Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres: Towards an Empowering Dissensus for EU Integration [1st ed.] 9783030536367, 9783030536374

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres Towards an Empowering Dissensus for EU Integration Alvaro Oleart

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology

Series Editors Carlo Ruzza School of International Studies University of Trento Trento, Italy Hans-Jörg Trenz Department of Media, Cognition & Communication University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology addresses contemporary themes in the field of Political Sociology. Over recent years, attention has turned increasingly to processes of Europeanization and globalization and the social and political spaces that are opened by them. These processes comprise both institutional-constitutional change and new dynamics of social transnationalism. Europeanization and globalization are also about changing power relations as they affect people’s lives, social networks and forms of mobility. The Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology series addresses linkages between regulation, institution building and the full range of societal repercussions at local, regional, national, European and global level, and will sharpen understanding of changing patterns of attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups, the political use of new rights and opportunities by citizens, new conflict lines and coalitions, societal interactions and networking, and shifting loyalties and solidarity within and across the European space. We welcome proposals from across the spectrum of Political Sociology and Political Science, on dimensions of citizenship; political attitudes and values; political communication and public spheres; states, communities, governance structure and political institutions; forms of political participation; populism and the radical right; and democracy and democratization.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14630

Alvaro Oleart

Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres Towards an Empowering Dissensus for EU Integration

Alvaro Oleart Department of Political Science and Public Administration Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology ISBN 978-3-030-53636-7 ISBN 978-3-030-53637-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53637-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To those who are bold enough to imagine democracy beyond the nation-state, and fight for it

Acknowledgements

European politics has been my passion and focus of research for the last decade, as I have observed a growing mismatch between the increasingly transnational flow of ideas, and decision-making processes still anchored in national governments. The book is obviously European in its substance, but also in its process. I moved to Brussels shortly after the 2014 European elections, in the midst of the increasing politicisation of EU affairs. While it was a fruitful moment for the rise of nationalist parties, such as the UKIP in the United Kingdom or the Front National in France, and (back then) political outsiders such as Podemos in Spain and Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy, the politicisation of the EU also renewed my interest in European politics and inspired my further research. I witnessed with concern the mainstream response to the politicisation of European politics, as if most criticisms to the EU’s status quo were inherently ‘Eurosceptic’. As an aspiring social scientist, I felt it was important and timely to emphasise an academic agenda that does not assume that the politicisation of European politics is necessarily a threat to the European project, but instead is constitutive of it. One of the aspects I value about academic research is that it is always an intellectual team effort. As such, this book could not have been done without many friends and colleagues, whose contributions to my intellectual growth have been immense, and who have also enriched me as a person. Words cannot do justice to express my profound gratitude to numerous people, but nonetheless I wish to highlight a few

vii

viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

names. The ideas expressed throughout this book are to a large extent influenced by Luis Bouza García, with whom we have developed fascinating research avenues. Our friendship and (very) extensive joint work, including the collaboration within the Jean Monnet network OpenEUDebate, continues to be a source of inspiration. I would also like to thank my Master studies’ professors Caroline Pauwels, Luciano Morganti and Jan Loisen from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Without them I would not have started my Ph.D. dissertation at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), which represents the basis for this book. At the ULB, I am grateful to the members of my Ph.D. committee, Ramona Coman and François Foret, my Ph.D. supervisor François Heinderyckx, and my teammate Jan Beyer, whose contributions have been of great (European) value(s) to my work in general, and this book in particular. I continued pursuing my European calling when I embarked on my next endeavour as a postdoctoral researcher at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, in the context of the Horizon 2020 RECONNECT project ‘Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and the Rule of Law’.1 My deep gratitude to Ben Crum, who has been a wonderful pillar of support to my academic career since my arrival at the VU, whose political theory insights have been truly valuable, and with whom I continue to learn and enjoy working together. My sincere thanks to all the friends and colleagues that participated in the tailored VU Amsterdam workshop held in February 2020, whose input and feedback elevated the quality of the different chapters that compose this book. Thanks to Jan Pieter Beetz, Thijs Bogers, Sinan Çankaya, Rein Koetsier, Stephen Haigh, Noah Schmitt, Özlem Terzi and Wolfgang Wagner. This adventure could also not have been concluded without the critical advice and enthusiastic backing of Hans-Jörg Trenz, co-editor of the Palgrave series on European Political Sociology and external jury member of my Ph.D. defence, whose insightful academic work has informed my thinking for this book. Thanks as well to Maximilian Conrad, Catherine De Vries, Niels Gheyle, Louisa Parks and Gabriel Siles-Brügge for their constructive feedback on the book and general encouragement, which has meant a lot to me. I would also like to thank everyone who accepted 1 This book project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation programme under Grant Agreement no. 770142. The information in this book reflects only the author’s views and the European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ix

to be interviewed, including civil society and trade union members and activists, elected representatives, EU officials and journalists, whose input has been precious. Thanks to my friends Daniel Cruz, Fran Cabrera, Hasan Aloul and Juan Domingo Sánchez Estop who have contributed ideas and shared their thoughts in our lengthy discussions, to my mum for her support and regular nutritional advice which contributed to my fruitful writing, to my dad for our regular stimulating discussions, to my brothers, and to my whole extended family, all of whom have stood by me, and whose encouragement I cherish. Last, and most importantly, heartfelt thanks to my beloved wife, and best friend, Nad’ka, for putting up with me during all these years. Our love and intellectual exchanges have brought light to this challenging but rewarding journey, and have been an essential component to completing this book.

