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Communication Deficit’ of the European Union Revisited Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2010 The Communication Deficit’ of the European Union revisited. Structures, Key Players and the New Communication Policy Spanier, Bernd Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-77676 Dissertation Accepted Version Originally published at: Spanier, Bernd. The Communication Deficit’ of the European Union revisited. Structures, Key Players and the New Communication Policy. 2010, University of Zurich, Faculty of Arts. PHILOSOPHISCHE FAKULTÄT DER UNIVERSITÄT ZÜRICH The “Communication Deficit” of the European Union revisited - Structures, Key Players and the New Communication Policy - Abhandlung zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Zürich Vorgelegt von Bernd Spanier Hauptreferent: Prof. Dr. Frank Esser Zweitreferent: Prof. Dr. Otfried Jarren To My Mother The EU’s “Communication Deficit” Revisited Page 3 of 231 I Introduction “The European Union (EU) is a success story that nobody is interested in”. This is, in essence, the rather painful paradox that many Eurocrats are wearily reminded of whenever they chat about the EU’s growing role in the world – to an essentially disinterested public. From the perspective of the academic observer, this may well have to do with the fact that particularly the Brussels-based advocates of this unique form of supranational cooperation appear to be slightly biased by an inherent sympathy for the common project and, as a result, are largely immune to critical reflection. This might possibly be the case, yet even the most sceptic EU critic will have to concede that there are a number of strong claims to be made in favour of the EU and its past achievements. Perhaps most remarkably, the European project has successfully challenged the traditional notion of political governance as the sole preserve of the nation state. In a multilateral world that has entered the phase of postnationalism the specific European form of a supranational alliance has come to act as a role model for international cooperation in other parts of the world and has inspired the development of local organisations such as Mercosur, ASEAN, or the African Union. The increasing appeal of multilateral power sharing has also not gone unnoticed in the United States where advocates of power politics in the realist tradition observe the European Union’s capacity to maintain a functioning form of “network governance” with habitual scepticism, yet not without a degree of tentative admiration (cf. Sloterdijk 2005: 25f).1 In terms of its universal appeal, 1 Bestsellers such as Jeremy Rifkin’s “The European Dream – How Europe’s vision of the future is quietly eclipsing the American dream” (2004) and T.R. Reid’s “The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy” (2004) seem to indicate a growing trend among American scholars and journalists to look at the European model as a rediscovered source of inspiration. The EU’s “Communication Deficit” Revisited Page 4 of 231 Europe has even been regarded as the only remaining “realpolitical utopia” (Beck/Grande 2004). This being said, there can be no question about the fact that the European success story has become somewhat flawed in recent years, most obviously reflected by the failed attempt to introduce a common European constitution in 2005 and the painstakingly long-winded efforts that accompanied the adoption of its successor, the Lisbon Treaty. Hitherto, the Union had suffered various crises and setbacks, e.g. the failed Maastricht referendum in Denmark, the resignation of the Santer Commission, reports about mismanagement and agricultural overproduction etc., to name just a few. However, the rejection of constitutional reform as manifested by the negative outcome of the referenda in France, The Netherlands and Ireland seem to indicate a new quality: in many ways, they can be perceived as manifestations of a “creeping euroscepticism” that has taken place in recent years and that is marked by a general disenchantment of citizens with the European project. Particularly the “no” votes by the founding members France and The Netherlands have touched upon the very basic foundations of the EU as they marked a clear stop signal to the further development of the Union. Prominent critics claim that European institutions have acquired an undue measure of competences and that the role of member states has been diminished to an unacceptable, because democracy-eroding degree. European citizens, so the frequently applied diagnosis, have become estranged from the European project and what they feel as a sealed-off elite in Brussels that is governing over their heads (cf. Habermas 2005). Although there is much evidence for the occurrence of second order effects and the assumption that citizens in those member states – at least to a certain degree – used the referendum to express their disagreement with domestic policies rather than a vote on the