Debates

IS THERE A SHARED PUBLIC SPACE IN EUROPE?

It is a familiar complaint: Europe has difficulty in establishing itself as a political community of citizens because the political discourse is limited to the national sphere. Transnational debate beyond all borders is a rare animal. At best we have balloons of cross-border communication, e.g. within the scientific community (cf. the EDAP papers) or journalistic niches (e.g Cafébabel). Basically, however, political communication takes place behind national partitions and linguistic borders. To that extent, linguistic diversity has a not inconsiderable price at the level of democracy. That was the subject of the presentation given by Professor Stephan Russ-Mohl in the framework of a European Jurists Forum organised by Dr. Dirk Buschle, Deputy Director of the European Energy Community. The group went walking in South Tyrol and held discussions in the Palais.

LINKS:

Info on Stephan Russ-Mohl on the website of the European Observatory for Journalism (EOJ) which is directed by Stephan.

The few transnational media projects (apart from wonderful ARTE) were not too successfull. Internet is here providing new niches: see for instance the multilingual online portal Cafe Babel.
Never ever was there so much discussion about the EU as is the case since Europe is facing a crisis. At the same time the number of EU correspondents based in Brussels was reduced by a third since 2005. This hardly has positive implications for the quality of "EU news". Who is still looking for quality may want to visit The best of European press.
It is the diversity of languages that makes it so difficult to create a common public space. Who is interested in the legal and political background might want to read the EDAP paper 1/2005 (Die Sprache und der Binnenmarkt im Europa der EU: Eine kleine Beziehungsaufstellung in 10 Punkten).
The European Diversity and Autonomy Papers (EDAP) are an Online Series dedicated to the topic of "diversity in unity". The Series was created at the occasion of Eastern enlargement on 1 May 2004. In the meantime far over 40 EDAPs were published.