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Year: 2010
Information Policy and the Public Sphere : EU Communications and the
Promises of Dialogue and Transparency
Brüggemann, M
Abstract: Unspecied
Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich
ZORA URL: http://www.zora.uzh.ch/40961
Originally published at:
Brüggemann, M (2010). Information Policy and the Public Sphere : EU Communications and the
Promises of Dialogue and Transparency. Javnost - The Public, 17(1):5-22.
5
Vol.17 (2010), No. 1, pp. 5 - 22
INFORMATION POLICY
AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE
EU COMMUNICATIONS AND
THE PROMISES OF DIALOGUE
AND TRANSPARENCY
Abstract
Taking EU communications as a case study this article
deals with the relationship between communication activi-
ties of public authorities and the public sphere. Traditional
theories of the public sphere regard government commu-
nications as an unwelcome intervention that distorts free
and open debates. This article argues that public relations
activities of governments should be analysed as being part
of the implementation of an information policy that also
comprises citizen’s rights of access to documents and in-
formation. Whether information policy distorts or supports
free deliberation is an empirical question that is answered
by looking at the information policy of the European Com-
mission since the year 2000. In response to the challenge
of communicating Europe to largely disinterested audienc-
es, the European Commission has reformed its communi-
cations in order to foster a European public sphere through
enhancing the transparency of European governance and
starting a dialogue with the citizens. The study shows that
the EU fails on its promise of dialogue and that transpar-
ency could still be improved. The information policy of the
Commission aims at normatively acceptable goals while
using ine ective means. Information policy does not turn
out to be propagandistic but ine ective. Focussing on
media relations could make PR more e ective in reaching
out to the wider public. If journalism functions as its neces-
sary corrective and citizens are empowered through strong
rights of access to information, than information policy
could contribute to a vivid transnational public sphere.
MICHAEL
BRÜGGEMANN
Michael Brüggemann works
Institute of Mass
Communication and Media
Research, University of
Zurich; e-mail:
as assistant professor
(Oberassistent) at the
michael@bruegge.net
6
Introduction
The European Union has a long-standing tradition of not communicating with
the broader public. Until the 1990s, political elites have pursued their agenda of
political and economic integration, while most citizens remained uninformed and
by and large uninterested in what was happening in Brussels. The rejection of the
constitutional treaty by the French and the Dutch voters in 2005, the Irish “No” to
the Lisbon treaty in 2008 and the record low voter turn-out in the 2009 European
elections are indications of the end of the traditional mode of European governance.
From the perspective of the EU elites, the legitimacy crisis of the EU at least partly
results from a “communication defi cit” (Meyer 1999). According to policy papers
from Brussels (e.g. European Commission 2006), the key for tackling this challenge
is to foster the development of a European public sphere. To further this purpose,
the European Commission has intensifi ed its communication activities since the
mid-1990s. From 2004 until 2009, communication even became part of the portfolio
of a Commissioner. Margot Wallström who was appointed to this post initiated a
comprehensive reform of the communication activities of the Commission (Euro-
pean Commission 2005a, 2006). Communication was supposed to become more
than just an appendix to politics: “This Commission has made communication one
of the strategic objectives for its term of offi ce, recognising it fully as a policy in its
own right” (European Commission 2005a, 2). The new policy aimed at enhancing
the transparency of EU policy-making. Furthermore, it was designed to promote a
dialogue with the citizens and thus prepare the ground of a thrivint European public
sphere (European Commission 2006, 4-5). The promise of fostering a European
public sphere understood as a transnational network of communication arenas
where European citizens can participate in public debates about issues of common
concern provides the research question for this article: Does the information policy
of the European Commission
eff ectively pursue this ambitious aim? Responding to
this question requires the exploration of new grounds in political communication
theory and research. The fi rst challenge is to develop a framework for analysing
information and communication activities as a policy and relating it to the notion
of a democratic public sphere. The second challenge exists with regards to the
operationalisation of this concept for analysing the case of the European public
sphere and the information policy of the Commission. On a theoretical level, the
empirical fi ndings should allow for a be er conceptualisation of the relationship
between the public sphere and
government communication activities
.
1
Information Policy: Connecting Public Relations and
the Public Sphere
In everyday talk, journalists might write about the “information policy” of an
energy company a er an incident at a nuclear power plant. This use of the term
equals information policy with public relations, which may be defi ned as “part
of the management of communication between an organisation and its publics”
(Grunig and Hunt 1984, 6). For the purposes of this article, however, the concept
of information policy is meant to provide an integrative framework for analysing
information and communication activities as a policy. Policy is understood as a set
of governmental decisions (Dye 1972, 2; Jenkins 1978, 5). PR activities can thus be
7
analyzed as being part of the implementation of a policy governing all activities
related to the exchange of all sorts of information, facts as well as opinions, between
a public body and its environment. Therefore, this area of political activity may
be defi ned as follows: Information policy is a set of political decisions, which determine
the goals, rules and activities of an organisation’s communication with its constituency.
