Below are the abstracts of the research papers that were presented in the afternoon sessions. If the paper title is blue, you can click through to see the full research paper.
Research Panels
1A: National Dimension and Citizenship
1B: Economic Issues and Citizenship
1C: Participation and Elections
2A: Social and Environmental Citizenship
Communicating the Mutation of Member States’ Nationalities
Communicating European citizenship is impossible without critical assessment of the dynamics of development of Member States’ nationalities in Europe. Old-school thinking about nationality, which ultimately undermines the understanding of European citizenship, is not an option any more at the present stage of European integration. Amplifying global trends resulting in the diminishing in importance of state nationalities, European integration shaped a legal reality where the importance of particular nationalities is dwarfed compared with that of EU citizenship. Short of being abolished in the legal sense, nationalities mostly serve as access points to the status of EU citizenship. The status provided by the Community is practically more important for all the individuals in possession of it, than any Member State nationality as such, bringing important rights, including equal treatment in twenty seven, as opposed to one state. Member State nationality is bound to mutate to a considerable extent under the pressures of the internal market, non-discrimination on the basis of nationality, and EU citizenship. In one example, already now several Member States differentiate between EU citizens and third country nationals for the purposes of naturalisation. The result of this mutation will necessarily be a legal status which is more aware of its own limitations. This reinvention of nationality will necessarily result in critical scrutiny of all its attributes which are taken for granted in the Member States today, including the importance and uniqueness of local nationalities, preventing Europeans from grasping the essence of EU citizenship.
Communicating What to Who: Learning from Experience in New Europe
We might spend hours in designing new strategies of how to communicate European citizenship and it will not bring to us any satisfactory result, unless we look to the core of the issue, which is what has to be communicated and why. In this paper I would like to draw parallels between the content of national citizenship and that of the European: are they the same or different? The other question is why national citizenship does not need strategies to be communicated? By asking these questions I call to focus again on the content of European citizenship and to suggest rethinking what is being communicated and whether this meets the expectations of European citizens. I also suggest that by studying examples of communication of European citizenship in New Europe is possible to learn not just successful strategies, but also about what the European citizenship could mean for European citizens.
Political Participation and Multi-Level Democracy in the EU
According to many writers and commentators, the European Union has a legitimacy problem, which is sometimes portrayed as a ‘democratic deficit’. Disillusionment with European integration has contributed to growing levels of Euroscepticism, leading to falling support for the EU and declining turnout in European Parliament elections. The failure of the European Constitution in 2005 and protracted wrangling over the subsequent Lisbon Treaty stemmed from two main causes: dissatisfaction with domestic politics, and an inability to convince citizens of the importance of European integration. Yet little effort has been made (in the existing literature) to link declining support for the EU polity to declining support for national systems. This paper will frame citizens’ support for European integration within the context of a broader disillusionment with conventional politics and political participation in member states (focusing on the UK). A major problem is that the EU polity has often been viewed in terms of multi-level governance, but rarely in terms of multi-level democracy. By learning lessons from declining support for electoral politics in established national democracies – and understanding the relevance for the European-level polity, politics and policy – we can provide better solutions on how to rejuvenate the EU.
Despite the disengagement from the EU that is widespread in the UK, large numbers of British nationals have over the past two decades taken up residence in another EU Member-State, mainly Spain, France and Italy, in an unprecedented wave of ‘lifestyle’ or ‘consumer’ migration (IPPR Report, 2006). As intra-EU migrants, they are in practice actively engaged at the forefront of the evolving process of European citizenship, since they can take advantage of the many rights and benefits offered by the EU since the Treaty of Maastricht, facilitating mobility in significant ways. But do these lifestyle migrants see themselves as ‘pioneers’ of European citizenship, or do they remain disengaged from the EU framework? In the latter case, how might they be brought more positively into the process of developing awareness of European citizenship at grass roots level, and what might European policy-makers learn from their responses? This paper will propose some answers to these questions, based on a case-study of British residents in France, with particular emphasis on those who, in significant numbers, have become active political participants through being elected to their local councils. Do they see their engagement as essentially local or do they acknowledge the wider European framework? What role might these councillors be able to play in sensitising other British residents in their local communities to make the transition from lifestyle migrants to active European citizens, and how might they be assisted in this venture?