Praise for Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres

“Alvaro Oleart offers a ground-breaking understanding of the European public sphere and new insights in the way in which it operates.” —Ben Crum, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

xi

Contents

1

2

Introduction to the Analysis of the Pan-European Debate Surrounding the TTIP Negotiations 1 Introduction 2 Research Design, Scope of the Research and Structure of the Book Bibliography An Agonistic Approach to the Europeanisation of Public Spheres: Matching ‘Policy with Politics’ 1 The Europeanisation of Public Spheres and the Democratisation of the EU 1.1 The European Public Sphere: A Democratic Aspiration for the EU From a Deliberative and Agonistic Perspective 1.2 The Europeanisation of Public Spheres Through the National Media: The EU as an Audience Democracy 1.3 The EU’s Democratic (and Opposition) Deficit: The Depoliticised Europeanisation of Public Spheres and the ‘Permissive Consensus’ 1.4 ‘Policy Without Politics’ in the EU and the Agency in Politicisation: Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs)

1 1 8 9

13 13

13

20

25

28 xiii

xiv

CONTENTS

2

Different Types of Politicisation and Their Implications for European Integration 2.1 The Third Face of Power: The Battle of Ideas to Define Political Conflict 2.2 Agonistic vs Antagonistic Politicisation of the EU: Policy Contestation as Politics in the Union, and EU Polity Contestation as Politics of the Union 2.3 The Agonistic Europeanisation of Public Spheres: Towards an ‘Empowering Dissensus’ for European Integration Bibliography

3

4

A Media-Centred Approach to Analyse the Politicisation and Europeanisation of TTIP 1 The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in Context 1.1 The Neoliberal Paradigm’s Hegemony in Europe: The Economic Autonomy Vis-à-Vis the Political Sphere 1.2 TTIP: A Neoliberal Trade Policy Project 2 Framing Analysis of Media Content in the TTIP Debate 2.1 A Framing Perspective 2.2 Methodology and Data Sets: Framing Analysis of Media Content on TTIP 2.3 Content and Process Frames, and Visual Categories Bibliography Framing TTIP in Spain 1 The (Lack of) EU Politicisation in Spain and Its ‘Permissive Consensus’: Europe as a Path to Modernisation 2 The Evolution of the Agonistic TTIP Debate in the Spanish Public Sphere 2.1 Overview of the TTIP Debate in Spain 2.2 February 2013 to September 2014: The Initial TTIP Debate Framed Through a Neoliberal Discourse

31 31

34

40 45

57 58

58 63 73 73 75 87 99 105

105 108 108

116

CONTENTS

European and National Protests Introduce TTIP into the Mainstream: Agonistic Politicisation Emerges in Spain 3 The Politicisation of TTIP in Spain: The EU Becomes a Political Arena for Civil Society and Political Actors Bibliography

xv

2.3

5

6

Framing TTIP in France 1 France and the EU: Agonistic Politicisation Focused on Social Issues 2 The Evolution of the Agonistic TTIP Debate in the French Public Sphere 2.1 Overview of the TTIP Debate in France 2.2 February 2013 to Mid-April 2014: The Progressive Media Introduces TTIP in France, the Mainstream Takes It to the Next Level 2.3 The Agonistic Politicisation in France: TTIP Becomes Mainstream from the 2014 EU Elections Onwards 3 The Politicisation of TTIP in France: Building on the Bolkestein Directive Bibliography Framing TTIP in the UK 1 Framing Europe in the UK: Antagonistic Politicisation Based on the Defence of National Identity and Sovereignty 2 The Evolution of the Agonistic TTIP Debate in the British Public Sphere 2.1 Overview of the TTIP Debate in the UK 2.2 February 2013 to June 2014: British Elites Debate TTIP 2.3 July 2014 to November 2016: TTIP Becomes a Matter of National UK Politics 3 The Politicisation of TTIP in the UK: Nationalising the Agonistic TTIP Debate in the Context of Brexit Bibliography

119 128 131 133 133 136 136

141

143 150 151 153

153 157 157 163 166 174 177

xvi

7

8

CONTENTS

Framing TTIP Across the Spanish, French and British Public Spheres: The Bursting of the Brussels Bubble 1 Overview of the TTIP Debate Across the Spanish, French and British Public Spheres 1.1 The Transnational Framing of TTIP Across Spain, France and the UK 1.2 February 2013 to Mid-2014: The Europeanisation of Public Spheres on TTIP Without Politicisation 1.3 Mid-2014 to November 2016: From Agonistic Europeanisation to the Emergence of an Episodic Transnational Public Sphere on TTIP 1.4 Europeanising the Public Spheres and Nationalising the TTIP Debate: Two Intertwined Processes 2 TTIP and the Bursting of the Brussels Bubble Through (Agonistic) Politicisation Bibliography The Transnational TTIP Debate: Politicisation Empowers Further European Integration 1 Contribution to the Literature, Shortcomings and Avenues for Further Research: Bridging the European Public Sphere Literature with EU Politicisation 2 Policy Effects of the TTIP Debate’s Agonistic Europeanisation: Towards a Great Transformation in EU Trade Policy? 3 An Empowering Dissensus for an Increasingly Federal European Integration Bibliography