In contrast to private actors, who might limit their communication to address
important stake holders, the constituency of democratic government bodies is the
general public.
Information policy does not only result in certain strategies and means of active
communication (public relations), but also in regulations of access to information
(transparency regime). Viewing PR and transparency rules as belonging to the same
policy enables us to explore the relationship between the two. While PR deals with
communication understood as active and purposeful exchange of information and
opinion which includes strategic persuasive communication campaigns, trans-
parency rules defi ne the right of the citizens to access all sorts of sources and not
only the purposefully prepared messages of PR agents. PR might facilitate broad
access to information but tensions might also arise between eff orts of PR to with-
hold information and give it a certain “spin” and regulations that provide rights
of full access to information. Having defi ned information policy, I will now briefl y
introduce the concept of the public sphere applied here and discuss the relationship
between European information policy and European public sphere.
The term public sphere has numerous meanings. First of all, the adjective “pub-
lic” describes objects which are neither secret nor private (Peters 2008/1994); “public”
means, being accessible for everyone and being relevant to the political community
as a whole. Discussion about what should concern the political community as a
whole is one of the main functions of a public sphere. In this article, the public
sphere is understood as a public space of communication with vital functions for
democracy. It is a sphere of social interaction that is structured as a network of spaces
of political communication (Habermas 1962/1989; 1992/1996). The various arenas of
public communication are connected by communication fl ows (Hilgartner and Bosk
1988; Gerhards and Neidhardt 1991). Central junctions of this network are the mass
media, which make the debates of smaller arenas of public communication acces-
sible to the broader public. The notion of a public sphere diff ers from descriptive
concepts such as “political communication” by its normative implications and its
reference to the political community. Normatively, the public sphere is conceptu-
alised as being an integral part of democracy. It serves two basic functions: Public
debates have an informative function and they establish the transparency of the
political process. Beyond that, they have a discursive function: they are the place
of exchange of ideas, opinions and arguments (Peters 2005, 104).
This concept of a public sphere (see Ferree et al. 2002 for a typology of diff er-
ent approaches, and Splichal 2006 for an analysis of diff erent philosophical roots
of public sphere theory) may be transferred from the national to the transnational
level: A transnational public sphere is a space of communication which is comprised
of a set of national public spheres connected by communication fl ows: “a cosmo-
politan public sphere is created when at least two culturally rooted public spheres
begin to overlap. [...] It will be a public of publics, a decentred public sphere that
permits many diff erent levels without an implied universal audience” (Bohman
2004, 138-139).
8
The European public sphere is a network of national spaces of communication in
Europe. The particularity of a European public sphere, in contrast to other big trans-
national communicative spaces, is the existence of the common political framework
of the European Union. This common political authority can be addressed when
actors in the public sphere make their claims. And EU politics can be expected to be
responsive to public opinions expressed within this sphere of publics. This is why
this transnational space of communication can become a political public sphere.
The question still arises, however, whether the social infrastructures are in
place, which can carry transnational debates in Europe. In the absence of strong
transnational media (Schlesinger 1999), the European public sphere evolves from
activities in the existing national arenas of communication. This is not to say that
a European public sphere exists just because there are mass media in all European
countries. The European public sphere exists only to the extent that national public
spheres open up for transnational fl ows of communication of a European scope.
This process of Europeanisation encompasses diff erent dimensions. Diff erent ap-
proaches converge to put the following three dimensions at the heart of a developing
European public sphere (Wessler et al. 2008; Koopmans and Erbe 2004):
1. Increasing discussion about EU issues (vertical dimension);
2. Intensifying connections between national public spheres (horizontal
dimension);
3. Development of a perspective as participants of a common debate (identity
dimension).
Empirical research on the European public sphere has brought to light the
ambivalent fi nding of a national segmentation of public spheres in Europe: a trend
of vertical Europeanisation with stagnation on the horizontal and the identity di-
mension (see Wessler et al. 2008 for a comprehensive account drawing on content
analysis of newspapers in fi ve EU countries).2
Ethics and Effi ciency of a European Information Policy
So far, we have defi ned information policy as a set of decisions governing PR
and the transparency rules of an organisation. We have defi ned the European public
sphere as a network of national networks of public communication which forms an
important precondition for democratic governance on a transnational level. Now,
in what way could information policy infl uence the public sphere? If one follows
the reasoning of the public sphere theory of Habermas, public debates should be
autonomous from state control in order to enable critical reasoning (Habermas
2006). PR activities of the state and of big companies would transform the citizen’s
sphere into an arena of mere affi rmation of power (Habermas 1962/1990). EU
information policy would thus only contribute to the “re-feudalisation” of the
European public sphere which would only serve the acclamation of political rule.
This is the exact opposite of what the European Commission promises in terms of
introducing transparency and dialogue with the citizens. If information policy was
really about facilitating access to and free exchange of information and opinion,
than it would be a substantial contribution to a thriving public sphere. In order to
be able to evaluate whether the information policy of the Commission promotes
a democratic public sphere, one has to look at both pillars of information policy:
PR and transparency rules.