EU Citizenship Discourse as Neoliberal Governmentality
This paper uses a governmentality approach to highlight the operation of neoliberalism in EU citizenship discourse and its implications for citizen participation. The paper is in two parts. The first part uses the example of citizen participation in the regulation of new technologies to trace how neoliberalism, understood as optimisation through the use and dissemination of market rationality, frames EU discourse. The latter includes law, official EU documents on citizen participation in governance and citizen/science relations, the latter being inflected with the discourse on ‘public understanding of science and technology’, and all of them being inflected with risk. Some of the side-effects of the neoliberal framing of citizen participation are highlighted: legitimating and extending EU governance, reducing the space for oppositional formations and, because the discourses render a ‘deficit model’ of citizens in need of education through communication and their participation in governance, limited citizenship. The second part proposes some discourses that can be used to combat neoliberal governmentality and promote citizen participation.
European Citizenship: Is Money the Path to Affection? Understanding the Impact of EU Redistributive Policy on Attitudes to the EU
Contemporary Europe is wracked with a ‘paradox of expenditure’ in which governments try to drive it down, yet expenditure-based programmes remain hugely popular. This paradox is even more pronounced following the credit crisis. The existing literature on the politics of expenditure in the EU emphasises two common themes: a focus on the EU budget; a perception that citizens shape their attitudes from a combination of affective and utilitarian motives, the latter being centrally linked to understanding of fiscal benefits. Yet what is also clear is that such studies underestimate the EU’s redistributive impact, failing to account for the importance of financial partnership within the Budget (e.g. additionality), ignoring the impacts of EIB loans and underplaying the role of EU membership in leveraging FDI, to give just three examples (Robinson, 2007; 2009). Reflecting this, the EU itself is also largely ineffectual at communicating its own redistributive impact.
This paper thus seeks to wrestle with these paradoxes asking - Why is the redistributive effect understated? What can be done to address this, so enhancing communication? What role should national and local government play? What of policy makers?
Talk2EU, managed by the Commission's Representation in Ireland, is the largest single nationwide EU communications project supported by the European Commission in recent times. While this year-long initiative ends in May 2010, key research findings are emerging. The paper will cover the modus operandi of the project, and will provide key indicators and feedback in relation to the core elements of the Talk2EU campaign, which include: organising over 40 events targeted at community groups and partner organisations; a supporting PR/media strategy; a significant web presence; social networking promotions; cinema advertising; a schools essay competition; research into the benefits of EU membership; and an online facility to answer citizens’ questions. The priorities set for the campaign were informed by Eurobarometer and other research findings in relation to the awareness of Irish citizens as regardsthe EU (and the Lisbon Treaty). A particular effort was made therefore to communicate with cohorts who were ambivalent to the EU or generally disinterested in EU issues. The paper will outline the provisional conclusions which could be drawn from what is well-resourced campaign. These findings, in particular in the post-Lisbon period, could inform the conduct of similar initiatives in other Member State. The author is an active member of the Talk2EU Project Board.
Miscommunicating Europe? Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe
In 2009 the European Parliament elections confirmed the general average decreasing turnout. Also, the ‘Eurogap’ between old Member States plus Malta and Cyprus (54.01%) and the post-communist new EU Member States (22.93%t) resulted almost unvaried compared to 2004. This paper presents a comparative qualitative analysis of the Polish and Bulgarian cases before and after the 2009 EP elections. Focus groups held in Bulgaria and Poland on Friday 5 June and a follow-up questionnaire on citizens’ interest towards the EU institutions as well as on the role of information explain to what extent citizens from the ‘new Europe’ feel engaged with the EU political process. An overview on further focus groups carried out in Poland in 2007 on the role of information shed light on citizens’ trusted sources of information. If in Central and Eastern Europe the quality of information on the EU is ‘abysmal’, citizens are interested in basic information
on the EU and trust the information provided by the Centres of European Information, think tanks and politicians they personally know. This paper answers on what information can be conveyed to the citizens and whether it was Europe or domestic political issues to (not)mobilise citizens out to vote in 2009.
What Went Wrong with the EU Citizenship in the UK, and What Should be Done to Correct it?
