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Abraham de Swaan (2007). The European Union and the Public Sphere; A communicative space in the making? in: John Fossum and Philip Schlesinger (eds.), London and New York: Routledge, pp. 135-153.

THE EUROPEAN VOID: THE DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT AS A CULTURAL DEFICIENCY

‘On croit souvent que la vie intellectuelle est spontanément internationale.
Rien n’est plus faux.’
  Pierre Bourdieuⁱ
  ‘A Europeanization of perspectives is occurring
  (at least the first signs of it)’
  Wolfgang Beckⁱⁱ

In the past half century, a peculiar political construct has emerged from the combination of European states: The European Union is more than a confederation, but less than a federation; more than just a free trade zone, but not quite an economic whole;ⁱⁱⁱ almost a world power, but one without an army or an effective foreign policy of its own; with a common currency, the euro, but with coins that reserve a different verso for each member state. And yet, taken together, in less than a lifetime, these are major achievements. The ambitions were even more grandiose: ever eastward. The Union, after expanding into Central and Eastern Europe, and the Baltic, one day may well come to include all of the Balkan, Turkey, and in the end, who knows, Ukraine, Georgia and even Russia. This geographic expansion was to be managed by further political integration. The constitutional treaty would have elevated the Union further beyond a sheer regulatory apparatus and closer towards a federal entity, to adopt the terms proposed in the Introduction to this Volume.^iv For the time being, however, the recent referenda in France and the Netherlands have put a damper on these designs, while the Austrian presidency of the Union during the first semester of 2006 set itself the objective of preventing the accession of Turkey.
An uneasy mood reigned among the Europeans even before the negative French and Dutch votes brought about an acute crisis which in turn much acerbated the existing malaise. The institutions of the EU, elected directly or indirectly, have failed to capture the imagination of the electorate.
There is a Council of Ministers, in which the governments of the member states are represented, each supported by a freely elected parliamentary majority at home. There is a European Parliament, directly elected by the citizens of every country. There is a European Commission which must take into account the Parliament's majority. Yet, no doubt, much of the wide-spread uneasiness among the citizens of Europe is connected to the notorious ‘democratic deficit’ of the Union.^v But the very plebiscites that had been staged to make up for this shortcoming elicited a resounding rejection.

The fragmentation of European public space

The Europeans do not speak the same language and hence do not understand each other well enough to differ or agree. But quite apart from the confusion of tongues, opinions everywhere are shaped within separate national frameworks. What is passionately debated in one country is often not even an issue in adjacent countries where a different agenda prevails. In many respects, however, the debate on the European constitution and especially the referendum campaigns waged in France and the Netherlands, represented a turning point in the formation of European public space. Not only did the proposed constitution evoke intense exchanges in each member state, it also elicited a vivid interest in the discussions going on in the other member states. Equally, the bomb attacks in Madrid and London were not reported only as threats to those countries exclusively, but rather as a menace for all of Europe. The riots in the French banlieue again prompted discussions elsewhere in Europe about the odds of similar troubles there. At an earlier stage, events such as the mad cow disease or the introduction of the euro inspired synchronous discussion of identical issues across the EU.^viThis also created an interest in the debates that went on in adjacent countries and in the European institutions.^vii Yet, such common European debates are still the exception rather than the rule, and it is a rare event that prompts a discussion allowing voices from all member states to agree or disagree about the same issues, according to a common agenda. Even today, the political and cultural debate still mainly proceeds in relative isolation within each national society. Abroad, it hardly meets response. In short, there is no such thing as a European public space, as yet. As Philip Schlesinger has stated:^viii

‘The mediated public sphere in the EU remains first, overwhelmingly national; second, where it is not national it is transnational and anglophone but elitist in class terms; third, where it is ostensibly transnational, but not anglophone, it still decants principally into national modes of address.’

In discussing Europe as a communicative space, much attention has been paid to the distribution of news and information, the professional task of journalists. Philip Schlesinger and others have shown that news about the EU is perceived by reporters through national filters, edited according to a domestic agenda, and only sparsely absorbed by the home audience.^ix Transnational media are almost without exception in English and aimed at a select public of financial, corporate and political elites.

The remarkable lack of interest in the culture and politics of other European states, even in neighboring countries with an identical language, a similar culture and a shared past, is hard to explain. It registers as a sleepiness, a sudden onset of boredom whenever the other country comes within one’s circle of perception. And underneath there often may linger disdain, or resentment, or both, reflecting past and enduring relations between more powerful and less powerful neighbors, or between centre and periphery. All this is part of an lasting national habitus, that incorporates the relations of cultural capital that prevail within and between national societies. In fact, this pervasive habitus of disinterest is a result of the lack of debate and exchange that transcends borders. This, in turn, is due to the absence of a cultural opportunity structure that would allow public intellectuals, authors, artists and scientists to manifest themselves throughout Europe. It sometimes seems as if any intellectual who attempts to overcome this national closure is pulled back by the invisible gravity of the domestic institutional structure.^x
So far, on the one hand, the paucity of resources and opportunities has discouraged intellectual entrepreneurs from seeking a transnational, a European audience. They had to look first of all for resources in their home society. On the other hand, the relatively laggard nature of European cultural elite formation has done little to prompt politicians or private sponsors to provide opportunities and resources at the European level.^xi

In the meantime, and in the absence of a single European public space, there are myriads of European niches, each providing a distinct meeting place to participants from all member-nations who have shared interests. And, the more circumscribed the agenda, the more smoothly the all-European exchange proceeds: experts, technicians, specialists have no trouble finding one another, nor do entrepreneurs from the same branch, believers from the same church, athletes from the same sport, or scientists from the same discipline find it hard to congregate and communicate.
But these multifarious niches, neatly separated as they are, do not add up to a European space. On the contrary, as the agenda widens and comes to encompass broader cultural, social, and political issues, communication becomes that much more difficult. There are literally thousands of specialized journals that carry the epithet ‘European’ or an equivalent in their title.^xiⁱ But when it comes to general cultural and political reviews, there may be no more than a dozen that achieve a genuine European distribution, and almost all of these are in English.
It is unlikely that these specialized networks of exchange will coalesce into broader structures of communication. They do not at the national level. The mutual isolation between academic disciplines, or between technological specialties, is notorious (and once again, the opportunity structure, or rather the reward distribution, prevailing in these fields discourages adventurous, transdisciplinary initiatives). It is all the more unlikely that this vertical fragmentation would be overcome at the transnational level. Nor is it very likely that the elite publics that are each connected with a prestigious transnational medium such as the Financial Times or the International Herald Tribune, or the Monde Diplomatique will in due time be ‘knitted together’. There is not much that connects the subscribers to different media, and their owners will be the last to encourage such promiscuity.