9
The analysis of the transparency regulation and its implementation will reveal
whether the rules grant the citizens well-secured rights of access or rather shield
state actions from public scrutiny by means of secrecy laws. Therefore, conceptu-
ally transparency regimes can be located between the poles of transparency and
arcane policy.
Then, PR activities may also serve or distort free public discussion. PR infl u-
ences public debates through strategic diff usion of themes and opinions, through
the promotion of certain speakers in public debates, and sometimes also through
the establishment of new communication arenas such as web platforms for an
exchange of opinions on selected topics. All of this is an intervention into the struc-
tures of public debates. The question is, whether it serves to improve the chances
of citizens to come to an “enlightened understanding” (Dahl 1989, 111) of politics
and exercise their “right to communicate” in public which lies at the heart of the
idea of publicity (Splichal 2006, 711). Thus, the contribution of PR to a functioning
public sphere is not to be determined a priori: PR might or might not promote
democratic communication. It could promote the debate of topics that would have
otherwise been neglected by today’s highly commercialised media system. It could
also spread lies and silence critical discussion of policies. The extreme forms of PR
may be labelled propaganda and dialogue. Propaganda as a concept of information
policy pursues persuasive goals and employs manipulative means. In contrast to
legitimate forms of persuasion, propaganda ignores generally accepted norms of
communication such as truthfulness and a minimum of respect towards diverging
opinions. Dialogue as a concept of information policy generates a communicative
exchange with some kind of connection to political decisions (see below for its
concrete operationalisation for this study). A policy orientated towards the strate-
gies of transparency and dialogue is a constructive contribution to a democratic
public sphere because it strengthens citizens’ ability to form rational opinions and
to participate in the political process in a meaningful way. Arcane policy and pro-
paganda are clearly not appropriate for promoting democratic public debates.
Figure 1: Information Policy and the Public Sphere
Information policy as:
... constructive
contribution to
the public sphere
... detrimental
to the public
sphere
Arcane policy
Transparent policy
Propaganda
Dialogue
PR
Transparency
regime
10
In order to assess the actual impact of information policy on the public sphere
it is not suffi cient to test whether it pursues the normatively acceptable aims of pro-
moting transparency and dialogue. The question is whether the policy is eff ective in
pursuing these goals. Eff ectiveness would be the third dimension that needs to be
added to Figure 1 in order to adequately locate information policy with regards to
the public sphere. If the information policy of the EU actually wants to infl uence the
transnational European public sphere, it would have to be able to operate eff ectively
in such an expanded and complex space of communication. The communication
of the EU must reach millions of citizens. Thus, besides the normative criteria, the
analysis of the European information policy must also include criteria which test
whether the information policy is suitable to reach out to this vast space of com-
munication. Information policy will become eff ective – in the normatively desired
or undesired ways – only if it reaches out to its addressees. When critics assume
that PR activities of authorities lead to a re-feudalisation of the public sphere, they
implicitly presuppose that the PR actually reaches the citizens and that it has eff ects
on them. These presuppositions, especially when applied to the PR of the European
Commission, should not be taken for granted.
Empirical Analysis of European Information Policy
The empirical study focuses on the development of the information policy of the
European Commission since the turn of the millennium. The PR of the European
Commission and the EU transparency regime will be discussed as to whether (1)
they follow normatively acceptable strategies of a democratic information policy,
and whether (2) the policy fulfi ls the preconditions for being eff ective with regards
to the European space of communication. The analysis of the transparency rules will
discuss whether they in fact are designed and implemented in a way that fosters the
transparency of EU policy-making. The analysis of the PR will focus on the question
of whether a political dialogue with the citizens was eff ectively promoted.
As for the PR, in the light of the diversity of the PR-instruments and activities
by the diff erent directorates and representations of the Commission, it was neces-
sary to further limit the case study. The analysis has focused on the information
activities around EU enlargement as this campaign became the biggest informa-
tion campaign of the Commission in recent years. The analysis of the information
activities related to enlargement required a multi-level analysis: it had to include
the central activities in Brussels and the activities of the Commission on the national
levels that was organised via its Representations in each of the member states.
The data collection was based on three pillars: expert interviews, document
analysis and a standardised survey. The main data source were 59 expert inter-
views with offi cials of the Commission, the European Parliament, the European
Council and the national governments, as well as with PR agencies involved, which
were conducted successively between 2003 and 2006. The EU-wide overview was
provided by two standardised surveys among all national representations of the
European Commission and among the receivers of grants for information projects
of the EU. In addition, almost 300 documents were analysed. Besides the policy
documents (reports and policy papers of the Commission) also selected PR products
(brochures, websites of the Commission in Brussels) and products of media relations
work (interviews with Günter Verheugen, at the time Commissioner responsible
11
for managing EU enlargement) were included. The diff erent sources of data were
analysed using qualitative content analysis. In the following, only some of the main
results can be presented here (see Brüggemann 2008 for details).