From first-hand experience, this paper argues that the people who tend to campaign on the door-steps of the UK in the European elections are not well informed of what the European Union (EU) is; what the European Parliament (EP) do; and how the life of the local people are affected by the EU. They tend to leave the electorate with further question marks on their minds about why they should be interested in the EU and what the EU do for them. Thus, the turn-out for the EP election was gone down to 34.70% in 2009. However, this paper suggests that the policy makers could make the EU and its citizenship more appealing to the Brits. It suggests that to have citizens who are informed of the EU and engaging with the EU related issues, the EU policy makers should first reach to those who are more in touch with the local people, be they local Councillors, local political party members, or politically engaged local campaigners. Once this is done, the EU policy makers should make sure that these local representatives are both well-informed of the EU and the EP, and able to talk to the locals about the EU. Secondly, the elected Members of the European Parliament should spend more time in Britain with the local electorate.
Critical Global Citizenship for Deliberative Democracies
Internationalisation and the quest for Cosmopolitan Education are complementary focuses in mainstream education across the world. British policy documents on the global dimension highlight eight key domains: Global Citizenship, Social justice, Conflict resolution, Interdependence, Human Rights, Diversity, Sustainable Development, Values and perceptions. The GCESD (Global Citizenship Education for Sustainable Development) framework affords flexible appropriations for widely differing educational contexts and climes, uniting initiatives in eco-pedagogy and more communitarian forms of Citizenship Studies. This paper seeks to address urgent demands for holistic vision, policy and leadership beyond the global contradictions and challenges of nationalism and neoliberalism. An enriched GCESD curriculum, requires extended readings of ‘lifelong learning’, ‘text’, and ‘identity’. European citizenship it is argued, can only be part of a coherent global programme, linking Development Education to Millenium Development Goals, drawing on conceptual frameworks such as the global dimension offered by Oxfam and DfES. Research involving over 500 initial teachers and practitioners, revealed scope for professional development to include critical understandings through media, political, economic and environmental literacies. The speaker will share new insights, research tools, and evaluation criteria, which offer a means to build the Global Community so essential for genuine Communication through Transformative learning.
Education for European Citizenship, Democracy and Antiracism: European Policy and Political Complacency
Citizenship education typically focuses on the nation and citizens’ supposed natural affinity to the nation-state. In our global age, this is challenged by cosmopolitans who propose a form of education which encourages a primary commitment to our fellow humanity and/or planet Earth, but re-emphasised by those who assert that in a globalized world and nation-states characterised by diversity, we require a primary commitment to the nation-state. The latter group proposes a renewed focus on civic education which promotes national belonging and loyalty, often targeting, either explicitly or implicitly, students from minority or migration backgrounds. Within EU member-states, this binary between education for national and global citizenship is troubled by the issue of European citizenship and belonging. This article reports on recent EC funded empirical research on education for European citizenship, discussing the findings in the context of European policies to combat racism and promote democratic citizenship. It focuses on teachers’ perceptions of their students’ needs as learner-citizens and their concerns about the ethno-nationalistic attitudes of some students. It considers the implications of these findings for educational policy-makers at local, national and European levels.
Communicating European Citizenship and Identity: The Role of Interaction and Socialisation amongst Secondary School Students at Three European Schools
Education has a crucial role to play in enabling young people to become active citizens, engaged in politics and policy-making at local, national, European and international levels. In this complex era characterised by globalisation and super-diversity, schools need to provide students the opportunity to develop the necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to live and work together in diverse contexts. Students need to be able to understand and accept their multiple identities, particularly as citizens at these various levels, and to understand and respect the identities and cultures of others. The ethos of the European Schools, which were set up in the 1950s for the children of EU employees, aims to encourage students to develop a European alongside a national identity and to become actively involved in European political decision-making by exploring European issues through discussion and debate. This paper, based on an ESRC-funded research project completed at the University of Oxford, looks at the opportunities provided to students at three of the European Schools, located in England, Belgium, and Spain, to interact and socialise with one another. It considers the importance of these social experiences on their behaviours and attitudes towards one another and on developing their sense of European identity and citizenship.
