The Utopian

2.1 The Utopian

In the literature in the past two decades we can observe a development from focusing on a ‘public sphere heavy’ notion of a singular, pan-European public sphere to focusing on a ‘public sphere light’ notion of co-existing national public spheres in regard to European politics. The by now largely rejected notion of a singular, supra-national, pan-European public sphere was conceptualized as communicative space requiring a common language, a shared identity and a transnational media system (Kielmansegg 1996 ; Habermas 2001 ; Grimm 2004 ). Theorists were quick to acknowledge that a European public sphere is close to impossible due to communication barriers imposed by, e.g., the different languages. However, as later acknowledged by Kielmansegg (2003

) and critics of this notion of a European public sphere (e.g., Schlesinger 1999 ; de Vreese 2002

), the European Union “is not a community of communication, hardly a community of shared memories; it is merely, and in a limited sense, a community of shared experiences” (my translation, Kielmansegg 2003 : 58).¹

Recently, Habermas and Derrida (2003 ) argued that developments in international relations (and most notably the rift between the U.S. and Europe) fostered public demonstrations on a common cause which could be seen as the beginning of a “real”, transnational European public sphere. In addition, it was claimed that the time was ripe for the articulation of a European identity beyond the ‘legacies of eurocentrism and the logic of nation states’. A response to this interpretation was offered by Hands (2006 ) who rejected that ‘February 15, 2003’ (the day of the mass demonstrations) could be seen as the birth of a European public sphere. It was rather a manifestation of the ‘maturing of global civil society’ and not an expression of a European public sphere.

The notion of a monolithic, singular and pan-European public sphere has also been largely discarded in the light of the evidence in this area where attempts to create pan-European media (including for example the newspaper The European and the heavily subsidized Euronews) have failed (de Vreese 2002 ).