The European Commission’s traditions of information policy clearly lie in a
bureaucratic form of arcane policy: communication and information were ne-
glected, though predominantly as a consequence of a bureaucratic communication
culture, not as a consequence of a politically motivated conspiracy, which would
consciously want to keep EU politics secret (Gramberger 1997, 100). A new, eff ec-
tive information policy heading for transparency and dialogue would constitute a
fundamental change of the “policy paradigm” (Hall 1993), away from the structures
and the organisational culture which have shaped the Commission since the 1950s.
In the following, we will fi rst turn towards the transparency rules and then move
on towards the analysis of PR activities.
Towards Transparency?
The EU’s transparency regime will be evaluated against criteria for a robust
transparency regime according to international standards as established by a com-
prehensive comparison of international transparency rules in a report issued by the
non-governmental organisation Article 19. According to international best practice,
general access to all existing documents of an institution should be available with
only a limited set of exceptions. A good transparency regime goes beyond the right
of access to documents and also includes the routine, direct release of informa-
tion, public meetings of institutions, and the introduction of registers listing all
documents that the respective organisation holds. Active communication (PR) can
contribute positively to realise transparency by facilitating access to information
for all citizens (Mendel 2003). We will now briefl y discuss how the diff erent EU
institutions perform on these criteria starting with the demand for public meetings.
The discussion will then proceed from the evaluation of the formulation of the
transparency rules to an analysis concerning the implementation of these rules.
Opening up council meetings. Traditionally, only the European Parliament (EP)
had public meetings. The Commission and the Council met behind closed doors.
For this reason, the Council has been widely criticised, since the secret meetings
made it possible for national governments to lie about the policies they pursued
in Brussels, and for using the EU as a scapegoat for everything that went wrong in
Europe while claiming all the good for the national government. Since September
2006, many sessions of the Council and particularly the voting of the government
representatives became public (Council of the European Union 2006). Today, meet-
ings with legislative decisions are public as well as every session related to policies
that fall under the co-decision regime with the EP. The citizens can follow these
meetings via Live Stream on the Web.3 There is a change towards more openness,
but there are still a number of meetings (those without legislative decisions) which
are not public.
A comprehensive right of access to documents. Likewise, a er the turn of the millen-
nium there was a move towards more transparency regarding the right of access
to documents. Until 2001 there was no right for the citizens to access documents.
The new EU-legislation (Regulation 1049/2001) is a thorough and robust regula-
tion, which grants a general right of access to documents to all residents of the EU.
12
If the Commission or the Council decline the release of documents, citizens can
demand an examination of this decision and ultimately also appeal to the European
Court of First Instance or to the European Ombudsman. A refusal of documents
can only be justifi ed with reference to the reasons for exceptions that are provided
in the regulation. The EU institutions always have to weigh their refusal against a
potentially overriding public interest in the release of information.
Limited set of exceptions. The exceptions concern documents withheld for reasons
of public safety, for keeping professional secrets and privacy, but also, whole areas
of politics (security, fi nance, and economy) are exempted (Article 4). Civil society
organisations such as Statewatch (Bunyan 2002) also criticise that the institutions are
allowed to reject documents whose publication would “seriously undermine” (Ar-
ticle 4.3) the internal decision-making process of the EU institutions (Bunyan 2002).
Register of documents. With regards to transparency, practical questions also come
into view. In order to request a document, one must be able to fi nd out what docu-
ments there are. Therefore, the transparency regulations oblige the EU institutions
to create public registers of all of their documents. This obligation corresponds to
the “best practice” of international transparency regimes. Having said that, it is
nevertheless important to distinguish between well-formulated rules and good
implementation. In the following, we will see that the Commission, in contrast to
the EP and the Council, does not always perform well in implementing the rules.
Implementation of regulations. The EU institutions have to regularly report on the
state of the implementation of the transparency regulation. Table 1 compares the in-
formation gathered from the reports of the EP, the Council and the Commission.
Table 1: Implementing the Rules: Comparing the Performance of the EU
Institutions
EP Council Commission
Documents in register 1,022,000 850,000 74,000
Number of requests 1,900 2,200 3,800
Critical remarks from the European Ombudsman
as opposed to number of complaints by citizens
1
1
0
0
5
7
Rate of documents disclosed after inquiry (2006) 98% 85% 77%
Note: The gures refer to the 2006 reports from the EU institutions as summarised by a paper issued
by the EP (2008).
Quite to the contrary of common expectations that the Council is the most secre-
tive of all institutions, the Commission shows most weaknesses in implementing the
transparency regulation. The main weakness is the absence of a functioning register
of documents held by the Commission.4 Whilst the Commission produces by far
more documents than the Council and the EP, the registers of these institutions are
ten times more extensive than the one from the Commission. Thus, citizens cannot
fi nd out which documents they can request from the Commission – a fact, which has
been labelled a case of “maladministration” by the European Ombudsman.5 Also,
with regards to other criteria, the Commission does not fare well in comparison
with the Council and the EP: The EP and the Council give green light for access in
response to a higher proportion of inquiries. And the Commission received critical
remarks from the European Ombudsman in fi ve cases in 2006.
