What does it mean when applied to Europe?

1.2 What does it mean when applied to Europe?

Habermas’ ideas have been applied to developments in Europe and in relation to European integration in particular. Taking some of these ideas at face value neglects the spatial limitations and implications of the ideas. Habermas’ original work was not concerned with collaboration in Europe across nation states. His writing pertained to localities defined by the nation state such as France and Germany. The writings initially do not concern issues of trans-nationality or international perspectives, but all take their starting point in the rather confined and homogeneous nation state. It is needless to say that the European Union (by 2007) has only some features of a state and many more differences including behind-closed-doors decision making, a weak parliament and a fragmented media system (Kleinsteuber 2001 ).

In later work, Habermas himself pointed out that the EU is challenged to be related to a meaningful public sphere: “the political public sphere can fulfill its function of perceiving and thematizing encompassing social problems only insofar as it develops out of the communication taking place among those who are politically affected. It is carried by a public recruitment from the entire citizenry” (Habermas 1996 : 365). Habermas is very explicit about the necessity for the emergence of a European public sphere: “The deficit in democracy can only be eliminated if a European public sphere comes into existence in which the democratic process is incorporated…. the pan-European political public sphere is the solution to the problem of insufficient social integration in the processes of Europeanization” (Habermas 2001 : 65).

In this vein Habermas is thus advocating a European political public space much akin to the national public sphere. Such a sphere would imply spanning sovereign states within a common system and with shared messages and meanings occupying this space. However, as will become evident later in this Review, research has tended to discard this ‘ambitious’ notion of a European public space.

In the discussion of which notion of the public sphere is most suitable to the advent of European integration a vast number of metaphors have been suggested: Forum, space, arena, and network are some of the most common. Summarizing previous research, a European public sphere would fulfill many (if not most) of the following functions: it would have a transparency function (being a space for all social groups and opinions), it would have a validating function (being a space for voicing, debating and possibly revising one’s own opinion), it would have an orientation function (being a space for voicing and being confronted with opinions), it would have a legitimating function (being a space where opinions and policies are made visible, a forum for gaining (or not) public resonance and legitimacy), it would have a responsive function (being a space for policy makers to infer opinions of the citizenry), it would have an accountability function (being a space where power holders would be discussed and held accountable) and it would have a participatory function (being a space in which contributions would be encouraged).