Playing the blame game II: The institutions’ fault?

3.2 Playing the blame game II: The institutions’ fault?

If the media fall short of taking the bulk of the ‘blame’ for the inadequate European public sphere we may turn to either EU citizens or the EU institutions themselves. The latter have recently launched a number of policy initiatives stemming from the notion that the legitimacy of continued European integration hinges upon public support. However, it is only in recent years that the importance of communication and interaction with citizens has become part of the agenda. So what is on the agenda? The most comprehensive initiatives ever to put ‘communication’ on the agenda stem from Commissioner Wallström’s Cabinet that has been in charge of Plan D (for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate) and of the White Paper for a European Communication Policy.

The self-defined strategic principles underlying the initiates are 1) listening to citizens (taking their views and concerns into account), 2) communicating how EU policies affect citizens’ everyday lives, and 3) connecting with citizens by ‘going local’ and addressing citizens in their national and local settings. While these principles may appear somewhat trivial, they do in fact represent and embody a real change of taking ‘communication seriously’ within the EU institutions. As Meyer (1999 ) noted, there was – prior to the mid 1990s – virtually no interest in or awareness of media coverage of European politics from the side of EU institutions. In that sense, the Wallström Cabinet should be applauded for putting it on the agenda with considerable effort. A few reflections on the current initiatives: First, the initiatives seem a decade late. Second, there appears to be an insufficient distinction between short-term and long-term goals. While educational programs etc may be excellent to achieve certain things, these are likely to be long-term. Short-term goals should be aimed at raising the visibility of Europe in debates, however not just in debates about European issues, but also in national policy discussions that have an international (often European) perspective. Third, the final goal of increased communication efforts should not be to make citizens love the EU. The aim must be to equip them with sufficient knowledge and awareness to appreciate the role of Europe in global and regional developments and to have sufficient considerations available to form a (quasi-)informed opinion. Fourth, and in the light of this review, the communication efforts should discard the notion of a monolithic pan-European public sphere. Citizens in Europe prefer national (news) media and efforts should not be geared at pan-European initiatives (unless seen as marginal, complementary tools for feeding into national public spheres). Looking into the future some might be tempted to turn to ‘new’ media and in particular the Internet in a search for new strategies and opportunities. But so far there is little encouraging in the evidence online where the structure of the offline public sphere seems to be reinforced (Koopmans and Zimmerman 2003 ).

As a closing note, we may conclude that while research on the European public sphere is entering a phase of empirical maturity and richness, the consequences of the composition and qualities of the Europeanized public spheres should be high on our agendas.