Index

179 179 181 188

190 196 198 213

217

217

220 229 240 247

List of Figures

Chapter 2 Fig. 1

Connection(s) between Europeanisation and (de)politicisation depending on the type of conflict (agonistic/antagonistic) in the European public spheres

42

Chapter 3 Fig. 1

Steps in the identification and coding of the framing analysis

83

Chapter 4 Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Chronological evolution by semester of the number of articles sampled in the three Spanish news outlets (In the horizontal axis, the numbers refer to the year and the semester: e.g. ‘13 01’ = first semester of 2013) Framing Ratio (R) in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled Spanish news outlets (The graphs include in the same category both the frames and their counter-frames [in case a frame has a counter-frame]) Framing ratio (vertical axis) evolution over time by semester of the leading opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic frames in the three Spanish news outlets sampled (the brackets in the horizontal axis indicate the number of articles in each semester)

109

110

112

xvii

xviii Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9

LIST OF FIGURES

Framing ratio over time by semester of the process frames in the sampled Spanish news outlets Framing ratio by period in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled Spanish news outlets Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled Spanish news outlets during the first period Framing ratio evolution over time by semester of the leading opportunity and agonistic frames in EL PAÍS Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the process frames by period in the Spanish public sphere Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled Spanish news outlets during the second period

113 114 116 118 119 120

Chapter 5 Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8

Chronological evolution by semester of the number of articles sampled in the three sampled French news outlets (In the horizontal axis, the numbers refer to the year and the semester: e.g. ‘13 01’ = first semester of 2013) Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled French news outlets (The graphs include in the same category both the frames and their counter-frames [in case a frame has a counter-frame]) Framing ratio (vertical axis) over time by semester of the leading opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic frames in the three French news outlets (the brackets in the horizontal axis indicate the number of articles in each semester) Framing ratio by period in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled French news outlets Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled French news outlets during the first period Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled French news outlets during the second period Framing ratio over time by semester of the process frames in the sampled French news outlets Framing ratio over time by semester of the leading opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic frames in Le Monde

138

139

140 140 142 144 145 146

LIST OF FIGURES

xix

Chapter 6 Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7

Chronological evolution by semester of the number of articles sampled in the three British news outlets (In the horizontal axis, the numbers refer to the year and the semester: e.g. ‘13 01’ = first semester of 2013) Framing ratio by news outlet in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled British media (The graphs include in the same category both the frames and their counter-frames [in case a frame has a counter-frame]) Framing ratio (vertical axis) over time by semester of the leading opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic frames in the sampled British news outlets (the brackets in the horizontal axis indicate the number of articles in each semester) Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the process frames by period in the British news outlets Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled British news outlets during the first period Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled British news outlets during the second period Framing ratio over time by period of the process frames in the sampled British news outlets

158

160

161 162 164 167 173

Chapter 7 Fig. 1

Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Fig. 4 Fig. 5

Number of articles sampled by country and by semester (In the horizontal axis, the numbers refer to the year and the semester: e.g. ‘13 01’ = first semester of 2013) Number of articles by semester and by ideological orientation of the news outlets Framing ratio (vertical axis) over time by semester of the leading opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic frames in the nine sampled news outlets (the brackets in the horizontal axis indicate the number of articles in each semester) Framing ratio over time by semester of the process frames in the nine sampled news outlets Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the nine sampled news outlets (The graphs include in the same category both the frames and their counter-frames [in case a frame has a counter-frame])

181 182

183 184

185

xx

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8

Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled articles during the first period Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled articles during the second period Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the leading process frames by period across the three public spheres

188 191 192

List of Tables

Chapter 3 Table 1

News outlets selected, its characteristics and the number of articles analysed

82

Chapter 4 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4

Number of articles sampled by article type and news outlet from the Spanish media Presence of images by visual categories and by period in the Spanish news outlets Presence of images by visual category in Spanish news outlets during the first period Presence of images by visual category in the Spanish news outlets during the second period

108 115 117 128

Chapter 5 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4

Number of articles sampled by article type and news outlet from the French media Presence of images by visual category and by period in the French news outlets Presence of images by visual category and by news outlet in the French media during the first period Presence of images by visual category and by news outlet in the French news outlets during the second period

137 141 143 149

xxi

xxii

LIST OF TABLES

Chapter 6 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4

Number of articles sampled by article type and news outlet from the British media Presence of images by visual category of the TTIP debate in the British news outlets during the two periods Presence of images by visual category and by news outlet in the British news outlets during the first period Presence of images by visual category in the British news outlets during the second period

159 163 165 174

Chapter 7 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5 Table 6

Number of articles sampled by country and type of news outlet Number of articles sampled by type of article and country Presence of images by visual category and by country in all the news outlets sampled Presence of images by visual category and by period including all the articles from the nine news outlets sampled Presence of images by visual category and by country during the first period Presence of images by visual category and by country during the second period