Exploring the Links Between a Grassroots Movement, Social Entrepreneurship, Journalism and Identity Building: The Italian Experiment of Vita Non Profit Magazine
Vita non profit magazine is an Italian experiment to link journalism with grassroots movements, an experiment to both report and build new ideas of social and active citizenship. The experiment is based on the thesis that a new, active approach to citizenship (be it local or global, Italian or European) must go hand in hands with an ethical and responsible reporting process on European civil society and that this is one of the strongest untapped tools the Union disposes to the awakening of European citizenship as a whole. The case study follows the experience and innovations proposed by the Italian Vita Non Profit Magazine. The problem of poor European citizenship and identification as well as apathy is analysed. From this stems the proposed argument which lies in the fact that there is an ordinary, everyday Europe which is not being told and has been overlooked. Here however lies the key to European citizenship building and participative democracy. The reality which is being referred to is Civil Society, an entity which, similarly to Europe, is as diverse as it is complex and difficult to pin down. As such, the idea that reporting on European civil society could give an alternative view of the continent which is much more identity building than the mainstream ways already being employed will be analysed through the case study of the the Italian Vita Non Profit Magazine.
Communicating the EU to its Citizens: The Civil Power of News
There has been much discussion of the relationship between the news media and the civil character of the EU. Much of this discussion has focused on the barriers that prevent the effective communication of the EU to its citizens by the news media. And yet encouraged by economic, single market concerns, we have witnessed the development of EU transnational communicative spaces as new regional and global corporate news providers develop new communicative niches to reach varied European publics. This growth has been accompanied by a fragmented and inconsistent approach by the EU to understanding the civil necessity of European wide public service news and where attempts have been made to stimulate such services they have failed, leading commentators and academics to speak of their limited nature, implausibility, impossibility, or beyond being EU competencies. In this paper I argue that it is both possible and necessary for the EU to develop a transnational independent pan-European public news service, one which is self conscious of the civil power of news and, one which following Schudson, understands news to be a public resource there for when people are ready to take political and civil action.
Europe’s Search for an ‘Attentive Public’: Public Communication, Media and Legitimacy
This paper draws on original empirical research (media analysis; interviews with journalists and civil society actors; focus groups with the general public) to develop a thesis and examine the relationship between the public and the European Union through mass mediated public communication. It refers to the situations before, during and after the Constitution event. Almond (1960) distinguishes three types of ‘public opinion’: a ‘general public’, an ‘attentive public’ and a ‘policy and opinion elite’. Here the ‘attentive public’ are an educated minority who follow abstract policy concerns, whom the elite plays to, and who also pass on views to the general public. Applying this formula to Europe, the ‘attentive public’ has been very much smaller than for national domestic politics. This is supported by empirical findings. A consequence of this very small ‘attentive public’ from civil society over Europe is that the mass media takes centre stage as the actor representing the public. To some extent the media fills the ‘gap’ for the missing ‘attentive public’ through its own opinion mobilisation. If anything, media mobilisation appears to have induced passivity for the elite-dominated project among the general public. Hence the ‘policy and opinion elite’ is effectively able to play to its own version of the European project represented in the media discourse, which reinforces its legitimacy, while Europe remains off the radar of the general public. The flaw in this ‘proxy’ public legitimacy supplied to elites by media discourse is that it is trumped by direct calls on the people that result in an expression of popular will. Nothing exposed this more than the failed referendums for the 2005 Constitution Treaty.
The paper outlines the prospects for an ‘attentive public’ over Europe, before, during and after the Constitution event.
European Industrial Citizenship: EU Social Policy at Work
Trade Unions need to promote the benefits of EU Social Policy to UK workers in order to inform them of their rights to consultation, information and even participation in economic decision-making at the workplace. The EU Social Policy rulings on Information and Consultation at the workplace, European Works Councils in multinational companies and the directive on the European Company are little known and hardly implemented in the UK. This paper argues that UK and European trade unions should work harder to spread information about these policies. This would greatly improve not only workplace rights for UK employees, but also lead to a better and more positive understanding of European social policy. Research done by the author on European Works Councils demonstrated how British employees learned to appreciate these regulations and the benefits they gained from working together with their European colleagues. Their attitude to Europe often changed after learning more about how Industrial Citizenship works in other European Countries, and they were far more willing to identify with their European colleagues than before.