13
The research process for this study also depended on free access to a multi-
tude of documents. Therefore, the author could gain fi rst hand experience with
the implementation of the transparency regulations by the offi cials working with
the Commission and the Council. Offi cials from the Commission followed quite
diverse approaches towards transparency when being asked for documents and
information for the purpose of conducting this research project. While some offi cials
were very open and helpful in providing documents, others claimed that all the
“public” documents of the Commission were already published online, whereas
all other documents were “internal” and not accessible for outsiders. This does
not go well with the transparency rules, which grant a general right for access to
all documents. And for all documents, they can be only refused on the grounds of
the exceptions in the regulation. Despite repeated e-mails, a query for documents
from one of the Representations of the Commission remained unanswered for fi ve
months and then access was refused. The author gained access to the requested
(two-year-old) activity reports only a er an appeal to the Secretariat General of the
Commission and a er declaring that the next step will be to appeal to the Court of
First Instance or complain to the European Ombudsman. Apparently, the spirit of
offi cial secrecy still pervades some corridors of the Commission. It seems crucial that
political organisations not only have well-formulated rules for access to documents
but that they also develop a culture of transparency in their daily work. Evidently,
this has been more successful in the Council than in the Commission.
Another important fi nding concerns the question of who actually uses the
transparency procedure. It comes as no surprise that ordinary citizens are not the
main users of this kind of procedure. Lobbyists, NGO representatives, lawyers,
scientists and representatives of other public institutions are the main users of
the transparency regulations (European Parliament 2008). An important group
is represented with less than three percent of the inquiries: the journalists. They
cannot wait for two weeks to access to documents. However, they would be the
group which could make the information contained in documents available to the
general public in a language that citizens can understand.
The conclusion must remain ambivalent. Looking only at the formulation of
the transparency rules, we could conclude that the EU is indeed one of the most
transparent public institutions in the world. But looking at the implementation of
the transparency rules, it still seems too early to talk about a fundamental change
of policy paradigm. There seems to be a co-existence of strong rules opening up
access to information and the traditions of bureaucratic arcane culture limiting
their implementation.
Dialogue Desired?
Access to information and documents may be complemented by public relations
measures of actively disseminating information. Furthermore, the Commission even
wants to go beyond dissemination of information and start a dialogue with the
citizens in order to vitalise the European public sphere. Whether the information
policy of the Commission incites such a political dialogue, was explored through
a case study of the PR campaign on the EU’s big fi h enlargement round. With a
budget of 150 million Euros between the years 2000 and 2006, the activities on EU
enlargement constituted an important focus of the Commission’s communication
work. The PR was partly managed from the headquarters in Brussels and partly
14
from the Commission’s Representations in the EU member states. The Representa-
tions administered a large part of the budget and had a (limited) degree of autonomy
in spending the funds.
Did the activities inspire a dialogue with the citizens? In order to respond to
this question, one has to further clarify the concept of “political dialogue” fi rst. The
concept of a political dialogue with the citizens goes far beyond the demand for
transparency. In fact, transparency is only one of the preconditions for a dialogue
to work out. The central feature of dialogue is the exchange of ideas, opinions and
arguments. A dialogue becomes political not only by dealing with political topics
but also because there is some kind of connection to political decision-making.
The connection to the decision-making process has a temporal component: the
dialogue should precede the political decision in order to be plausibly able to have
some kind of relevance for politics. In the case of “dialogue a er decision-making,”
PR would use dialogue merely as a means of persuasion. This may be eff ective
and also politically legitimate; however, it is not consistent with the concept of
dialogue in a political sense. Then, a political dialogue would also have an insti-
tutional component: there would have to be procedures and routines which feed
the results of the dialogue back into the political decision-making arena, thereby
providing for responsive politics. First of all, we will look at the temporal condi-
tion for the possibility of political dialogue, i.e. the relationship between political
decision-making and public communication activities. In retrospect, three phases
can be distinguished.
(1) Politics without public communication. A er the fall of the iron curtain in
1989 the EU faced the question of how to relate to the Central and East European
countries (CEE). The political project of enlargement developed as an answer to
that question. In 1993, the accession criteria were formulated in Copenhagen. Un-
til 1997, three CEE countries, Cyprus and Malta had submi ed applications and
struck association agreements. De facto, the general course for a big enlargement
round of the EU including a number of CEE countries was set by the year 1997.
It took fi ve more years, however, to develop a communication strategy paper on
EU enlargement.
(2) Information for experts and the slow establishment of an information policy on
enlargement. From 1998 to 2002 the crucial negotiations towards accession took
place. The political process was transparent only for policy experts who were able
to interpret the policy papers issued by the Commission, such as the progress
reports about each candidate countries’ preparedness for enlargement. The Com-
mission did not publish information about the negotiations themselves. One of the
interviewees remarked:
The Commission strictly adhered to the principle of confi dentiality. However,
since so many participants were involved in the negotiations the journalists
did always fi nd ways to get information. [...] In this situation, those who leaked
the information set the tone and the Commission played the second fi ddle.