180 180 187 187 189 193

CHAPTER 1

Introduction to the Analysis of the Pan-European Debate Surrounding the TTIP Negotiations

1

Introduction

A spectre is haunting the European Union. It’s the spectre of politicisation. After decades of ‘permissive consensus’, during which the European project has rarely been contested in the public sphere(s), the European Union (EU) has become a matter of contestation in mainstream public debates across European countries. During the recent 2019 EU elections, over half of the eligible voters turned out to vote, which constitutes the biggest turnout since the 1994 EU elections. Similarly, the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the increasing politicisation of the EU, as citizens and national governments demanded EU-level action. While it is still early to draw firm conclusions, it is safe to point out that during the last decade there has been a substantial increase in the politicisation of EU affairs at the national level in several countries, on issues such as trade, austerity, climate change, immigration or, recently, health care due to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The EU has never received as much attention from citizens and the national media as in the last years. There is indeed an academic agreement regarding the EU’s growing politicisation, departing from the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s (Barth & Bijsmans, 2018), and continuing with the debates surrounding the European Constitutional Treaty, the 2005 French and Dutch referendums (Taggart, 2006), the 2010 Eurozone crisis, the 2015 refugee crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 crisis. However, there is an academic © The Author(s) 2021 A. Oleart, Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53637-4_1

1

2

A. OLEART

disagreement on whether this increasing politicisation leads to the rise of nationalist rhetoric or prevents it. Hooghe and Marks (2009) famously argued that the politicisation of EU issues has led the EU from a ‘permissive consensus’ to a ‘constraining dissensus’1 by increasing the political cost of EU decision-making, given that pro-European elites are facing an increasing Eurosceptic citizenry at the national level, due to the structural opposition of cosmopolitan and nationalist groups. However, this (pessimistic) interpretation of the growing politicisation of the EU at the national level is not the only one. Other authors argue that politicisation can, on the contrary, Europeanise the public spheres and normalise the EU as a polity (Risse, 2010). In line with this latter line of thought, this book will argue that politicisation empowers European integration, further intertwining national and European politics and connecting European citizens with EU institutions, thereby socialising citizens at the national level with the EU. The political and historical context is deeply influential when reflecting upon the state of European democracy and conflict’s role in it. The global financial crisis triggered in 2008 was followed by the Eurozone crisis in 2010–2011, and together they had a considerable impact on the interest in EU politics by European citizens, and particularly those from the most affected countries, such as Greece, Italy or Spain. This was illustrated by the 2014 European elections, summarised by the BBC with the following headline: ‘Eurosceptic “earthquake” rocks EU elections’ (BBC, 2014). Similarly, Franklin and Nielsen (2016) edited an academic book entitled The Eurosceptic 2014 European Parliament Elections. In January 2015, the left-wing political party Syriza won the Greek general elections by campaigning against ‘Austerity’, a victory that the progressive news outlet, The Guardian, summarised in the following way: ‘Syriza’s historic win puts Greece on collision course with Europe’ (Traynor & Smith, 2015). In June 2016, British citizens voted against maintaining UK’s membership of the EU, mainly on the basis that they wanted to ‘take back control’. In parallel, a number of right-wing political parties with tendency to question the EU project as a whole in different countries greatly increased their votes and gained (or maintained) positions in the government of several member states, such as Hungary, Poland or Italy. These political dynamics could be understood as a process by which ‘Euroscepticism’ travels ‘from the margins to the mainstream’ (Brack 1 Trenz (2016), however, has questioned whether the ‘constraining dissensus’ is really ‘constraining’, given the fact that the politicisation of the Eurocrisis has not prevented governments from making decisions and implementing policies.

1

INTRODUCTION TO THE ANALYSIS OF THE PAN-EUROPEAN DEBATE …

3

& Startin, 2015), which implies that the European project is increasingly questioned in the public sphere, a phenomenon that might have a crucial influence on the future of European integration (De Vries, 2018). However, the increasing politicisation of EU affairs can also be seen as ‘resistances’ (Crespy & Verschueren, 2009) to one or several aspects of European integration, rather than an illustration of ‘Euroscepticism’.2 It is in this context of growing politicisation of the EU that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, a trade agreement between the United States (U.S.) and the EU, started. After Obama’s announcement on 2013, February 12, about the TTIP negotiations, on 2013, June 14, the 28 EU member states officially gave the mandate to the European Commission to start negotiating a freetrade agreement with the U.S. on the EU’s behalf. Once the mandate was given, negotiators from both sides met regularly in successive rounds that alternated between the U.S. and Brussels. The first round took place in Washington D.C. in June 2013, while the final round (the 15th) took place in New York City in October 2016. Paradoxically, after years of contestation led by left-wing campaigners across Europe and the U.S., the victory of the right-wing U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, on November 11, 2016, effectively ended the TTIP project and the negotiations were put in the freezer. The TTIP negotiations between the EU and the U.S. were initially received with great hope in June 2013 by mainstream political parties and specialised economic newspapers such as the Financial Times . TTIP, a trade agreement that largely followed the dominant neoliberal policy paradigm but with unprecedented ambitions (De Ville & Siles-Brügge, 2016), was presented as an opportunity to increase business competition and free trade, creating ‘jobs and growth’ across both the EU and the U.S. However, almost four years later, a technical and European issue like TTIP had become a politicised topic in several European public spheres. Despite the highly technical and complex nature of TTIP, mainstream debates included civil society actors speaking out against the negotiations, both at the national and EU levels. In addition, the European Commission opened participatory mechanisms to certain civil society actors, changed some of its proposals (such as the investors’ protection mechanism or the negotiations’ transparency) and adopted some of their ideas in the Commission’s discourse. 2 ‘Euroscepticism’, is however a highly contested term, of which seminal definitions included this type of resistance as part of ‘soft Euroscepticism’ (Taggart & Szczerbiak, 2004).