The impasse in the development of border transcending media or associations is characteristic of general cultural and political communication in Europe, not for specific scientific, technological or commercial exchange. The more specific the theme of the network or the periodical, the more easily it is to put it together and keep going. There is no dearth of associations, conferences, journals dedicated to a scientific or technological discipline, sub- or even sub-sub discipline. Researchers and experts are very well informed about their peers throughout Europe and the rest of the world and keep in continual contact. On the other hand, the broader the scope of the intellectual encounter, the harder it is to create and maintain a shared agenda, to define a common ground, across borders and across languages. But the vocation of the public intellectual is precisely to engage in debate on the broad issues of the day and many in the audience want to hear a voice that is familiar from earlier discussions express its opinion on ongoing issues. One function of the much maligned celebrity intellectuals^xiiiis to function as beacons that shed their light on the many and diverse issues that pop up in the sea of current events from a steady and familiar vantage point (much like familiar critics can help readers situate a work of art in the context of the art world, whether or not readers share their tastes). Another function of media intellectuals is to define new issues and introduce them in the public debate. This usually is a shared endeavor, most often accomplished in mutual antagonism, by the debaters on both sides. Vital public opinion exists in a public of divided opinion. Intellectual debaters need a theatrical quality to command attention, to impose themselves upon a public that is constituted in the very course of the spectacle: assisting at a dramatic choc des opinions that may not always yield the truth, but is certain to inspire passion about public issues and thereby create a public with respect to which these issues are public.

The role of intelectuals in Europe

The deficient communication between the nations that make up the European Union is not due to a lack of political culture, or a scarcity of debate and polemics in each of the member countries. On the contrary, every national society boasts the full gamut of newspapers, from the popular press to the most prestigious dailies. Each country is served by an array of TV-channels, and a few of those provide some space for the discussion of public issues. In all member states there are politicians and intellectuals galore who are perfectly capable and quite eager to discuss questions of politics, culture and morality. But time and again, the gravitational force of the national culture pulls back those intellectuals who might aspire to transcend the borders of their nation and the barriers of their language.

After all, it was the emergence during the Modern Era of the nationstate in tandem with a national society that spawned a public space where people could exchange their opinions. Yet, the history of the origins and evolution of a public sphere in European national societies offers a precedent, but it does not provide a blueprint to emulate on a European scale.^xiv After all, most of these nations have been under the rule of a more or less autonomous, more or less effective regime for centuries. In each country, the various regional languages were gradually pushed aside by the language of the court and the capital city, which set the tone for the entire society. Hence, a coherent, literate public that shared a language and an agenda could emerge. A new kind of entrepreneurs found their audience: independent authors who wrote for a clientele that bought and read books and newspapers. They were mostly small, self-employed operators trading in sentiments and opinions, in brief, intellectuals: people who speak and write professionally in public about concepts and ideas.
      Intellectuals still exist today, there are even many more of them, although nowadays there are very few who still work on their own account, as 'freelancers'. Most of them by far are employed by universities, publishers and the media. All these institutions are very much orientated towards their domestic environment when recruiting students, seeking a readership, or addressing an audience.^xv They are, moreover, bound to the soil of their national language. They also depend on the national government for legal protection and as the case may be, for financial support. As a consequence, academics, editors, journalists find almost all of their connections within nationally defined networks and build up their reputation within the confines of their home society. Thus, there are German intellectuals, and French, Greek, Portuguese and also Dutch intellectuals, each addressing their particular domestic public. But on the whole, the intellectuals in Europe are not the intellectuals of Europe.^xvi
      It very seldom happens that intellectuals find a European audience, and manifest themselves at the all-European level. Only a very small number have achieved a reputation that goes beyond the borders of their own society, allowing them to publish, in translation, in the other countries of the Union.
The few who have achieved international renown as intellectuals did so mostly on the strength of a literary or an academic oeuvre that was translated and published abroad, or because they made a name for themselves as commentators on international affairs and in due time were reprinted in other countries. Literary fame especially has allowed a select company of authors to make themselves heard throughout the Union, e.g. Günter Grass, Milan Kundera, or Umberto Eco. Their observations on political and cultural issues are published and read throughout the Union after their novels had already provided them with an audience that recognizes their voice. There are other remarkable exceptions, such as Jürgen Habermass and the late Pierre Bourdieu, philosophers and sociologists both, whose comments on the predicaments of contemporary society resonated far beyond their home country. But almost all the others among the handful of authors who succeeded in building a transnationally valid reputational capital started out in the UK or the US, writing in English, before they acquired a name across the EU, (even if they were born elsewhere in the former Britsh empire and started life with a different mother tongue). Transnational reputational capital remains very scarce for intellectuals (and even more so for almost everyone else). The vast majority of reputations does not reach across the borders of language and culture.
      Very few politicians have succeeded in extending their reputation beyond the confines of their home society, except through incidental news items. E.g. Tony Blair or Sylvio Berlusconi or Jacques Chirac certainly are well known all over Europe, but it is doubtful whether abroad they can conquer an audience beyond the eight o’clock television news. Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle are the shining exceptions as the great heroes of World War II who both were authors in their own right. Surprisingly, the European commissioners did not achieve much transnational capital either, even though they appeared exceptionally well positioned to do so. These admittedly haphazard examples seem to suggest that lasting, border transcending reputations, surprisingly, are built more on a written oeuvre than on political capital or celebrity media exposure. At least among an elite public, literary and academic prestige seem to command more lasting attention from audiences than simple fame. The scarcity of border crossing intellectual reputations seems to be a consequence of language barriers, but also of the ‘cultural opportunity structure’ of the Union and its constituent states. The concept is a variation on the notion of Political Opportunity Structure, current in the study of social movements, where it denotes the totality of ‘signals to the social and political actor which either encourage or discourage them to use their internal resources to form social movements.’^xvii Likewise, the structure of cultural opportunities determines the chances and incentives for academics, artists, authors and other intellectuals to reach an audience and earn an income through cultural pursuits.

