The core aim of the CINEFOGO Spread of Excellence Network has been defined as to disseminate academic knowledge among other societal actors, namely politicians, civil servants, professionals, scholars outside the Network, journalists, and, last but not least, the general public – and to nurture manifold public discourse about such issues of public life which have a relevant European connotation.

In principle, all political communities need platforms, spheres, spaces to exchange views and exemplify positions of differentiated actors, to have cross-cutting public debates, to involve citizens in policy formation, discuss common tasks and solve natural controversies. This is also true for the European Union. Nevertheless, the European public space has been exposed to much more difficult political tasks in a much more complex institutional and cultural environment than was the case of nation states: clashes between national and transnational political reasoning, the building of legitimacy for the new EU institutions, public discourses as precursors of EU decisions and regulations etc.

A European public space?

Does a European public space exist at all? Recently, a positive evaluation of the situation has occurred. De Vreese - Schmitt (eds.) (2007:5) assure us that “conventional wisdom, holding that a European public sphere is close to impossible due to communication barriers imposed by, for instance, the different languages, seems to belong to the past.”

But some scholars are more skeptical as e.g. Peters – Sifft – Wimmel – Brüggemann – Kleinen-von Königslöw. After having analyzed three dimensions of the processes of Europeanization: content, public identities, and communication flows, the authors ask: “Has public discourse in fact Europeanized in the last decades? (…) Our results show that national public spheres are, in fact quite resilient and that change is slow or halting.” (Peters – Sifft – Wimmel – Brüggemann – Kleinen-von Königslöw 2005:139). The authors conclude that what is at stake is the legitimacy of European institutions, which depends on the Europeanization of public discourse.

In her reflection of the current situation, Ms. Margot Wallström, currently serving as Vice President of the European Commission, and Commissioner for Directorate-General Communication, is also modest and realistic: “... we lack a European public sphere in which citizens can communicate with one another and a European demos can evolve” (2007:8).

It seems that there is a considerable challenge both politicians and citizens alike are exposed to deal with in the European Union: to broaden the space for the democratic mediation of opinions and interests in, I repeat, institutionally and culturally enormously complex and dynamic environment.

Barriers to broadening the European public space

In order to be able to fulfil this aim, it is necessary to be aware of the nature of the obstacles we should overcome. There are three serious barriers which, in my view, significantly contribute to the difficulties associated with the strife for effective engagement of us, scholars, in the effort to broaden European public space:

1. The co-existence of a dialogic form with a non-dialogic form of communication, transmitted by the media, and independent of physical location.
2. The application of the narrow concept of communication, understood as a technical problem of transmission of information.
3. The low political culture framing the communication processes.

The first barrier is associated with the co-existence of a dialogic form with an (increasingly relevant) non-dialogic form of communication, transmitted by the media, and independent of physical location. (Thompson 1995). The author calls the non-dialogic form of communication mediated publicness. This indirect and mostly one-way form of communication is increasingly relevant – but its impact on actors cannot be easily evaluated. It is also very difficult to make such form of communication equal in terms of the power of the public vis-à-vis the media. This has important implications for the ability to find a right balance between checks between media and other political actors – and, consequently, the democratic legitimacy of media.

The second barrier stems from the application of the narrow concept of communication, understood as a technical problem of transmission of information (e.g., concept of e-government as the remedy to problems of public administration). Nevertheless, effective communication is tightly associated with interests that are pursued and compete with other interests. In other words, it is impossible to nurture communication as an art for art’s sake, as governance in general, political fights, and especially public policies are the battlefields in which communication is a means and a weapon at the same time.