4

A. OLEART

The book departs from the European public sphere literature in interaction with the literature on politicisation of the EU, and attempts to empirically investigate how the debate around the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) took place in several European public spheres. The empirical data collected comes from quality news outlets, an established source of data when undertaking research that touches upon the European public sphere and its relevance for the legitimacy of the EU (Beetz, 2015; Hawkins, 2012). The media is also a consistent choice for empirical data when taking a public sphere perspective, where there is a direct link between the quality of discourse and the legitimacy of a polity. The public sphere is conceived as ‘an intermediary system of communication between formally organized and informal face-to-face deliberations in arenas at both the top and the bottom of the political system’ (Habermas, 2006, p. 415). The driving concept across the book is the Europeanisation of public spheres, as a way to define the phenomenon by which the national public spheres increasingly converge in terms of its framing. The concept of Europeanisation has many faces (Olsen, 2002), and this book refers purely to one of them, the Europeanisation of public spheres. While the institutional dynamics of the EU has received wide attention, the mediatised aspect of EU politics has received less (Michailidou & Trenz, 2013). The book analyses the mass media debate and politicisation of TTIP in the Spanish, French and British media through a framing analysis. It aims to answer two research questions. First, how and to what extent were national media discourses about TTIP Europeanised? Second, how does this type of Europeanisation of public spheres contribute to the democratic legitimacy of the EU? The first question is descriptive, about what kind of debate we witnessed around the TTIP negotiations, a substantive contribution on what the TTIP debate was about by trying to make sense of it, whereas the second is normative, and will be mainly addressed in the last chapter. The main argument put forward is that the national media discourses were Europeanised in an agonistic way, a process that matches ‘policy with politics’ (Schmidt, 2013) at the EU level and normalises the EU as a polity by channelling conflict as politics in the Union rather than politics of the Union. In this way, conflict is a means of socialisation with European politics. The book mobilises the conceptual framework of Chantal Mouffe, distinguishing between agonistic and antagonistic conflict, concepts that are dealt with in Chapter 2. The analysis of the TTIP negotiations is an interesting empirical choice to investigate the European public sphere because the negotiations triggered one of the biggest episodes of politicisation of EU affairs in recent years, alongside with the 2005 French and Dutch Referendums (De

1

INTRODUCTION TO THE ANALYSIS OF THE PAN-EUROPEAN DEBATE …

5

Vries, 2009) or the Euro crisis (Statham & Trenz, 2015). After a year of campaigning, on the 6th of October 2015, the self-organised European Citizens’ Initiative STOP TTIP gathered almost 3.3 million signatures, the highest number ever collected so far by a European Citizens’ Initiative (Oleart & Bouza, 2018), in a campaign that argued that this trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.) posed ‘a threat to democracy and the rule of law’. In spite of the attempt by the European Commission to frame TTIP as a matter of ‘jobs and growth’, the TTIP negotiations were increasingly criticised in the European public spheres in spaces such as mass demonstrations, the media or parliaments (Bouza & Oleart, 2018). How, and why, did a complex and technical EU trade policy dossier became politicised? This book attempts to provide a partial answer to this question through the lens of the literature on the European public sphere and the politicisation of European integration. The book is not (only) about the content of the TTIP negotiations, but rather about the pan-European politicised public debate that emerged around them, and its implications for European integration. The main focus is not to measure the degree of politicisation of TTIP, but to analyse the type of politicisation that took place. The literature on the European public sphere has not often entered into dialogue with the literature on EU politicisation, and therefore, it has not prioritised the important role of conflict and politicisation in the emergence of a European public sphere (except for Risse, 2010; Statham & Trenz, 2013a, 2013b, 2015; Tobler, 2002; Trenz & Eder, 2004). This is perhaps because such literature was prominent during the early 2000s, a period of greater concern about the ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU (Warleigh, 2003), but not that much about the EU’s increasing politicisation. Public sphere scholars mainly argue that the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ is not primarily an institutional one that can be solved through institutional reforms, such as providing more influence to the European Parliament3 . Instead, the democratic deficit arises from the lack of a Europe-wide public sphere that keeps EU’s administrative power4 in check (Conrad, 2009, 2010). The national fragmentation of the European public spheres (Eriksen, 2007; Risse, 2010, 2014) has

3 That said, institutional reforms could also contribute to improve the democratic legitimacy of the EU. 4 Administrative power is understood as the EU’s authority to exert its competences.