Lars Hoffmann & Elizabeth Monaghan
Communicating the EU through Debate: Opportunity Structures for Transformation
The language of ‘debate’ has emerged over the past decade to become a characteristic feature of political discourse in the EU. National governments – either individually or in the Council, the European Commission, and the European Parliament have all emphasised the importance of having a specific expert or general public debate, firstly on a range of issues (whether matters of everyday policy-making or more history-making decisions about the intended direction and underlying purpose of the Union), and secondly for a range of apparent purposes (whether to enhance popular participation in decision-making, to identify the options for further integration, or to legitimise decisions in the face of increasing public scepticism vis-à-vis the European project). Behind much of the rhetoric on the importance of debate in and on the EU is an assumption of transformation: that people’s opinions and preferences regarding the future shape and direction might be transformed through the process of debate. However, this paper argues that the extent to which this transformative potential is realised, the existence of opportunity structures for transformation (OSTs), varies significantly. Norms of appropriateness, the presence or absence of a shared normative agenda, and the degrees of inclusiveness and formality shape OSTs and in turn the efficacy of debate as a political tool.
Aine Ryall
Communicating European Environmental Citizenship
This paper explores environmental citizenship within the framework of European Union (EU) environmental law. EU law has had an enormous impact on environmental quality, but there are still persistent problems with implementation and enforcement at national level. Environmental citizenship involves individuals and NGOs taking an interest in environmental matters, contributing to policy/decision-making processes and identifying breaches of environmental law. EU directives offer important procedural rights to support active environmental citizenship, including: access to information held by public authorities; participation in decision-making and access to justice to enforce information and participation rights. These rights equip individuals and NGOs to act as environmental watchdogs. Much remains to be done to inform citizens of their rights under EU environmental law, however. Recent environmental directives oblige Member States to be proactive in publicising environmental law rights amongst the citizenry. In Case C-427/07 Commission v Ireland, 16 July 2009, the Court of Justice ruled that simply providing information on rights in publications or on the internet was not sufficient to ensure that the public is aware of its rights on access to justice in environmental matters. Environmental law is technical and complex and people find it off-putting. The paper considers mechanisms by which Government could promote active environmental citizenship via EU law rights.
Adrian Blackledge & Sue Wright
Testing for Citizenship: Why Tests and Why Now?
Citizenship tests have recently been adopted as a means of regulating access to citizenship in a number of European states and beyond. In this paper we present and compare the contexts in which these tests have been introduced; we examine the nature of the tests and foreground some of the anomalies inherent in the testing regimes; and we attempt an explanation for the current turn to testing. In order to do so we look beyond the EU context, to Australia and the UK, two states which have substantial and different histories of immigration, and which have both recently introduced and expanded tests for those seeking citizenship or indefinite leave to remain. In our examination of the citizenship testing regimes in Australia and the UK we analyse principles and practices which have recently been adopted in many European states. In our conclusion we ask why there has been such a rapid proliferation of citizenship tests in so many national contexts in recent times, and propose responses which call into question traditional relationships between nation-state, citizenship, and national belonging.
European Union Citizenship as an Experimental Institution
Scholarship on the role of the European Court of Justice in shaping the polycentric European governance and the law and politics of ‘sovereign’ national authorities contains plenty of discords. Yet its role as a driving force of European integration is probably beyond dispute. Not just jurists but also political scientists have acknowledged its authoritative reasoning on matters of integration and principle, notwithstanding the existence of concerns about growing judicial power and the perennial disagreement over whether judicial processes are less legitimate than democratic ones. Certainly, if the meaning of the latter is confined to majoritarian processes, then the assumption of a quasi-legislative role by courts, that is, their ability to bypass political and legislative processes appears to be problematic. But since democratic systems are built upon both majoritarian electoral processes and reflective values and rights which place constraints on governments’ powers, the judicial protection and advancement of these values and rights are normatively and empirically justified. Courts normally function as ‘fora of principle’ (Dworkin 1996) and are seen to be reliable agents for securing equitable settlements within and above the nation-state. Seen from the perspective of achieving rights-enhancing and fairer settlements, ensuring non-discrimination and promoting human welfare, the role of the courts, be they national constitutional courts or the ECJ, is commendable. Seen from the (narrower) perspective of the actually existing world of majoritarian democracy, which entails the promotion of ‘the right’ and ‘the good’ through the exercise of governmental power, any institution which might call into question the ‘undisputed’ sovereign authority of the state, is bound to be seen as having an adverse effect on democratic decision-making. To some extent, this