The third barrier which should be taken into consideration is the low political culture framing the communication processes. Recently I presented an example of divergent discourses about social rights at national and European levels. (Potůček 2007) In the Czech case, academicians, civil servants, politicians and civic activists pursued different agendas, spoke a different language, and were not prepared to mutually inform their approaches toward social rights, to understand each other, and follow them as criteria in the processes of decision making and policy implementation. In this case, lack of trust among the actors and inadequate communication skills had an adverse effect on the overall efficiency of public discourse. At the European level, the Commission speaks on one hand about the need to make the European economy the most competitive in the world, it supports further trade liberalization (including the services of general interests), fiscal discipline, flexible labour markets . On the other hand, it declares its adherence to the principles of social justice, social rights, fighting social exclusion and poverty. No doubt the general public’s confusion about the consistency of these aims is supported by the daily experience of many people with precarious working conditions, tightening social provisions, insufficient public services, etc.

The troubles with broadening the European public space do not stop outside the borders of our CINEFOGO project. The WP6 Pilot Training: Research Communication and Dissemination, organized by the Center for Social and Economic Strategies on September 2007 in Prague, represented an opportunity especially for those responsible for Spread of Excellence (SoE) within individual CINEFOGO Work Packages to learn how to effectively communicate research outcomes to the broader public – to politicians, civil servants, journalists, representatives of interest groups, and the general public. But the interest was lukewarm: less than one half of the participants were members of the CINEFOGO Network of Excellence...

The European public space in context

The success in broadening the public space in the European Union will be vitally dependent on the consistency and efficiency of European, national, issue-specific, regional, municipal public policies and on support and follow-up from relevant European institutions. Only actors actively involved in these policies will have a strong interest in effective communication with other stakeholders. The effort to make communication processes more effective and satisfactory will have to take this condition into account. There is an increasing awareness of the importance of this issue, complemented by some examples of effective forums at all levels of governance and among various stakeholders – on one hand NGOs, private corporations, national and transnational organizations, scientists, journalists, and on the other hand politicians and civil servants. The CINEFOGO Work Package 17 “Partnership – Keystone of Governance”, coordinated by Annette Zimmer from University of Münster, produced a video feature covering one of the best practices of such public-private partnerships, and there are more examples of such communicated collaboration both within and outside our CINEFOGO network. Nevertheless, much more understanding and effort is required to cover needs of the developing European society and its citizens.

Conference April 2009: European policy makers meet CINEFOGO
The top-level CINEFOGO conference, organized in close collaboration with the EC Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities and scheduled to take place on April 2009 in Brussels, will create an extraordinary opportunity to ease the access of policy makers to the academic findings of the whole CINEFOGO community concerning social rights, citizenship and governance in the European Union.

I would like to thank Lars Josephsen for his valuable comments to the draft of this article.

Resources

De Vreese, C. – Schmitt, H. (eds.): A European Public Sphere: How much of it do we have and how much do we need? CONNEX Report series No. 02, 2007. Note: CONNEX is a Network of Excellence funded by the EU under the 6th Framework Programme. Available at http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/projekte/typo3/site/index.php?id=613

Peters, B., Sifft, S., Wimmel, A., Brüggemann, M., Kleinen-von Königslöw, K.: National and transnational public spheres: the case of the EU. European review, Vol. 13, Supp. No. 1, 2005, pp. 139-160.

Potůček, M. Universal social rights, diverging discourses. Prague, Charles Universisty 2007. Powerpoint presentation available at http://martinpotucek.cz/download/pwp/social_rights_pwp.pdf

Thompson, J.B.: The Media and Modernity. A Social Theory of the Media. Oxford, Polity Press and Blackwell, 1995.

Walström, M.: European citizenship as seen from Brussels. Cinefogo Newsletter, No. 3, May 2007, pp. 7-9. Available at http://www.cinefogo.org/publications/newsletters/Newsletter03.pdf

WP6 CINEFOGO Pilot Training: Research Communication and Dissemination. (TRANSAACT Course.) More information available at http://www.cinefogo.org/learning-dialogue/transaact/transaact-training-1

WP17 CINEFOGO Partnership – Keystone of Governance. More information available at http://www.cinefogo.org/workpackages/wp17