All in all, the Commission did not act as a political communicator, but dissemi-
nated expert information about the state of the accession process in the diff erent
candidate countries. At the same time, the structures of an EU information policy
on enlargement were established: the Directorate General of Enlargement set up
an information unit and issued a strategy paper in 2002.
15
(3) Delayed implementation of PR activities for the general public. It was not before
2003 that concrete PR activities were planned and realised on a bigger scale. Due
to delays in implementing communication plans, many projects could only be
realised in the years a er the accession date (1 May 2004).
Overall, communication was clearly lacking behind political decision-making.
De facto, the PR of the Commission served to clean up a er political decisions. It
served to communicate political decisions rather than generate a political dialogue
preceding political decisions. The uncoupling of the policy process and communi-
cation activities might be interpreted as a political strategy. In line with the spirit
of the traditional functional logic of European integration (Haas 1968), progress
in the integration process preceded public discussions. EU enlargement became a
“fait accompli” before the citizens took notice of it.
The analysis of policy documents and the expert interviews conducted with
offi cials show that this was not necessarily a voluntary decision or a strategic
move by the Commission. One explanatory factor was the bureaucratic culture of
the Commission. Following this logic, some of the interviewees argued, that the
Commission was not able to disseminate information before the fi nal agreement on
the list of the joining countries and the precise time plan for accession was agreed.
Otherwise one would presumably not know what to communicate. Other reasons
for delays in communication as pointed out by most interviewees are related to
implementation problems that the Commission faced due to strict and changing
budgetary rules and a lack of adequate staffi ng for the administration and imple-
mentation of communication measures with the broader public.
Even with this lagging behind of the communication process in mind, it would
still be conceivable that the Commission has kicked off a “dialogue” about the
topic of EU enlargement in 2004 with some kind of political relevance for the fol-
lowing enlargement round to include Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. Therefore,
it still makes sense to determine whether there was some kind of broad debate
with citizens at all. Then, at least, the PR would have been dialogic. As pointed out
above, it would constitute a political dialogue only if some kind of link to political
decision making could be detected.
The empirical quest for dialogue will be pursued focussing on the case of Ger-
many since here, unlike in other member states, the PR activities were documented
in a very thorough and consistent way, e.g. giving details on the groups targeted
by the PR measures, the number of participants and the degree of media coverage
about the Commission’s activities. The Representation in Berlin provided monthly
reports from 2002 until 2004 and in this time period it described 159 information
activities, which are the units of analysis. In the fi rst step, various types of activities
were assigned to diff erent strategies of information policy. The underlying assump-
tion is that diff erent communication activities have a varying potential to inspire a
dialogue. In a discussion forum where people representing diff erent opinions sit on
the podium and the audience can ask questions and express opinions, the structural
conditions for a dialogue are be er than in the case of marketing activities such as
organising entertaining events, performances, games or pu ing up posters along
the road. Of course, this classifi cation is very rough because it is not guaranteed
that a speaker uses valid arguments instead of sheer propaganda lies. Also, at a
public round table discussion, the only thing that is certain is that the se ing of the
16
event allowed for the exchange of diff erent positions and arguments but we do not
know whether there actually was an exchange of diff erent opinions.
Table 2: Profi le of PR Activities in Germany (2002-2004)
PR activities Frequency (%)
Seminars, exhibitions, political education
26
Political speeches / appearance of single speakers 13
Discussion forums 46
Social events, games, advertisements 15
Analysis of the monthly reports of the German Representation of the Commission
by the type of activities mentioned; N = 159
.
100
Table 2 shows that nearly every second PR action mentioned was a discussion
forum. This most frequent type of activity was followed by measures which con-
vey background information like seminars, exhibitions, and activities of political
education. Hence, many actions had a high potential of dialogue and transparency.
There were fewer activities which fall into the category of one-sided justifi cation.
Political marketing in the forms of social events, games and advertisements plays
only a negligible role.
Dialogical forms were at the heart of the PR activities organised by the Commis-
sion. It was not possible, however, to determine an institutional feedback-channel
through which the results of these dialogues were able to systematically fl ow back
into the political decision-making. Thus, the communication of the Commission
on the topic of enlargement turns out to have been dialogic. In the absence of an
institutionalised or at least a temporal connection to the political decision-making
process this should not be interpreted as a political dialogue, but rather as a dialogic
means of explaining a political decision already taken. Its aim is to bring the topic
of enlargement onto the agenda of public debates.
So far, we have argued that the dialogic PR of the Commission was not a politi-
cal dialogue. We will now show that it was not a dialogue with the citizens either,
since the Commission failed to reach out to the broader public. Again, this will be
demonstrated drawing on an analysis of the data from Germany. We assume that
debates with a broader outreach call for one or (rather) several of the following
conditions to be fulfi lled: (a) there are many participants; (b) activities primar-
ily address professional multipliers such as teachers, politicians, and journalists
among the participants; (c) important media outlets follow the debate and serve
as amplifi ers.