debate exemplifies contrasting conceptions of democracy held by political and legal scholars. But the debate could also be seen to reflect a different emphasis on how far and in what ways governance should be responsive to the governed, pro-actively address their needs and promote their welfare. In this paper, I address this question by comparing and contrasting two dimensions of the same institution; namely, the judicialised material scope and the non-judicialised personal scope of European Union citizenship. The latter institution was established by the Treaty on European Union in 1993 and its material scope has developed significantly owing to the European Court of Justice’s interventions which have brought about incremental and transformative institutional change. To an extent, the content of European citizenship could be seen as a reflection of ‘governing with judges’ (Stone Sweet, 2000). The fifth report on European Union citizenship (Articles 17-22 EC), which was published on 15 February 2008, charts the steps that have been taken towards making European Union citizenship a reality and the obstacles which may hinder the full implementation of specific provisions. Notably, the period covered by the Commission’s report (1 May 2004 - 30 June 2007) was a one of deep institutional change owing to the European Court of Justice’s interventions and the entry into force of Directive 2004/38 (the so called ‘Citizenship Directive’) on 1 May 2006. But the personal scope of Union citizenship and the exclusion of long-term resident third country nationals remain areas of ‘governing without judges’. In the subsequent discussion, I reflect on the consequences of the Member States’ (relative?) autonomy for the rights of citizens and residents, substantive commitments to non-discrimination and equal treatment and the vision of a diverse and inclusive European polity. I argue that the political consequences are too important to be left to national governments alone.
Dynamics of Anomaly and Assertion: Enacting European Citizenship
When European citizenship is ‘communicated’, who is communicating, how, and to what effect? This paper illustrates key ways in which citizens themselves, along with core EU and member state institutions, are enacting European citizenship. Despite its low profile, the legal status of European citizenship is subject to a dynamic set of rulings, debates and actions. Drawing on research from the EU Framework 7 funded ENACT programme, this paper will show how a fresh perspective built around the notion of acts of citizenship can cast new light on the legal, political and social construction of European citizenship. Cases studied include European Court of Justice rulings, acts of member states on deprivation of citizenship, and bottom-up pressures from more marginal groups such as mobile citizens (e.g. the Roma) and the ‘non-citizens’ of Latvia. The paper develops an original framework centred on the notion that a dynamic of anomaly, on the one hand, and a dynamic of assertion, on the other, are both crucial and – surprisingly, perhaps – mutually dependent in shaping European citizenship. This framework is intended to be a useful theoretical and practical tool for all those seeking to understand the present and potential future trajectory of European citizenship.
The European Commission has just launched a consultation on how to implement the European Citizens' initiative created by the Lisbon Treaty. This new right of initiative is part of the new article 11 TEU, which expects a lot from European Civil society. Instruments like the citizens initiative can help organised civil society to contribute to the emergence of a public sphere, through a “reflexive democratisation process” (Eder and Trenz 2007: 178-179). This article will analyse the potential that civil society organisations have in fostering participation and deliberation by European citizens.
Although the literature on European civil society is very rich (see Greenwood 2007: b for a thorough review of the state of the art), little is still known about the actual links between the organisation of European civil society and the functioning of the EU as a democratic polity (Maloney and van Deth 2008: 4). In order to do this the paper will analyse these organisation’s collective action strategies and framing of participatory democracy. Analysing these groups’ advocacy and discourses at European and national level is a way of understanding and possibly making recommendations on the potential and limitations that these groups have in bringing about a sphere of communication and political action for European citizens.
Filippo Addarii, Hanneke de Bode & Ben Rattenbury
Communicating European Citizenship Without Mentioning It
The proposed paper describes the development of a European network of civil society leaders, Euclid Network, launched to help civil society cross national borders to benefit from knowledge-sharing and joint initiatives that an integrated Europe offers and requires. The authors argue that the solution to reconnecting citizens to the European Union lies in enabling citizens to live as Europeans taking advantage of all the benefits of integration, connecting with fellow citizens and participating in the European project. Civil society leaders are dormant advocates for the EU, interested in the European project but discouraged by the perception that it is just about politics and institutions; citizens are not in its remit and their views are ignored. A clique within civil society has thrived in this context: Brussels-based civil society platforms have monopolized the dialogue between European institutions and citizens flourishing with minimal effort, facilitated by the EU. Inspired by the success of the Erasmus programme and partially funded by the EC, Euclid Network has developed a new methodology connecting citizens – specifically civil society leaders – through twinning programmes facilitating peer-learning and cross-border partnerships. Such engagement coupled with concrete personal benefits has become the best advertisement for the EU and a gateway for European integration.