What makes the concept interesting is the shift away from individual motivation and competence, towards the broader social context in which people operate. Thus, the prevailing constellation of universities, newspapers, reviews, and foundations granting subsidies or awards, may much influence the career moves that intellectuals make.
      Next, the networks that academics and authors form with their peers, and the way these ties are structured, may also shape their choices. Such networks may connect close colleagues, but also the members of an editorial board or an organizing committee, they comprise ties to departments in other universities, to translators and publishers. Citation networks chart another aspect of this opportunity structure. There is little doubt that invitations for conferences or acceptance for publication in reviews are more likely to be forthcoming for scholars or authors already connected with the organizers or the editors and in other respects, too, well-situated within the network. To outsiders this may smack of favoritism, but from the inside it seems a simple matter of affinity of style and opinion, and of predictable performance. And finally, there is the overriding structural fact of the prevailing language. Most often, its impact remains largely unnoticed in the domestic context, where the single national language is shared as a matter of course. The European constellation of languages is the topic of a final section of this article.

The existing cultural opportunity structures in the national societies of Europe operate strongly against the emergence of border transcending intellectual reputations. First of all, in order to cross borders, more often than not authors must switch languages. This compels them either to invest heavily in the cost of mastering a language to such a degree of perfection as to be able to write and publish in it, or it imposes the considerable costs of translation (and how to get editors and publishers interested in a text that has not been translated yet?). More fundamentally, language differences delimit the scope of attention and delineate networks of affinity among intellectuals. People ‘naturally’ (that is ‘structurally’) prefer to read texts in their own language.
Institutions provide very few career opportunities for intellectuals, writers, journalists and scholars outside their national societies. Language requirements severely restrict employment for academics at foreign universities (even for those who speak English) and they entirely rule out editorial or publishing jobs abroad. Equally scarce at the all-European level are the other ingredients of a successful career and a major reputation: awards, subsidies, commissions, committee or jury memberships and so on. Almost all these resources are proffered by national institutions rather than by European agencies. Moreover, as argued before, the odds of obtaining such prizes and positions are much improved by mutual acquaintance, while acquaintance networks rarely extend beyond the frontiers of nationality and language. There are, admittedly, a few very prestigious prizes intended for laureates from all over Europe, e.g. the Amalfi, the Erasmus or the Charles the Fifth awards, and there is the European University Institute near Florence, or the Europa College in Bruges and Warsaw, there are some ‘Jean Monnet’ and ‘European Union’ university chairs here and there. But even the rare intellectuals who qualify for such privileges must first make their reputation and win their laurels within their own national societies.
Granted, things are changing in the direction of increasing European exchange, also among scholars or authors. A finely branched circuit of conferences and workshops has taken shape by now and continually brings together intellectuals, scholars, writers or artists from all over Europe. Moreover, a small number of periodicals already appears in several languages, such as Liber, now defunct, directed by the Pierre Bourdieu, or Le Monde Diplomatique. But with the exception of the latter, the most widely read transnational publications in Europe are all English or American: from the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Economist, to the Herald Tribune and the Financial
Times. ^xviii

The role of elite media

In 1990 the British newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell decided to launch ‘Europe’s first national newspaper’, aiming for an all-European readership. A few years later the daily was defunct and survived a few years more as a weekly publication. Losses have been reported at 70 million pounds.^xixThis debacle may have functioned as a warning for anyone attempting to try and embark on a similar enterprise again. There are, however, as mentioned, media that have succeeded in crossing borders.
In fact, the weekly British Economist produces a special ‘continental edition’ for mainland Europe with a circulation of 200,000 (as compared to the 150,000 of the UK edition and an overall global circulation of more than one million).^xx The London based Financial Times, with a total circulation of 426,000, reaches 119,000 readers in mainland Europe and participates in ‘partner’ editions in German, French, and Chinese.^xxi Both publications cater mainly to the business elite throughout the EU, but they devote considerable space to general political and cultural issues, making them significant media of intellectual debate on the continent. The same applies to another worldwide publication, the International Herald Tribune (owned by the New York Times which provides much of its editorial content). It mainly addresses American expatriates and the foreign business community with an overall circulation of almost a quarter of a million and a European readership of 145,000 (most other readers live in East Asia).^xxiiThe largest intellectual, even ‘high brow’ medium is the bi-weekly New York Review of Books with an impressive worldwide circulation of over 1,4 million, mostly American readers. In Europe, its combined subscription and newsstand cum bookshop readership numbers about 13,000.^xxiii The bi-weekly London Review of Books, with a much smaller total circulation of 43,000, distributes a few thousand copies in continental Europe.^xxiv These English language publications are mostly read in the Western part of Europe. Central and Eastern European countries may yet have to catch up, since they became accessible to foreign media only after 1989. The one exception to the predominance of English language media that are based in London or New York is the astonishingly successful Le Monde diplomatique, a political and cultural bimonthly with a global printed circulation of 1.5 million in 21 languages. Its editorial position is clearly to the left, or rather ‘altermondialiste’. Outside of France, Le Monde Diplomatique is usually published as a monthly supplement to a local newspaper or review, in the Mid East, Latin America, and also in the European Union, where it has a combined foreign readership of almost six hundred thousand. In the EU, it is the most widely distributed transnational medium for intellectual debate and the only one of some importance that is not based in the US or the UK.^xxv The impact of the electronic media is much harder to assess, since viewers and listeners tend to tune in whenever it suits them and their habits must be assessed through periodical survey questionnaires of contested validity. Thus, RFI, the French international radio and tv network, claims 44 million ‘regular listeners’ all over the world (the majority in Francophone Africa) and more than two million in Europe, ‘West and East’, for its broadcasts.^xxvi The French international TV-chain TV5 Monde reports 72 million weekly viewers, 29 million in Europe alone.^xxvii These figures cover the audiences for sports, news, as well as more intellectual items such as documentaries and political or cultural features. The same applies to Deutsche Welle, which broadcasts mainly in German and in English, mostly to a European audience, estimated to number some 65 million ‘weekly’ listeners and 28 million viewers. In the European Union it reaches roughly 5 million viewers and six million listeners on a weekly basis (especially in Central and Eastern Europe).^xxviii BBC World, the British international radio and TV network, provides programming in English for 4,5 million viewers every week, over the entire range of genres, with very frequent news broadcasts and a sizeable share of general cultural and political items.^xxix The Franco-German channel Arte broadcasts its ‘high brow’ programs throughout Europe simultaneously in French and German for a rather small audience (e.g. 0,4% of the market in Germany, corresponding to some 240,000 adult viewers).^xxx Dutch Radio Netherlands (Wereldomroep) broadcasts in nine languages and reaches about 50 million weekly listeners, making it the 4th largest global network (the Voice of America is still the world’s largest global broadcaster).^xxxi Many other countries support an international tv or radio station, broadcasting in several languages, but with rather small audiences. The smaller international stations increasingly rely on global news agencies, thus increasing the similarity of news broadcasts across the globe, while at the same time increasing the variation of available items in any single location.^xxxii