Table 3: The Reach of PR Activities in Germany (2002-2004)
“Micro-activities”: activities that reached less than 50 people and did not focus
on professional multipliers (journalists, teachers, politicians) 22%
“Media-centred activities”: News coverage in several regional or one national
media outlet 22%
Typical number of people attending (median) 85
Note: Analysis of the monthly reports of the German representation of the European Commission
N = 159 (activities mentioned)
17
Almost one-fourth of all activities mentioned in the reports by the Commis-
sion reached less than fi y people and did not primarily address professional
multipliers (see Table 3). These types of activities were therefore categorised as
“micro-activities” from which no eff ect on the broader public space can plausibly
be expected. Typically, the activities of the Commission drew only slightly more
than eighty participants. According to the reports, only less than one-fourth of all
activities received intense media a ention. Overall, these fi gures show that (at least
if the case of Germany was representative for the PR of the Representations of the
Commission) the Commission was not able to reach out to hundreds of millions
of EU citizens drawing on the small scale PR activities that were at the heart of the
EU enlargement campaign.
As the Commission has no direct way to address hundreds of millions of citi-
zens, it would still be possible to focus PR activities on media relations in order
to enhance outreach. Unfortunately, media were clearly not at the centre of com-
munication on EU enlargement. This can be shown by looking at the resources
available for projects with the media. Table 4 classifi es the various posts from the
budget administered in Brussels by primary target group as “media relations”
or “direct PR”: barely thirty percent of the expenditures went to media-cantered
activities (Table 4).
Table 4: The Central Budget for PR Activities (2001-2004)
Share of PR budget [%] Media relations Direct PR
Centrally managed PR
expenditures of DG
Enlargement:
35 Million Euro in total.
Publications 6
Events 1
Discussion Forums 2
Information Centre in Brussels 4
Calls for Proposals: NGOs* 56
Calls for Proposals: Media 24
Other Broadcasting Projects 2
Journalist Seminars 3
Overall Percentage 29 69
Note: Calculations based on Commission documents (European Commission 2004; European
Commission 2005b). The data are rounded to one percent.
*The largest tender of fourteen million Euros in 2004 was not only available to NGOs but also to
public bodies.
The fi nding that the Commission neglected media relations is also supported
by looking at human resources; a good press work does not necessarily require a
huge budget but certainly adequate staffi ng. Specifi c media relations work on EU
enlargement in Brussels was basically handled by one press offi cer, the spokes-
man of Günter Verheugen, who was supported by one secretary and a part-time
assistant – facing one of the biggest press corps in the world.
The case study on EU enlargement has shown that the human and fi nancial
resources of the Commission for communication were centred on PR activities that
18
aim to reach out directly to citizens. They did reach some citizens but mostly those
already interested in the EU who were willing to a end informational seminars or
public roundtable discussions. The PR of the Commission failed to reach the public
at large. Media work was structurally weak and therefore could not compensate
for the failure of direct PR activities.
Perspectives for the Information Policy of the EU
Overall, the information policy since the turn of the century has turned into
a road heading for more transparency and dialogical forms of communication.
The introduction of new transparency rules as well as other measures, namely the
introduction and the improvement of the Web site “EUROPA” (see Brüggemann
2008 for details), are certainly milestones on this way. As regards the question of
dialogue, there was a multitude of discussion meetings funded by the Commission
and o en organised independently by civil society organisations. As these measures
were lagging behind the decision-making process, they can hardly be viewed as
being part of a political dialogue with the citizens of Europe. It could still have been
a relevant contribution towards explaining EU enlargement to the people if the PR
had been able to reach out to millions of citizens. Looking at the eff ectiveness of
both, the steps towards transparency as well as the a empts towards dialogue, the
analysis arrives at the fi nding that the potential to actually enhance the transparency
and public debate about European governance is severely compromised by a lack
of eff ective implementation of information policy: This was shown by looking at
the implementation of the transparency rules as well as by looking at PR measures.
All in all, the image emerges of an information policy which operates “with the
handbrake on.” Information policy turned out to be normatively acceptable (even
if the aim of dialogue proved to be illusionary) but not eff ective.
However, the information policy is not failing because it refrains from means
of marketing and propaganda. Promoting a culture of transparency within the
European Commission and installing a more comprehensive register of documents
would help to make transparency real. The only way to enhance the eff ectiveness
of the PR of the EU seems to be to focus on media relations. Only the media can
take micro-dialogues with a few dozens of citizens to the wider public; this means
the promises of the PR of the Commission must be scaled down. A direct dialogue
with the citizens seems to be illusionary. The promise of dialogue itself becomes
propagandistic if the debates with citizens do not reach a wider public and are in
no way linked to political decision-making.
