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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Political Legitimation and European Public Spaces: Communication as Practice and Resource

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In this chapter, the author offers an analysis of European public spaces and follows with a discussion of the transformations in the European Commission’s communication strategy since September 2004. For the first time, the European Commission openly challenged the monopoly of political legitimacy of national political institutions. It was involved in the construction of a new communication strategy that would fill the gap between supranational segmented publics and general national publics. This risky political move involved the redefinition of the status of political communication, the reinforcement of the communication aspect in all of the Commission’s activities, the recruitment of new personnel with communication competence and the increase in communication-related expenditures. The purpose of these actions was to transform the Commission from a technocratic to a real political institution.