A number of tv and radio stations limit themselves to news or sports broadcasts, such as CNN, in English, (with a reported ‘weekly’ audience of 7,5 million in Europe),^xxxiiⁱ or CNBC, with 2,7 million European viewers on a weekly basis.^xxxiv Most interesting for the present purposes is Euronews, an editorially independent station under contract with the EU which broadcasts in seven languages to 6,7 million European viewers every week.^xxxv Eurosport is a highly successful channel, broadcasting in eighteen languages for a pan-European audience and devoted exclusively to sports coverage.^xxxvi Most printed periodicals, radio and tv stations by now have created websites that present published editorial material, usually with added comments, arguments, supporting documentation, audience reactions etcetera. Increasingly, multilingual international websites that cater to a political and cultural elite appear on the world wide web, the most notable instances being Eurozine (edited in Vienna), with articles from some 100 cultural magazines in Europe, quite often in translation.^xxxvii A site hosted by the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam will soon present a daily digest of major European newspapers in several languages.^xxxviii Sports and entertainment coverage crosses the frontiers of language and nation with much greater ease than political and cultural items. Many of the programs are initially produced by American media enterprises. But some are indeed of European origin and scope: the Eurovision song festival or the contests for the European football championship are among the most notable examples of shows that capture a vast audience throughout the Union.^xxxix

The emerging European public sphere

The national framework shapes opinion within each country, the national past determines shared memories, and the cultural opportunity structure in each society controls the intellectuals. It sometimes seems as if some kind of national gravity holds them back from even trying to transcend borders. It also reveals structures of national sentiment and practice that usually remain unnoticed, because they are so ‘banal’ as Michael Billig has called it. This apt expression conveys the unreflected, unremarked, even unconscious implications of opinions, sentiments and practices that make up nationality in the course of everyday life.^xl      And yet, some kind of European public space is bound to take shape in the not too distant future. It certainly won’t be as coherent and homogenous as the term, in the singular, suggests. Like the public sphere in national societies, it will be fragmented with the fragments hanging more or less together, but even less so: ‘a sphere of publics’ in the editors’ elegant phrase. In normal times, that is. There are moments in a given society that everyone’s attention is drawn by one and the same topic. Fleeting moments of unanimous interest are summoned up by the tragic death of a young celebrity, the exciting marriage of a royal couple, or the triumphant victory of a major football team. Other events have a more lasting impact on the attention economy of the nation, and they usually have to do with disaster, rebellion, crisis and war. Medrano (2003) speaks of a ‘thematische Synchronizität’ in the news coverage on the EU, and an increasing similarity of themes and political options in the separate member states. But the absence of debates across borders and the limited participation in national debate on the EU points to a public sphere that will remain fragmented (‘versäult’), or ‘pillarized’, into separate but congruous national spheres.
      The recent debate on the European Constitution still proceeded as a series of parallel national discussions, albeit in the awareness that the neighbors were talking about the same things at the same time.^xliClearly, no politicians or intellectuals managed to express what was at stake in terms that could have captivated audiences across borders and beyond language barriers. This may have been due to the highly technical and rarified nature of the laws being proposed. Actually, during the debate that preceded the referendums in France and the Netherlands, rather strong feelings about the alleged impact of ‘Brussels’ on domestic politics and about the competition the enlargement of the Union would bring for workers at home became manifest. But such resistance is no less ‘European’ than a whole-hearted acceptance of further integration. What was ‘un-European’ in these campaigns was the predominance of national politics, a symbolic use of the vote against the Chirac and Balkenende governments, regardless of the European issues at stake.
      Barring major disasters and wars, the most probable way for a European sphere of publics to take shape is in the course of a fundamental conflict throughout the EU, not only similar and synchronous, but this time interconnected across borders. The simultaneous rise of an anti-immigrant radical right and a fundamentalist immigrant movement in Europe might provide the fuel for a conflict that can command the attention of audiences across the EU and begin to connect the discussions in the individual countries. Under such conditions. journalists will provide the accounts that draw the public’s interest, intellectuals will coin the ideas and concepts that shape opinion and sentiment. The murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a young islamist Dutchman, the train bombings in Madrid and London and the widespread unrest evoked by the rioting youth in the French suburbs all elicited reactions throughout the European Union, at times reacting upon the reactions in other member states in the manner of an incipient all-European debate. Another case in point: The commotion in Islamic countries about the cartoons in a Danish newspaper portraying Mohammed, and the concern that this in turn caused among European publics, provoking discussions throughout the Union, statements by national leaders and even a formal declaration by the European Commission. As might be expected, this communicative integration was brought about by an exterior reaction that was perceived as hostile to the Union in its entirety. But interior developments, such as low wage competition from the new member states, or the takeovers of major national industries by competitors from other countries within or outside the Union also inspired spirited, synchronous, parallel debates, at times even interacting with those in other member states.
      The inadequate cultural opportunity structure is coupled to a most persistent cultural obstacle structure: the coexistence of two dozen languages within the European Union. This multiplicity, of course, also greatly hampers the emergence of a public debate at the European level, and hence prevents the formation of a public space.