Even if direct dialogue might be bound to fail, the Commission can still go be-
yond promoting open access to EU information. It could strive to put EU topics on
the agenda of public communication by strengthening media relations. National
media are perfectly adapted to the needs of the national audiences. There are
already signs of Europeanisation at least in the quality press (see e.g. Wessler et
al. 2008). Information policy could try to broaden this trend. By provoking public
transnational debates in the media, the Commission could contribute to a lively
European public sphere. Beyond these practical conclusions drawn from this
study, we will now go back to the more abstract question concerning the relation-
ship between information policy and the public sphere and open up some links
for future research.
19
Information Policy and the Public Sphere:
Potential and Limits
The ambivalent fi nding of this study, that the Commission pursues democrati-
cally acceptable aims but fails in communicating eff ectively, also opens up a new
perspective on normative theorising of state intervention in the public sphere. The
general assumption of a re-feudalisation of the public sphere through information
policy cannot be confi rmed by the case study on the European Commission. PR
measures are neither propagandistic by nature nor do they always have strong
eff ects. If the case of the EU can be generalised to the information policy of other
public bodies, then we should be very cautious in jumping to conclusions about
good or bad eff ects of government intervention in the public sphere. Information
policy may contribute to transparency or it may indeed be an a empt towards
misguiding citizens. Providing access to information and documents promotes the
thriving of a public sphere as it provides an important resource for public discus-
sions: information that is needed to make useful political arguments and come to
enlightened conclusions.
For the question of promoting direct political dialogue with citizen, there is a
more sceptical conclusion. For the Commission, the strategy of a political dialogue
proved to be deceptive. Researchers should be very careful when looking at political
institutions which promise a dialogue with the citizens: they should ask whether
these public bodies can actually initiate and implement a political dialogue with
the citizens and whether these public bodies can be plausibly expected to take
dialogue seriously. First of all, executive bodies such as the European Commission
lack a strong incentive for dialogue if they are not elected by the citizens and do
not have to fear sanctions if they ignore the needs of the citizens. In these cases,
responsiveness is primarily a voluntary act of the administration. Furthermore,
the Commission, as well as many national administrative organs, lack the means
for a direct dialogue with the broader public. They cannot directly communicate
with millions of citizens.
Government bodies might nevertheless contribute to the thriving of a public
sphere in a more eff ective and normatively acceptable way if they focus on media
relations. Then, on the one hand the media can work as an amplifi er of political
communication to a wider public. On the other hand, professional journalism can
counter propaganda eff orts by press offi cers. Therefore, the media are not only an
amplifi er but also a necessary corrective of government communication. Direct
PR might be fashionable among some practitioners because there is no critical
corrective for their messages. Sometimes, however, they overlook that there is also
no amplifi er for reaching out to millions of people. Media relations are thus the
missing link between information policy and the public sphere. And the political
message which results from these considerations is that a democratic and eff ective
European information policy is feasible.
Using the concept of information policy for empirical studies has proven to be
useful for the case of the EU and it is very likely to be helpful to analyse national
forms of government communication since it combines the analysis of transparency
rules and PR measures, which are, indeed, two sides of the same coin. Furthermore,
the study has shown that it is paramount to combine research addressing norma-
20
tive questions (guided by the public sphere concept or other approaches) with
questions of eff ectiveness of communication. Benefi cial or malevolent, a empts
to communicate may fail. Following Luhmann, one should indeed assume that
communication is unlikely to occur (Luhmann 2005, 30). And this is certainly true
for direct communication between government bodies and citizens, especially
when the question is taken to the level of transnational structures of governance
and communication.
Notes:
1. This article presents a concept of information policy that has been originally introduced in a more
conceptual article in Javnost – The Public (Brüggemann 2005) and has been more fully developed
and applied to the case of the EU in a book published in German (Brüggemann 2008). This article
presents key ndings and the main conceptual conclusions arising from of this study. I would like to
thank the reviewers from Javnost – The Public for the very helpful feedback on earlier versions of this
article!
2. For an overview of some of the ourishing academic literature on the European public sphere
which goes beyond the scope of this article, please see the review article by Brüggemann
et al. (2009) as well as the special issues of Javnost – The Public (2/2005), European Journal of
Communication (4/2007), Journalism (4/2008), Journalism Studies (1/2009) and the project reports by
the AIM project (see: http://www.aim-project.net/), the EUROPUB project (see: http://europub.wzb.
eu/ ), the Reuters Institute (see: http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/research/featured-projects)
and the ongoing research in Amsterdam (see: http://www.claesdevreese.com/research.html), Oslo
(see: http://www.arena.uio.no/about/sta /trenz.xml), Zurich (see: http://www.nccr-democracy.uzh.
ch/research) and Bremen (see: http://www.jacobs-university.de/publicsphere).
3. See: http://ceuweb.belbone.be.
4. Find the register of documents at: http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/recherche.
cfm?CL=en.
5. According to the web site by the NGO Statewatch that has set up an observatory on Freedom of
Information in the EU, see: http://www.statewatch.org/foi/foi.htm.
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