ABSTRACT

Historians have only recently begun to take note of the debate on the European public sphere and have started inquiring into its history. Remarkably, historians from cultural and social history rather than from European integration history proper first devoted attention to this question.1 Issues of European politics in a broader sense have already been intensely discussed at earlier moments of European crises, when ad hoc European public spheres emerged temporarily.2 In the postwar period, for the first time, there was an institutional addressee for a political public sphere.3 Such a European public sphere can be characterized as a sphere of communication for mediating between European citizens and the institutions of the European political system, which is a key precondition for democratic governance. It is in the public sphere, and mainly via the media, that citizens learn and form an opinion about the European Union (EU). At the same time, by observing the European public sphere, European policy-makers find out what Europeans think and expect of the EU.4