6

A. OLEART

led researchers to look at their Europeanisation, focusing on the extent to which national media focus on EU affairs. However, a number of academics such as Mouffe (2000, 2005, 2013) argue that this literature has placed too much emphasis on the role of rational deliberation, rather than paying attention to the crucial role that conflict plays in the discourse circulating in the public sphere. Policy contestation, rather than polity contestation, should be seen as a symptom of the ‘normal’ politics of a democratic polity. The book argues that the democratic deficit of the EU is based not only on the lack of the Europeanisation of public spheres, as it has been argued before by a wide range of academics, but also on the lack of (agonistic) conflict. Rather than ‘constraining’ European integration by the lack of consensus (Hooghe & Marks, 2009), dissensus can enlarge the political arena beyond the national public spheres by embedding European issues into national public spheres. Thereby, politicisation can empower further integration. As argued by Schattschneider (1980 [1960], p. 109), the price of support for a polity is participation, and real participation requires conflict. In consequence, agonistic conflict can have an ‘empowering’ effect for European integration by legitimising it through agonistic policy contestation, as opposed to the polity contestation (De Wilde & Trenz, 2012) of the EU. Hooghe and Marks, and other academics working on conflict about the EU assumed that politicisation on EU affairs generally takes place between supporters and opponents of European integration. The empirical research exposed in this book, focused on the discourse and frames circulating in the Spanish, French and British media, conceiving news outlets as central actors in the structuring of discourse in the public sphere, indicates that this is not necessarily the case, and that conflict can arise without taking the patterns that were often assumed. The TTIP debate is interesting as well because of the (re)emergence of the alter-globalisation movement. Trade has been the main policy area by which neoliberal globalisation was advanced during the 1980s and 1990s, which explains that international trade negotiations became a catalyst for protests at the global level during the late 1990s and early 2000s (Aaronson, 2002). The 1999 World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial conference in Seattle became the first mass global protest against the liberalisation of international trade, which was framed as a threat to democracy (Crespy, 2016, p. 172), an inclusive framing that glued together a wide range of actors, from trade unions to environmental activists. The alter-globalisation movement found widespread

1

INTRODUCTION TO THE ANALYSIS OF THE PAN-EUROPEAN DEBATE …

7

resonance following the mass demonstrations in Seattle in 1999 and was further advanced through successive World Social Forums. In its European version, led by actors such as ATTAC and the Seattle to Brussels network, the alter-globalist perspective challenges neoliberalism and corporate power in society and, while heavily criticising the EU, it has often done so from an Alter-Europeanist (della Porta & Caiani, 2009) point of view, rather than from a nationalist perspective. That is, a position to encourage a European and/or global governance, but with an economic paradigm that opposes neoliberalism, a paradigm which alterglobalisation activists consider to be pushed by a global elite in the benefit of multinational corporations and at democracy’s expense. The ‘resistances’ to European integration were already present in the early 1990s during the debate around the Maastricht Treaty, as well as in the mid-2000s around the debate on the European Constitutional Treaty. The debate over ‘Europe’ re-emerged as a reaction to the Eurozone crisis (for a cross-country analysis of the media coverage to the Eurocrisis, see Picard, 2015) of 2010–2011. It peaked with the 2014 EU elections where a number of parties that ‘resisted’ European integration from different points of view made big gains, such as Podemos in Spain, Front National in France, UKIP in the UK or Syriza in Greece. Arguably, the increasing politicisation of the EU has also led to the UK referendum in 2016 that resulted in Brexit. It is in this context that the alter-globalisation movement re-emerged with great strength in opposition to the TTIP negotiations. In fact, the Stop TTIP movement not only mobilised the alter-globalisation movement, but also a number of constituencies based at the national level that often do not mobilise around European issues, such as the coalition to protect the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. This makes the analysis of the TTIP debate in different member states all the more interesting, since the movement does not necessarily oppose ‘Europe’ or European integration as a whole, but rather a particular type of European integration, perceived as being driven by corporate interests at democracy’s expense. A number of scholars have identified this social-liberal cleavage in the EU (Díez Medrano, 2009). One example of this type of conflict is the Bolkestein Directive (Crespy, 2012), heavily debated in several EU member states between 2004 and 2006. The Directive’s opponents positioned themselves as protecting a ‘Social Europe’ against the ‘Neoliberal Europe’ driving the initiative. This type of conflict should not be understood as ‘Eurosceptic’, but rather a form of ‘resistance’ to a certain type

8

A. OLEART

of European integration. Rather than looking at the contestation of EU policies as a threat to the EU as a polity, the book argues that contestation might lead towards an empowering dissensus (Bouza & Oleart, 2018) for European integration by reinforcing transnational communication flows, building a Europe-wide ‘communicative power’ that can hold accountable the EU’s administrative power. This process might ultimately lead towards the materialisation of transnational identities (Checkel & Ketzenstein, 2009) that are constructed on the basis of transnational campaigns and debates, and encourage transnational representation in national political arenas (Kinski & Crum, 2019). The book will touch upon the relationship between Europeanisation, politicisation and the emergence of transnational identities in the conclusion.