The European language constellation and public space

The European Union boasts a common currency, but so far lacks a common language. It continues to speak in public in all the languages of the member states, initially four, at present twenty-one, before too long twenty-three, and in a not too distant future possibly even twenty five or more. This prospect has prompted much alarm, but so far rarely any serious debate beyond the circle of specialists. French turned out to be stronger than the franc, Dutch more stubborn than the guilder and German even harder than the mark.
      In fact, there hardly is a language policy for the European Parliament, or for the Commission’s bureaucracy, let alone for ‘ L’ Europe des citoyens’, for civil society in the European Union. At the time, the six founding members contributed Dutch, French, German and Italian, an almost manageable number. The official languages of the member states were admitted as the languages of the Community. Without much discussion, French was accepted as the working language of the Community’s budding bureaucracy, as it had been the language of diplomacy until then and the sole language of the European Coal and Steel Community that preceded the EC. In those postwar years, the Germans and the Italians kept a low profile, and the Dutch (even when counting in the Dutch-speaking Flemish of Belgium) were not numerous enough to impose their linguistic interests.
      The first great expansion of the European Community, in 1973, brought in the British, the Irish, (almost all of them native English speakers)^xlii, and the Danes, who for the vast majority had learned English in school. As soon as England joined the EC, English became the second working language in the corridors and meeting rooms of the Commission and the Parliament.^xliii As new members joined the Community, the number of languages grew accordingly.
      In the meantime, from the nineteen sixties on, secondary education had been rapidly expanding throughout Europe. Quite independently from one another, the member states realized sweeping reforms of their secondary school systems. In the process, most of them reduced the number of compulsory foreign languages taught, but kept English, either making it compulsory or leaving the choice to the students, who tended to opt for English anyway, since it seems to hold the best job prospects and radiates the glory of global mass culture. Due to the expansion of secondary education, there are now more citizens in the Union who speak French, German, Spanish or Italian as a foreign language than ever before, but many more, still, have learned English: almost ninety percent of all high school students in the Union. French scores half this percentage, German a quarter and Spanish one eighth.

      That makes English in fact the vehicular language of Europe. In fact, not by right. Firstly, the Union happens to be a combination of states which all hold on to their own official language; secondly, numerous decisions taken by the Union directly affect the citizens in the member states and therefore must be couched in their own legal language. The Union's multilingualism is therefore a matter of democratic principle and fundamental treaty law. The present eleven languages are prescribed in the public meetings of the Council and the Parliament and for all decisions that immediately bear upon the citizens. Behind closed doors, however, the languages of choice are French, increasingly English and, far behind, in third place, German.
There can be no doubt, that Germany as the most populous nation and a founding member of the Union is entitled to have its language treated on an equal footing with English and French. However this would compel Spain to insist on equal treatment for Spanish, which among the languages of the EU is second only to English, as a world language. This would force Italy as a founding member of the Union to demand the same position for its language and then, unavoidably, the turn would come for another founding member, the Netherlands, and so on until all members would have formally secured the position of their language in the EU and everything would be exactly where it is now: all official languages are also formally working languages but only two are actually used on a day to day basis. ^xliv      In border-crossing encounters the Europeans speak English; in the East, they use German at times and in the South sometimes French. Within each national society (excepting Ireland and the UK) English presses on as the principal foreign language, the language of business, science and technology, international sports, transport and tourism, and of the worldwide mass media. As long as each state continues to support its own language in the schools and the courts, in national politics and the administration, English, even though widely used, does not represent an acute threat. A condition of 'diglossia' prevails in all these countries: a rather precarious equilibrium between the domestic language and English, in which each one predominates in a different series of domains.
      Since English is so visibly, so audibly present and so much more than before, one hardly notices the domains where it has not penetrated. In the private sphere, at home and among friends or close colleagues, people speak their mother tongue with abandon, eagerly adorned with anglicisms, but they use no English there. Many people read English books, but very few read newspapers in English. The TV often speaks English, but it either comes with a spoken translation (‘dubbing’) or with subtitles in the home language. Quite a few people can follow a discussion, even at a high level, in English, very few can stand their ground in a debate in that language, unless they acquired it as a native tongue. Almost no one who had to learn the language at a later age can write publishable English.

