Real freedom for all turtles in Sugarscape? - Presses universitaires ...

312A r g u i n g a b o u t j u s t i c eHowever, in recent years, socio-economic processes and forms ofgovernance which transcend the traditional realm of national democracyhave gained ever more importance and transnational institutions haveemerged. While we thus increasingly evolve towards an era of ‘post-nationaldemocracy’, public spheres have largely remained national and havebecome increasingly inadequate to enable democratic information,participation and debate on a large number of today’s important policies.This is why it is argued that in order for these transnational political systemsto become more democratically legitimate, it is necessary for transnationalpublic spheres to develop.This argument has been made most extensively concerning the EuropeanUnion (EU), which through the continuous process of European integrationhas gained an enormous influence on the lives of citizens in its memberstates. As Fossum and Schlessinger (2007: 2) argue: ‘Inasmuch as the Unionactually might serve as an exemplar for the development of post-nationaldemocracy at the supranational level, surely such a process has to be rootedin the reshaping of the EU as an overarching communicative space (orspaces) that might function as a public sphere’. Its absence is therefore oftenregarded as an element in the broader democratic deficit of the EU.Habermas (2001) even sees the development of a European public sphere asthe only way the democratic deficit can be eliminated. Moreover, thisdiagnosis is also made by the EU itself. The European Commission’s ‘Whitepaper on European Communications Policy’ of 2006 notes that ‘people feelremote from (…) the decision-making process and EU institutions’ and sees‘the inadequate development of a ‘European public sphere’ where theEuropean debate can unfold’ as a main reason for this.A European public sphere can be imagined in two ways. The first is a pan-European public sphere, carried by pan-European media, available acrossthe entire EU territory. Some of these exist today (Arte, Euronews, EuropeanVoice, EUobserver, ...), but reach a very limited audience and are notconsidered as primary communication instruments by EU decision-makers.A problem for the rise of such European media is obviously the absence of acommon language in the EU as English cannot (yet) be considered the linguafranca of all of its social classes and geographical areas.A second way to conceive a European public sphere is through‘Europeanisation’ of national public spheres and accordingly of nationalmedia reporting. This is generally operationalised as treatment in nationalmedia of the same EU-actors and topics, within a similar framework.However, large scale content analysis shows that only very smallproportions of news reporting concern EU-actors and topics (Machill & al.,2006). Moreover, EU-news that does reach national audiences is often