European Constitution, the contradictory reasons that were named in post-referendum opinion polls indicate that neither the significance of this European decision became successfully communicated, nor The EU’s “Communication Deficit” Revisited Page 5 of 231 were incorrect counterarguments sufficiently rebutted (cf. Taggart 2006). In short: the constitutional crisis of the European Union can indeed be seen as much as a crisis of communication as a crisis of confidence. The apparent impossibility of communicating with its citizens is what has commonly become known as the EU’s “communication deficit”. The effects of this lack of communication can be empirically measured by looking at a number of parameters. There is, for instance, the extremely low extent of knowledge about EU matters in the general public. A Eurobarometer opinion poll, conducted in Mai 2006, sums it up boldly when stating that there is “near-zero knowledge and understanding of the functioning of the Union, its institutions and their role” (European Commission 2006a). It was not least because of such knowledge gaps that the EU referenda in the above mentioned countries became “hijacked” by issues that actually bore no reference to the actual topic. Apart from those shortcomings in communication that become visible in the context of referenda and factual knowledge, the EU’s problem in communicating with the general public manifests itself first and foremost in a very basic sense: extensive and widespread indifference – reflected by the obvious discrepancy between the EU’s highly significant influence on the political processes on the one hand and the near absence of a public debate on the EU’s actions on the other. This is most visibly echoed in the media coverage on EU affairs. Today, approximately 75 % of national legislation is strongly affected by decisions taken in the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council.2 The number of binding European legal acts has nearly trebled within the 2 The exact share of legislation that can be traced back to decisions on the EU level remains the subject of debate: whereas European regulations are immediately binding in their entirety and have a direct impact on domestic legislation, European directives set a framework within which national legislators can operate. European recommendations, though not binding, may also be adhered to in a considerable number of cases. Depending on how the European influence is operationalised, numbers vary between 40 per cent and 90 per cent (cf. Arbia 2006), yet the figure The EU’s “Communication Deficit” Revisited Page 6 of 231 past two decades and, through its economic strength as well as its developing common foreign and security policy, the EU has become an increasingly influential player on the world stage (cf. Wessels 2008: 22-25). The decisive impact of the EU, also indicated by the broadening spectrum of the vast number of lobbying groups and interest representations that are active in Brussels (cf. Jarren et al. 2007: 353 f), stands in marked contrast to its representation in the media. As a broad number of studies on the media coverage on EU issues have shown, coverage in general public media is “barely existent, homogeneous and mostly negative” (e.g. Peter/Lauf 2004, similarly de Vreese 2003). Even in times when EU issues feature more prominently in the media, such as during the 1999 Helsinki summit where fundamental decisions were taken about Europe’s future enlargement and integration with far-reaching consequences for European citizens, a public debate was largely absent and information provision seen as “deficient” (cf. Gerhards 2000: 277f). 1. Research Interest: A Deficient EU Media Relations Policy? The “communication deficit” finds its most visible refection in the apparent difficulty of the European institutions to connect with citizens by way of a public debate. Unlike in a domestic national context, there seems to be no equivalent in the form of a “European Public Sphere” that could act as an intermediary between Europe and its citizens. In particular, the European Union seems to fail in informing citizens via their familiar media. Eurobarometer surveys time and again indicate that people feel insufficiently informed about European topics (cf. European Commission 2008a: 42) and that the media feature “too little” rather than “too much” about the European Union (European Commission 2005: 17). of 75 per cent seems to meet with a broad consensus and has been frequently referred to by advocates, as well as opponents of the EU (cf. Pöttering 2009, in: Die Welt). The EU’s “Communication Deficit” Revisited Page 7 of 231 This suggests a certain deficiency on the part of EU political public relations: journalists in the UK, for instance, apparently feel that the EU is failing to actively provide the material they need and do not recognise how much that material should be organised around the particular interests of a targeted audience (cf.
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