2 Research Design, Scope of the Research and Structure of the Book The TTIP negotiations (2013–2016) offer an opportunity to study the politicisation of an EU issue in several member states, since the agreement triggered widespread contestation in several countries at the same time, and also triggered the attention of the national media in different countries. The analysis of the TTIP debate in Spain, France and the UK is particularly interesting because historically the three countries have had different attitudes vis-à-vis the EU, and the three countries had similar levels of contestation of TTIP. The way of ‘framing Europe’ (Díez Medrano, 2003) in the three countries corresponds to the three types of conflict (agonistic, antagonistic or no conflict at all) that are laid out in the theoretical framework in Chapter 2. The data collected to study the public debate around TTIP in Spain, France and the UK is composed of media articles published on TTIP by nine news outlets from the three countries. Previous research has indicated the importance of the national political context, and in particular the national media, in filtering and shaping how European issues are framed (Díez Medrano, 2003; Díez Medrano & Gray, 2010; Grande, 2016). The media, and national news outlets in particular, are understood as central actors in the framing of European issues. While not representing the public sphere as a whole, news outlets are conceived as the central arena where political debate takes place, which in turn influences other spaces of the public sphere, such as parliaments. As both a transmission belt and an actor, the media plays a central role in the public sphere, reaching different publics and contributing to setting the political agenda.

1

INTRODUCTION TO THE ANALYSIS OF THE PAN-EUROPEAN DEBATE …

9

If an issue is not present in the news media, it can hardly be considered to be politicised. In consequence, the most coherent empirical data to analyse the public debate about an issue is the media. As any empirical analysis, the scope of the book has been limited to ensure the feasibility of the research. The case selection of the Spanish, French and British news outlets for the media content analysis limits the scope of the research.5 The book has eight chapters. After this introduction, Chapter 2 introduces the theoretical framework, outlining the central theoretical concepts, the media’s role in a public sphere, and the state of the art on the Europeanisation of the national public spheres and politicisation of the EU. The chapter also describes the different types of Europeanisation based on the type of politicisation and its normative implications for the democratic legitimacy of the EU. Chapter 3 introduces the methodology and data sets, touching upon the perspective from which the empirical analysis is undertaken, namely framing. The chapter also introduces TTIP, putting it in context, explaining the negotiations’ origins and content. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 describe the empirical analysis in each of the three countries analysed, Spain, France and the UK, outlining the media content analysis for each country. Chapter 7 brings a transversal analysis of the three countries from a transnational perspective, focusing on the frames of reference that have circulated across borders in the media content analysed, how can the results be explained and its possible implications for EU trade policy. Chapter 8 reflects upon the results analysed, outlines avenues for future research and addresses what sort of European integration is agonistic politicisation of the EU really empowering, and how the argument for a more federal European integration relates to the EU’s response to the COVID-19 crisis.

Bibliography Aaronson, S. A. (2002). Taking trade to the streets: The lost history of public efforts to shape globalization. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

5 The book analyses news outlets, but did not look into other spaces of the public sphere, such as television, radio, social media or national parliaments. The study of these other spaces would also help to trace how the TTIP debate took place in the different national public spheres and could represent sources for future research, but lie outside of the scope of this book.

10

A. OLEART

Barth, C., & Bijsmans, P. (2018). The maastricht treaty and public debates about European integration: The emergence of a European public sphere? Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 26(2), 215–231. BBC. (2014, May 26). Eurosceptic ‘earthquake’ rocks EU elections. Available online: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27559714. Accessed 18 May 2016. Beetz, J. P. (2015). Stuck on the Rubicon? The resonance of the idea of demoicracy in media debates on the EU’s legitimacy. Journal of European Public Policy, 22(1), 37–55. Bouza, L., & Oleart, A. (2018). From the 2005 Constitution’s ‘permissive consensus’ to TTIP’s ‘empowering dissensus’: The EU as a playing field for Spanish civil society. Journal of Contemporary European Research, 14(2), 87–104. Brack, N., & Startin, N. (2015). Introduction: Euroscepticism, from the margins to the mainstream. International Political Science Review, 36(3), 239–249. Checkel, J. T., & Ketzenstein, P. J. (2009). The politicization of European identities. In J. T. Checkel & P. J. Ketzenstein (Eds.), European identity (pp. 1–28). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Conrad, M. (2009). Between communication and community. EU constitution making, a European public sphere and the (un-)likelihood of transnational debate (Doctoral thesis). Conrad, M. (2010). The missing link in EU democracy? Why a transnational public sphere matters. Icelandic Review of Politics & Administration., 6(2), 207–228. Crespy, A. (2012). Qui a peur de Bolkestein? Conflit, résistances et démocratie dans l’Union européenne. Paris: Economica. Crespy, A. (2016). Welfare markets in Europe: The democratic challenge of European integration. London: Springer. Crespy, A., & Verschueren, N. (2009). From Euroscepticism to resistance to European integration: An interdisciplinary perspective. Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 10(3), 377–393. della Porta, D., & Caiani, M. (2009). Social movements and Europeanization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Ville, F., & Siles-Brügge, G. (2016). TTIP: The truth about the transatlantic trade and investment partnership. Cambridge: Polity. De Vries, C. E. (2009). The impact of EU referenda on national electoral politics: The Dutch case. West European Politics, 32(1), 142–171. De Vries, C. E. (2018). Euroscepticism and the future of European integration. Oxford University Press. De Wilde, P., & Trenz, H. J. (2012). Denouncing European integration: Euroscepticism as polity contestation. European Journal of Social Theory, 15(4), 537–554.