The Lesson from Lisbon: Civil Society not Political Parties
The Irish government held a re-run of the Lisbon Treaty referendum in October 2009 and overturning the previous year’s No vote, it was passed with a 67% majority. How was this achieved when other member state governments have been loath to hold referendums on the EU after the recent No votes of the 2000 Danish referendum on the Euro, and the 2005 French and Dutch referendums on the European constitution? This paper will argue that civil society groups played an important role in gaining public support for the Treaty. These groups tailored their arguments and campaign tactics to directly appeal to specific segments of Irish society that had voted No in the first referendum. They did this by emphasising how the EU, and by extension the Lisbon Treaty, had and would benefit them. The wider argument of the paper is that political parties and governments are not the most effective vehicles to put forward pro-European arguments to the electorate. Levels of party based competition are too high and public cynicism towards the political system too ingrained for this to happen. The lesson from Lisbon is that advocacy for the EU must be taken out of the hands of the politicians, and into the arms of specifically created civil society groups.
European Active Citizenship: Communicating Participation Levels through the Development of an Index
This paper will debate the communication of active citizenship in Europe through the development of an index on this topic. This index was developed whilst working at the European Commission at the JRC CRELL and was used by the EC as a composite indicator to monitor progress on the Lisbon Strategy in the field of education. The paper will present the theoretical basis for the index including Aristotle and Rousseau. It will present the conceptual framework of European active citizenship index including the definitions of different forms of participation (political life, civil society and the community) and the values of human rights and intercultural understanding involved in this engagement. The index is comprised of 63 indicators predominantly from the European Social Survey including indicators on voting and less traditional forms of participation. The varying results of this index across European countries will be discussed in particular focusing on their implication for the future of democracy in the different regions of Europe. In addition, the paper will discuss how such indexes can be used as a form of communication with civil society and community organisations to facilitate greater public engagement.
Meeting Communications Challenges Across the Levels: The Example of the Charter of Fundamental Rights
This paper explores the multi-level nature of European citizenship as a communications prerogative within the European Union’s governing architecture. Using the example of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the paper explores the extent to which the effective implementation of the Charter and the concomitant protection of fundamental rights in the EU is a multi-level and multi-actored process. Many of the initiatives undertaken to explain, highlight and effectively communicate the Charter are undertaken through partnership arrangements between multiple tiers of governmental authority in the member states, or indeed, through partnerships at the local and regional level, where municipal and regional authorities engage in projects that are run collaboratively with stakeholder groups such as NGOS or voluntary associations. Based on a wide-ranging empirical survey of policy practice in the member states, this paper addresses how the communications challenge with regard to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is being met through voluntary partnership arrangements across levels of political authority. The focus is on a small number of case study policy dimensions to the Charter, including
- Countering gender discrimination
- Spatial planning
- Responsibility for the rights of the child
- Promoting diversity and inter-cultural understanding
- Responding to new migrant flows
- Fostering the political rights of all EU citizens, and
- The protection of environmental rights
The paper suggests that this multi-level response offers something of a multiplier effect within the broader EU communications process, encouraging wide-scale engagement with EU policy issues.
Building Europe from the Bottom Up: Towards an Open Method of Communication for the EU’s Institutions
Democracy is central to a European conception of society, but how far does contemporary practice in the EU institutions relate to democratic principles, ideals, and values? The European Union is an institution in constant evolution, but there are gaps in its democratic legitimacy. Recent events surrounding the proposed European Constitution, the Lisbon Treaty, and 2009 European Parliament election results in many Member States show that there is a great deal of attention placed on issues with a European scope, but less on the actual role of the EU in the lives of many citizens. Local and regional governments, as the institutions closest to citizens have a key role to play in ensuring that citizens feel that democracy is working. It is not an easy task to link this to the EU institutions, but this article will show some approaches, examples, and models of successful participatory practices at the local and regional level in the EU that can serve as inspiration for recommendations at the European level. This article will take an approach that challenges mainstream
thinking on communicating Europe, and will reconsider the European Commission’s attempts in light of these arguments, focusing on the ‘Communicating Europe in Partnership’ initiative [COM(2007)568].
