Courts as interacting centres: National courts and the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) continuously collaborate and challenge each other, a perfect example of polycentric conflict resolution.
EU citizenship: Citizens move across borders to study, work, and vote locally. This creates overlapping communities, but also tension, when mobility rights clash with local democratic choices.
Policy networks: Agencies, ministries, experts, and NGOs coordinate in fields like environment, digital policy, and food safety. They are decentralised but linked through shared rules.

Why Polycentricity Could be the Future of EU Integration

The EU is too diverse for a one-size-fits-all integration. Polycentricity has more opportunities to respect local identities and social models while still enabling cooperation.

It also empowers individuals and communities. At its core is the idea of self-governance. Instead of waiting for national or EU leaders to act, people and places can generate solutions.

Polycentricity might be better at handling modern complexities such as climate change, migration and the digital transformation. These challenges demand responses on many different levels. Overall, polycentricity sounds like a doable solution for the EU, but this also requires changes to the current structure.

Towards a polycentric EU

Further strategies to strengthen polycentricity in the EU should include making citizens’ participation truly meaningful. This could mean, for example, strengthening the European Citizens’ Initiative by turning it into a genuine agenda-setter, with mandatory debates in the Parliament and a requirement for a public response from the Commission. Simplifying the signature process could also improve transparency and accessibility. Together, these steps could help create a more genuine bottom-up governance structure within the EU.

Another step could be to strengthen horizontal, cross-border cooperation among cities, regions, thematic networks, universities, civil society, and young people (this can be found inEU&U’s manifesto). These connections are essential for polycentricity and could deepen integration at more local levels. This could be supported by empowering institutions such as the Committee of the Regions, as well as regional authorities more broadly, alongside greater inter-parliamentary and inter-municipal cooperation.

The EU also suffers from unequal orprivileged access. Many citizens do not know how to make their voices heard or how to influence policy. Addressing this could involve clearer communication, for example, through digital dashboards that explain decision-making processes, as well as more transparent and accessible databases overall.

Finally, the EU could invest more in learning and civic capacity. Such structures benefit institutions as much as individuals. This could take the form of empowering youth councils, introducing participatory budgeting pilots, expanding EU democracy education programmes, or developing online civic platforms. Polycentricity thrives when individuals understand and engage with governance, and strengthening education and participation is a crucial step forward.

Outlook

While all of these ideas sound appealing, how realistic is a polycentric EU? There are already many elements of this in place; however, it is doubtful that we will see a fully polycentric EU. Polycentricity offers a vision of Europe where power moves in many directions, where cities, citizens, and communities collaborate across borders while maintaining their own identities. Right before Europe Day, imagining a more polycentric EU is an interesting thought experiment, inviting us to consider what we could achieve in the next stages of integration. After all, a diverse institution like the EU will always require polycentric elements.

Could Polycentricity Be the Future of European Integration?