Symposium: Developing a European Public Sphere

Abstract

The aim of this symposium is to evaluate aspects of the present state of the European constitutional process – a process that seems to have stalled since the signature of the Lisbon Treaty in December 2007. This document is in turn the result of the deep crisis in the European integration process prompted by the outcomes of the French and Dutch referenda in 2005. These events triggered, or were symptoms of, what Kalypso Nicolaidis (2005) has called the 'struggle for EUrope', votes of 'despair', 'frustration' and 'protest'. The popular perception, evinced by these referendum outcomes, of the European Union (EU) as an elite project might be expected to intensify an already present concern among policy makers (i.e. among that very elite against which the 'vote of protest' was directed) about the nature, indeed the existence, of a European public sphere. Empirical social-scientific evidence suggests that this popular perception of elitism may be rationally grounded. Writing in this journal's sister publication, Ruud Koopman interprets the data collected within the EURPUB project as indicating that 'civil society actors[...] are clearly the least able to profit from the opening up of Europeanised discursive spaces' (2007: 199). Conversely, 'core state actors such as heads of state and government, cabinet ministers and central banks are by far the most important beneficiaries of the Europeanisation of public debates, in whichever form it occurs' (Koopman, 2007: 205).