The EU’s Communication under the Barroso Presidency: Political Strategies and European Dilemmas
The overall background to this paper is based on two main areas. On one hand it deals with the recent empirical and theoretical works which have focused their attention on the development of the European public sphere. On the other hand attention has to be given to the most recent institutional developments which the European Union is facing, particularly with regard to the production of a media policy subsequent to the publication of a Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate in 2005 and of the White Paper on Communication Policy in 2006. Between 2005 and 2009 the European Commission has in fact initiated an impressive series of concrete measures, targeting journalists and civil society. Codes of conduct, guidelines, training courses for journalists and workshops for civil society actors have been organised in order to enhance dialogic interactions and to put Europe on the public agenda. Furthermore, the improvement of the europa.eu web site and the interactive structures that were set up (for example thematic blogs and fora or the Your-Voice in Europe portal) aimed to give people a say on political matters concerning the EU, and was an attempt to develop a strategic and comprehensive approach to public communication. My argumentation is that these initiatives should be conceived as political strategies implemented in order to solve the ‘so called’ European dilemmas: the distance existing between the European institutions and citizens’priorities, the diffused lack of interest towards the EU’s project, the persistence of the democratic deficit and subsequent lack of legitimisation towards the European Integration. It is not a case that since 2004 the European Commission’s vice-president, Margot Wallstrom, has repeatedly put on the agenda the need to improve the EU’s ‘communicative structure’ in order to ‘fill the gap’ between European Institutions and the public opinion. Throughout the reference to a set of qualitative data collected in the period of time 2004-2009 –interviews with key actors (European Commissioners in Bruxelles and in Rome, NGOs representatives, Europe Direct directors in Italy) and discourse analysis of official documents and press releases- this paper aims at furnishing an evaluation of the Eu’s communication policy -in terms of objectives and contents of the public campaigning- under the first Barroso presidency.
Communicating the EU and Citizenship as Identification
Communicating the EU to its citizens is not an end in itself; it is widely perceived as crucial in promoting identification. The latter is seen as the basis of engaged, active citizenship qua civic and political participation, the apparent lack of which is widely lamented. The resulting emphasis on communication, however, carries a somewhat simplistic equation of information and identification that pervades both political and academic debates. However, ‘information’ is most often implicitly premised on the rationalist and positivist assumption of the primacy of ‘facts’ and dispassionate logical argument. This paper aims to challenge the validity qua sole applicability of these assumptions when aiming for identification. It emphasises a constructivist theoretical approach and explicates theoretical and practical (both current and potential further) uses and utility of affective and narrative forms of discourse. It draws on discourse theoretic and psychoanalytically inspired political theory and innovative conceptualisations of ideology and political narrative. These are applied to an exemplary EU publication to provide some empirical evidence on how the EU is communicated to its citizens via discourses of EU citizenship. Clearly, a host of other discourses are relevant, too, but, in the context of this conference, these are particularly instructive in coming full circle to the question of how matters of citizenship in the EU are discursively represented.
Political Symbols, Citizenship and Communication
Political symbols are an essential part of each polity's identity building process, they cristallise and underpin its overall legitimacy, but also take part in its permanent re-construction (Renan 1882, Anderson 1983). The European Union, driven by a need for stronger popular support and in an effort to enhance its legitimacy has itself engaged in creating official symbols (Theiler 2005, Bruter 2005), which have been solemnly given "constitutional status" in the Constitutional Treaty (art. I-8), but were discreetly ushered out from the Lisbon Treaty. While it would be wrong to claim that the EU's flag, its anthem, Europe day and the recently formulated motto have been complete failures in identity policy, it is important to recognise that these are all elite-drafted top-down creations (Hobsbawm 1983). What the EU lacks is non-official symbols which have emerged in a more spontaneous bottom-up process and which are felt to have strong emblematic salience for what the collectivity stands for: popular heroes and narratives, lieux de mémoire (Nora 1993) in the largest sense. On these latter type of symbols the nation-state seems to enjoy a full-fledged "emotional monopoly" (Sonntag 2006). The paper argues that the use of EU symbols inevitably raises the delicate and controversial issues of a common narrative and the EU’s ultimate finality. Moreover, in today’s overloaded communication environment, symbols need to be appropriated and carried by a significant bottom-up movement in order to become meaningful and avoid the automatic suspicion of “spin” through “branding”.