ISSUES OF PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE FOR THE FUTURE OF THE EU

Today the structure of the European Union is much too complex and not transparent enough to create a public discourse on and within it. Although the EU will always remain a complex polity individual citizens cannot be expected to get themselves acquainted with all procedural details. The overall aim and the overall structure of the EU has to become clear to the citizens.

In order to become interested in European affairs European citizens have to get some influence on these affairs. This is one of the reasons we decided to launch the Year of Public Policy Advocacy in Europe in 2014. The party system at the EU level is vague and fragmented and this hinders political discussions. The citizens do not vote for the party their MEP is a member of within the European Parliament but for the national party the MEP belongs to in the nation state. Rather than a genuine Europeanised party system, one finds a rather loose system of cooperation among national parties. European parties are mainly coalitions of different national parties and the logic of the alliances is different to that found in national party systems. Citizens don’t necessarily know who or what kind of politics they are supporting when voting and the situation can also make it difficult to have meaningful public political debates. Not only is following debates in the European Parliament more difficult for those who are used to following national party politics, the connection between the debates in the European Parliament and the actual decisions and legislature is much more complicated than at a national level. Indeed, the European political culture is still rather undeveloped compared to national political cultures. The low turnout of EP-elections and the fact that those elections are usually fought over national and not European subjects are other indications for the problems of political representation.

The strengthening of the European Parliament’s power through co-decision is welcome but it does not result in sufficient pre-conditions for a European public sphere and thus for a lively European democracy. If the European Union is to succeed as a political project, i.e. if its existence is to make a difference for European politics then it has to be more than a poorer version of the nation state on a trans-national level. Representatives of national governments fight for their national advantages instead of developing competing concepts for the development of Europe. Political representation is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of democracy and it should be complemented  with deliberations, with support for a vivid and controversial media and cultural landscape creating many different public spaces.

Some say that it is difficult to create a European public sphere because Europe lacks a common language, a common forum and a common point of reference. They also say that Europe lacks a European identity and a European civil society , at least in the way that they are perceived within nation states. They point out that media coverage of EU issues is rather limited in comparison to those at a national level and a large proportion of citizens do not seem to know, or at least do not seem to be very interested in what’s going in the EU.

Others believes that a European public sphere can emerge: 1. If and when the same (European) themes are discussed at the same time at similar levels of attention across national public spheres and media; 2. If and when similar frames of reference, meaning structures, and patterns of interpretation are used across national public spheres and media; 3. If and when a transnational community of communication emerges in which speakers and listeners recognize each other as legitimate participants in a common discourse.

There is also another feature in EU topics  that contradicts that of prevailing news values: power in the EU cannot be personalized the same way as in national politics. Within The main power centres like the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council it is usually not possible to connect certain views to certain people. The main actors like the President of the Commission, Commissioners, or High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy are obviously quite distant figures to most Europeans, especially as their backgrounds or personal lives are not common knowledge. Citizens have been able to follow the top politicians at the national level for years or even for decades whereas the top EU figures come from nowhere, influence EU decision making for a few years and then disappear from sight. At the national level personalisation of power gives journalists tools with which to make politics more attractive in the eyes of the audience. People and human drama may interest many people who wouldn’t otherwise follow politics but on EU issues, journalism usually lacks the human aspect of politics. Personalization is actually one of the key things that keep journalism and public sphere ideals apart. For rational public sphere ideals personal aspects and emotions related to politics seem to be only some kind of fuss, whereas in journalism handling issues through persons has become more and more salient.

“Europeanizing” the public sphere also seems to be a distant idea because of the nationalistic bias of EU journalism. The main task of the correspondents is often to domesticate the news and construct a national frame to the European issues. Moreover, many structural features of the EU governance like the executive nature of its governing institutions, vague party system and the fact that the EU leaders have remained distant to the EU citizens make it difficult for the journalists to make stories that attract publics. Media logics and logics of the EU governance don’t fit very well with each other. Even if some signs of an emerging European public sphere are detectable, there are many features in journalism, the EU governance and EU structures that hinder its genuine development. The  difficulties of creating a public sphere are much bigger at the EU level than at a national level.

At the moment the main challenges seem to be concentrated in a relatively low public and media engagement in European public affairs. Prevailing journalistic conventions, news values, the nature of the EU governance and public sphere ideals do not fit very well with each other. The crucial question still remains (and is of major importance as we approach the European elections: how does one make the elitist EU project more popular?