The World of European Information: The Institutional and Relational Genesis of the EU Public Sphere

Neither the EU communication policy nor the criticism it is subject to are new. Born with the integration process itself, the question of Community communication can be traced back to the 1950s, when the ‘High Authority’ sought to develop the ‘public relations’ of the ECSC (European Coal and Steel Community).1 A first report by the European Parliament devoted to the ‘information problem’ of the European community project was published in the 1950s (Carboni, 1957). Although this question was from the inception an important issue in inter-institutional debates (the Parliamentary Assembly adopted resolutions on the information—communication policy in 1960, 1962, 1972 and 1986), it was only from the 1980s onwards that information— communication policy became the subject of recurrent controversy, particularly around the themes relative to the excessive power of the Commission and the ‘democratic deficit’ of Europe — until then synonymous with parliamentary impotence (Marquand, 1979). Sporadically, crisis after crisis, and controversy after controversy, the paradigms on which the conceptual frameworks of European communication were based shifted. First of all, the ‘challenges’ facing European leaders in terms of opinion and the media were not the same in 1952 as they were in 1992 or today.