Koen van Zon

Koen van Zon works as a postdoc researcher on the Consumers on the March project. He completed his PhD thesis at Radboud University Nijmegen, where he also studied history. He also worked as a lecturer at Radboud University and Utrecht University.

In his PhD thesis, he studied the history of the representative institutions of the European Community (the European Parliament and the European Economic and Social Committee). These institutions were created in the 1950s as a bridge between the Community and its citizens, but they struggled with their role in the Community.  Given their limited competences, how should they perform this bridging function, and did their power base reside with their constituencies or in the Community?

In the Consumers on the March project, he builds on his expertise in the institutions of the European Community and the question of political representation, by looking at the way in which the representation of consumer interests was organised at the European level and the ways in which institutions of the European Community adopted the consumer interest as part of their political agenda.