Within the prevailing cultural opportunity structure, English is the paramount medium of international exchange. Yet, reflection and debate in English are not encouraged at the European level, since the Commission does not want to appear to favor that language above other languages of the Union. Apparently, the British government does not consider its task to actively promote the exchange of opinion in English on the European continent, and this might even evoke contrary reactions among the other countries of the EU.^xlv      The governments of the member states do not want to privilege a foreign language, out of 'language envy', even if their own language does not stand a chance abroad. The pattern is familiar from postcolonial societies where, notwithstanding strong anti-colonial sentiments and a new nationalistic fervor, the debate about a national language ground down into a stalemate: At independence, each indigenous language group supported the idea of a single indigenous language of country-wide communication for the new nation, but they all agreed that it was not to be the language of the other group. Since both the colonial bureaucratic elite and the liberation movement had used the colonial language as the unifying means of communication, only a very strong consensus and radical educational policies could have overcome the predominance of the colonial language at the time. Indonesia indeed succeeded in imposing Bahasa Indonesia (Malay) to replace Dutch and Javanese. Tanzania successfully introduced Swahili in stead of (and next to) English.
      Swahili and Malay were indigenous languages, but neither was strongly identified with a single, imposing ethnic group. Hindi in India, Afrikaans in South Africa, Wolof in Senegal, on the other hand, evoked language envy among the other groups. As a result, in many formerly colonized countries, English, respectively French, remained in place as the languages of government and administration, of business, science and technology, and nation-wide elite media.^xlvi      Another mechanism operated in the same direction: parents opposed the initiatives by well-meaning reformers to introduce indigenous languages as the medium of instruction in the schools. In public they would support the introduction of an indigenous language as the national medium, but in private they preferred their children to learn the language that promised the best opportunities in the labor market, the world language introduced by the former colonizers. A clear case of ‘public virtue and private vice’ as David Laitin astutely observed.^xlvii
      Likewise, the European Union, in its campaigns for language learning and in its initiatives to support the smaller languages, officially and publicly continues to profess its unwavering commitment to full multilingualism. On their part, the envious member states will not allow any other language to take precedence over their own. In the meantime, European youngsters overwhelmingly (almost ninety percent) chose or accept to learn English as a foreign language. In doing so, they privately undermine the collective, public commitment to the promotion of a variety of foreign languages. Such diversity, however, while favoring no single language would leave all these new multilingual citizens with their different foreign languages still unable to communicate across the Union.

The European Union is bound by treaty to leave matters of culture to the separate member states: this follows from the founding treaties and from the principle of subsidiarity, that reserves all issues than can be dealt with by the individual countries separately for the national governments. But, in actual fact, these member states on their own are in no position to introduce a common language for all-European communication, let alone to create a European public space. No intellectual networks can emerge in Europe, no all-European journals with a broad political or cultural orientation will appear, as long as the intellectual exchange is hampered by the barriers of language and by the constraints of the national frameworks. Given the cultural opportunity structure in the countries of Europe, there can be no substantive democratization, no exchange of opinion that will affect Europe's citizens in sizable numbers. That is the principal democratic deficit of Europe.
      There may be remedies. At the institutional level, the European Commission and the Parliament, faced with a Babylonian plethora of two dozen different languages, are now experimenting with pragmatic arrangements in hopes of reducing the avalanche of translation and interpretation to manageable proportions:^xlviii Thus, committee meetings may proceed in English, French, and as the case may be, German or Spanish. In stead of translation from and into every language of the Union, facilities are gradually limited to interpretation from all languages into only two or three ‘relay’ languages and from those into all languages that participants may request. The Commission’s officials use English and French in their oral communication and for the internal preparatory documents. Semi-official publications appear in English or French only. But the principle of full multilingualism continues to receive unabated lip service and a full public debate on the issue is strenuously avoided.
      Clearly, the European language predicament is very similar to that prevailing in India and South Africa: both are highly multicultural and very multilingual polities, the former having succeeded in maintaining a degree of democratic rule for more than half a century and the latter having achieved a transition toward democracy in the past ten years. Rather than the primeval model of the nation state, France, or the prime instance of a democratic federation, the United States, in this case India and South Africa may provide the most relevant instances of comparison for the evolving European Union. Both must cope with a multiplicity of languages and a great variety of ethnic and religious groups. Nevertheless a democracy with a shared and lively public space has emerged in either country. Institutions and concepts that originated in Europe play a major role in both India and South Africa, in combination with Asian and African political traditions and practices. In one respect, the EU has a major advantage: the level of education is much higher and almost every child has an opportunity to learn at least one foreign language. But which one? As in the EU, in South Africa and India, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. Piously protesting the ideal of full equality for all languages, in fact either government allows English to continue in its privileged position, thus permitting the educated elites to reap the benefits of their competence in that language.
      As in the EU, the prevalence of English is a foregone, but tacit conclusion. At this point in the argument, Pierre Bourdieu once exclaimed (in French) ‘Il faut désangliciser l’Anglais’. But how to expropriate English from its native speakers? It is after all the first second language on a continent where it is nobody’s first. A Euro-English dialect with its own generally accepted standards will not emerge, just as no Afro-English or Asian-English standard has appeared. The English-speaking elites have a vested interest in maintaining full intelligibility between their version of English and ‘world-English’ and the same applies to Europeans using the language for continental and global communication.
      Thus, for a long time to come ‘transatlantic’ English will remain the standard in Europe and the rest of the world. In this volume, Lars Blickner has proposed to adopt a European ‘meta-lingual language’ that would systematize and unify the political concepts circulating in the Union’s many different languages. But, whatever ‘meta-lingual’ may mean in this context, this proposal refers only to the lexical and semantic aspects of European usage, it has nothing to do with the morphological properties of current, natural languages in the EU. What is indeed needed, is a good lexicon of ‘Eurospeak’ in twenty-five languages, a formidable task in itself.
      The only promising interpretation of Bourdieu’s exclamation would be to adopt English tooth and claw, but to ‘de-anglicize’ the institutional means of communication and distribution: create European journals, owned by European companies and run by European editors, found European distribution agencies for films and books that select productions from one country in the Union to present in the other member-states, initiate European scientific and cultural associations as an alternative to organizations under American tutelage.
      English is not the problem, it is the solution. The problem is that British and American organizations control the distribution and exchange of cultural expressions and scientific findings. That is what makes it hard for authors, artists and scientists in one European country to get access to the public in another country, unless they have first been selected by an editor, publisher or distributor in New York or London.

It appears that in the long run, also in the individual member countries, democracy can not work, if the major decisions are taken at a higher, a European level, without intellectual exchange and political debate taking place on a corresponding, European scale. If that is indeed the case, then a European public space will in the end turn out to be a necessary condition for the survival of national democracies, also. That is why the individual member states and the Union as a whole should improve the cultural opportunity structure at the European level. That requires European journals, websites and newspapers, European universities and academies, European cultural meeting points and intellectual networks.^xlixIn his manner the material conditions may be realized for a public debate, not delimited for the greater part by language and nation, but shaped by a joint, European agenda of dissent and consensus.

Abram de Swaan (1942) is University Professor of Social Science at the University of Amsterdam. De Swaan's most recent books are Words of the world; the global language system(Polity/Blackwell: 2001) and Human societies, An introduction (Polity/Blackwell: 2001). Since 2004 he is the director of the Academía Europea de Yuste (Spain).

i Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Les Conditons Sociales de la Circulation Internationale des Idées’ Actes de la Rercherche en Sciences Sociales. 145, décembre 2002,. pp.3-8, p.3.

ii Wolfgang Beck, ‘An Empire of Law and Consensus’, Internationale Politik. [Transatlantic Edition; Special Issue], 4, Winter 2005, pp. 105-111, p. 109.

iii Göran Therborn,‘The World’s Trader, the World’s Lawyer: Europe and current global processes’, European Journal of Social Theory. 5.4, 2002, 403-417. As the author points out, by dint of its heritage and present global position, it is also the most important force towards ‘transnational normativity’ in the contemporary world.

iv For a quite different perspective on a possible European future, see the critical survey of authors who perceive the EU as an emerging, highly differentiated network of networks, where spaces mater, not borders. Cf Barrie Axford and Richard Huggins in: Dennis Smith and Sue Wright (eds.), Whose Europe? The turn towards democracy. Oxford: Blackwell publishers. Sociological Review Monographs, 1999, 173-206.

v Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione, ‘The uses of democracy; Reflections on the European democratic deficit’ In: E. O. Eriksen and J. E. Fossum (eds.) Democracy in the European Union: Integration Through Deliberation? London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 65-84; `Though the EU dresses itself up in the rhetoric of democracy – a fundamental requisite for Member States – it is covered at best by the scantiest of fig leaves.’ But this does beg the question what democratic institutions would fit ‘the mixed character of the European polity.’ (pp. 65, 83 respectively).

vi Cf. Reiner Grundmann. “The European public space and the deficit of democracy”. in: D. Smith & S. Wright (eds): Whose Europe? The Turn Towards Democracy. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishing, Sociological Review Monographs, 1999, pp. 125-146.

vii Christophe Meyer, shows that since 1987 the number of journalists accredited in Brussels grew steadily and as a corrollary coverage of EU news grew at a pace: Christophe O. Meyer, “Towards a European Public Sphere? Transnational investigative journalism and the European Commission’s resignation”. In: B. Baerns & J. Raupp (eds): Information and Transnational Communication in Europe: Practice and Research. Berlin, Vistas, 2000. Leonard Novy, too, stresses the national perspective of news reports on the EU. The European Parliament, however, he qualifies as ‘beinah öffentlichkeitsabstinent’, (almost entirely abstemious from any publicity). Leonard Novy, ‘Vom Schweigen der Union’, Eurozine 21 July, 2004 (visited 1 March, 2006)

viii Philip Schlesinger, The Babel of Europe? An essay on networks and communicative spaces’ in: Dario Castiglione and Chris Longman (eds.) The Public Discourse of Law and Politics in Multilingual Societies. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2005.

ix Philip Schlesinger, ‘The Nation and Communicative Space’ in: H. Tumber (ed.) Media Power, Professionals and Politics, London: Routledge, 2000, 99-115.

x This may be the structural basis of the sociological mentality that Ulrich Beck, ‘An Empire of Law and Consensus’, Internationale Politik [Transatlantic Edition; Special Issue], 4, Winter 2005, 105-111, has aptly called ‘methodological nationalism’: an incapacity to grasp the emerging realities of the European Union.

xi I have convincing experimental proof of my thesis: Some years ago, I intended to submit to the Brussels authorities a research proposal on the emergence, or rather the non-emergence, of European cultural elites. I was strongly discouraged to do so by the research consultants in Brussels. The EU, I was told, avoids cultural topics and eschews anything to do with elites. Sadly, my assumptions were confirmed even before the research began.

xii Just typing ‘European’ in the periodicals catalogue of a large library yields thousands of ‘hits’: at the latest count 4020 for the University of Amsterdam library. Many of those may, however, lead to the same publications or point to other items than reviews and journals.

xiii Cf. Pierre Bourdieu, Sur la Télévision; (suivi de) L ’emprise du Journalisme, Paris: Liber, 1996.

xiv Of course, there exists a spontaneous tendency to define an idealized version of the nation-state as the final objective of European integration. Against it, a more sophisticated view considers the nationstate completely irrelevant in conceptualizing the integration process. Quite interestingly, Dennis Smith argues in terms inspired by Norbert Elias, ‘that the sociogenesis of the European Union is a process that has a similar structure to the sociogenesis of the state, except that this process operates at a higher level of integration.’ According to the author: ‘At the centre of Europe formation is a shift from national states that mainly impose discipline on those subject to their domination to national states which are themselves to a very considerable extent subject to continuing discipline from “above”.’ Cf. Dennis Smith and Sue Wright (eds.), Whose Europe? The turn towards democracy. Oxford: Blackwell publishers. Sociological Review Monographs, 1999, 235-256 (246).

xv Cf. Craig Calhoun, ‘The Democratic Integration of Europe; Interests, Identity, and the Public Sphere’ Eurozine. 21 June, 2004 (visited 1 March, 2006).

xvi Thus, in May 2003, when seven European newspapers decided to publish the reactions by half a dozen of the most celebrated intellectuals in Europe (Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Jürgen Habermas, Adolf Muschg, Richard Rorty, Fernando Savater, Gianni Vatimo, to the question ‘What is Europe?’ commentators in each member state concentrated almost exclusively on the contribution from their countryman: ’Despite its grandiose pretensions, the Habermas initiative has become a striking example of the difficulties confronting the modern Babylon that goes by the name of Europe in establishing a transnational discursive and deliberative space worth its salt.’ Carl Henrik Frederiksson, ‘Energizing the European Public Space’, Eurozine, www.eurozine.com 13 May, 2004 (visited 1 March, 2006). Frederiksson is the chief editor of Eurozine, among the most successful of pan-European cultural and intellectual websites.

xvii Cf. Hanspeter Kriesi a.o., New Social Movements in Western Europe: A comparative analysis, London, UCL Press, 1995, xiii et passim. Kriesi c.s. adopted the formula cited here from Sidney Tarrow. The concept has been around at least since the early nineteen seventies.

‘ xviii Although … the press remains almost exclusively a national medium, there are, nevertheless, newspapers and magazines that self-consciously address a European (as well as global) elite audience…’ Philip Schlesinger, ‘Changing spaces of political communication: the case of the European Union’ Political Communication, 16, 1999, 263-279, (271).

xix Cf. Carl Henrik Frederiksson, ‘Energizing the European Public Space’, Eurozine, www.eurozine.com 13 May, 2004 (visited 1 March, 2006).

xx Cf. Audit Bureau of Circulations, www.abc.org.uk (visited 25 November, 2005). The author wishes to express his gratitude to Christine Lohmeier for her research into the circulation figures quoted here, to Isabelle Steenbergen who made an initial inventory of border-transcending printed and electronic media in the EU, and to Marianne Bernard who revised it for publication on a website of the European Cultural Foundation.

xxi Cf. Audit Bureau of Circulations, www.abc.org.uk (visited 25 November , 2005).

xxii Information from IHT marketing department and www.iht.com, visited 25 November , 2005.

xxiii Information from NYRB marketing department, 27 November, 2005.

xxiv Cf. www.lrb.co.uk/advertising/media.php, visited 27 November, 2005.

xxv Oral communication by Dominique Vidal; see also www.monde-diplomatique.fr/int (visited on 9 December, 2005).

xxvi RFI, Direction des Études et des Relations Auditeurs, see also www.rfi.fr/pressefr/articles/072/article_30.asp (visited 12 March, 2006).

xxvii Cf www.tv5.org/TV5Site/tv5monde/publicite.php (visited 10 February, 2006).

xxviii Communication from Dr. Roland Schürhoff, see also Deutsche Welle, ‘Weltweite Schätzung der Reichweiten für das DW-Programangebot’ (Januar 2005).

xxix In addition, BBC World Service broadcasts news and features in some forty different languages all over the world for 146 million listeners across the globe as of June 2004, cf. www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/06_june/2 1/ws_figures.html (accessed on 28 Nov. 05).

xxx Communication from ‘Arbeitsgemeinschaft Fernsehforschung’.

xxxi Cf. www.radionetherlands.nl/aboutus/aboutrnw_facts.

xxxii This, in a generalized version, is of course an apt definition of globalization in general. See my ‘The Sociological Study of Transnational Society’ in: Dick Kooiman, Adrianus Koster, Peer Smeets en Bernhard Venema (eds), Conflict in a Globalising World; Studies in honour of Peter Kloos. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2002, pp. 19-33.

xxxiii According to writen communication from CNN.

xxxiv According to writen communication from CNN.

xxxv According to writenc ommunication from CNN.

xxxvi No overall viewer ratings avaialable, only for the highly educated audience.

xxxvii Seek www.eurozine.com.

xxxviii Seek www.transeuropeanmedia.eu

xxxix Cf. Paul Martin, ‘Stand up if you’re European; Football and the development of a sense of European identity’ 4th European conference of Sociology, Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, August 18-21, 1999.

xl Cf. Michael Billig, Banal nationalism. London: Sage publications, 1995.

xli Juan Díez Medrano, ‘Qualitätspresse und politische Integration’ in: Ansgar Klein a.o. (eds.), Bürgerschaft, Ofentlichkeit und Demokratie in Europa. Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 2003, 191-212.

xlii Although Ireland joined the Union in 1973, Irish was not adopted as an official and working language of the Union until 2005. In a population of 5.5 million (including Northern Ireland), there are about a million speakers of Irish, and some 5 0,000 citizens who speak the language on a daily basis (Gaeltacht); the others speak no Irish at all, cf. Glanville Price, Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe, Oxford: Blackwell publishers, 1998. Cf. also Heinz Kloss and Grant D. McConnell, The Writen Languages of the World: A Survey of the Degree and Modes of Use (ed. Albert Verdoodt), Québec: Presses de l’Université de Laval, 1989.

xliii Cf. Irene Bellier, ‘Moralité, Langue et Pouvoirs dans les Institutions Européennes’, Social Anthropology 3.3 1995, pp. 235-50; Michael Schlossmacher, 'Die Arbeitssprachen in den Organen der Europäischen Gemeinschaft. Methoden und Ergebnisse einer empirischen Untersuchung' in: Ulrich Ammon, Klaus J. Matheier and Peter H. Nelde (eds.), Sociolingistica, International Yearbook of European Sociolinguistics vol. 8 English only? in Europe. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1994, pp. 101-122; see also Virginie Mamadouh, De talen in het Europese parlement. [Amsterdamse sociaal-geografische studies, 52] Amsterdam: Instituut voor sociale geografie, Unversiteit van Amsterdam, 1995.

xliv Cf. Abram de Swaan, Words of the World; The global language system. Cambridge: Polity, 2001, esp. pp. 169-171.

xlv British publishers, and especially the providers of language curses do, however, actively promote English abroad, see David Graddol, The Future of English? A guide to forecasting the popularity of the English language in the 21st century, London: The British Council, 1997.

xlvi Cf. Abram de Swaan, Words of the World; The global language system. Cambridge: Polity, 2001, passim.

xlvii David Laitin, ‘The power of language and the language of power - Language conflict and violence: The straw that strenghtens the camel's back’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie; 41.1, 2000, 97-137.

xlviii Chris Longman, ‘Deliberating in many tongues; The Convention’s language regime’ in: D. Castiglione a.o., Constitutional politics in the EU: The Convention moment and its aftermath. Basingstoke: Palgrave (in press), relates how during the plenary meetings of the Convention all official languages (eleven at the time) were used, while in the Praesidum and the Working Groups English and French were predominant in writen and spoken communication, for practical considerations, obviously.

xlix See the challenging diagnosis and remedies in Otto von der Gablenz a.o., Europe as a Cultural Project; Final report of the reflection group of the European Cultural Foundation (2002-2004).