1

INTRODUCTION TO THE ANALYSIS OF THE PAN-EUROPEAN DEBATE …

11

Díez Medrano, J. (2003). Framing Europe. Attitudes to European integration in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Díez Medrano, J. (2009). The public sphere and the European Union’s political identity. In J. T. Checkel & P. J. Ketzenstein (Eds.), European identity, (pp. 81–107). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Díez Medrano, J., & Gray, E. (2010). Framing the European Union in National public spheres. In R. Koopmans & P. Statham (Eds.), The making of a European public sphere: Media discourse and political contention (pp. 195–220). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eriksen, E. O. (2007). Conceptualising European public spheres. General, segmented and strong publics. In J. E. Fossum & P. Schlesinger (Eds.), The European Union and the public sphere. A communicative space in the making? (pp. 23–41). London: Routledge. Grande, E., & Hutter, S. (2016). Introduction: European integration and the challenge of politicisation. In S. Hutter, E. Grande, & H. Kriesi (Eds.), Politicising Europe: Integration and mass politics (pp. 3–31). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Habermas, J. (2006). Political communication in media society: Does democracy still enjoy an epistemic dimension? The impact of normative theory on empirical research. Communication Theory, 16(4), 411–426. Hawkins, B. (2012). Nation, separation and threat: An analysis of British media discourses on the European Union treaty reform process. Journal of Common Market Studies, 50(4), 561–77. Hooghe, L., & Marks, G. (2009). A postfunctionalist theory of European integration: From permissive consensus to constraining dissensus. British Journal of Political Science, 39(1), 1–23. Kinski, L., & Crum, B. (2019). Transnational representation in EU National Parliaments: Concept, case study. Political Studies: Research Agenda. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0032321719848565. Michailidou, A., & Trenz, H. J. (2013). Mediatized representative politics in the European Union: Towards audience democracy? Journal of European Public Policy, 20(2), 260–277. Mouffe, C. (2000). The democratic paradox. London: Verso. Mouffe, C. (2005). On the political. London and New York: Routledge. Mouffe, C. (2013). Agonistics: Thinking the world politically. London: Verso. Nielsen, J. H., & Franklin, M. N. (2016). Eurosceptic 2014 European Parliament elections. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Oleart, A., & Bouza, L. (2018). Democracy at stake: Multipositional actors and politicization in the EU civil society field. Journal of Common Market Studies, 56(4), 870–887.

12

A. OLEART

Olsen, J. P. (2002). The many faces of Europeanization. Journal of Common Market Studies, 40(5), 921–952. Picard, R. G. (Ed.). (2015). The Euro crisis in the media. Journalistic coverage of economic crisis and European institutions. Oxford: I.B. Tauris. Risse, T. (2010). A community of Europeans? Transnational identities and public spheres. New York: Cornell University Press. Risse, T. (2014). European public spheres. Politics is back. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schattschneider, E. E. (1980 [1960]). The semisovereign people. Boston: Wandsworth. Schmidt, V. A. (2013). Democracy and legitimacy in the European Union revisited: Input, output and “throughput”. Political Studies, 61(1), 2–22. Statham, P., & Trenz, H. J. (2013a). How European Union politicization can emerge through contestation: The constitution case. Journal of Common Market Studies, 51(5), 965–980. Statham, P., & Trenz, H. J. (2013b). The politicization of Europe. Contesting the constitution. London: Routledge. Statham, P., & Trenz, H. J. (2015). Understanding the mechanisms of EU politicization: Lessons from the Eurozone crisis. Comparative European Politics, 13(3), 287–306. Taggart, P., & Szczerbiak, A. (2004). Contemporary Euroscepticism in the party systems of the European Union candidate states of Central and Eastern Europe. European Journal of Political Research, 43(1), 1–27. Taggart, P. (2006). Questions of Europe—The domestic politics of the 2005 French and Dutch referendums and their challenge for the study of European integration. Journal of Common Market Studies, 44, 7–25. Tobler, S. (2002) Transnationale Kommunikationsverdichtungen im Streit um die internationale Steuerpolitik. Berliner Debatte Initial, 13(5/6), 57–66. Traynor, I., & Smith, H. (2015, January 26). Syriza’s historic win puts Greece on collision course with Europe. The Guardian. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/25/syriza-historicwin-greece-european-union-austerity. Accessed 17 July 2017. Trenz, H. J., & Eder, K. (2004). The democratizing dynamics of a European public sphere: Towards a theory of democratic functionalism. European Journal of Social Theory, 7 (1), 5–25. Trenz, H. J. (2016). Narrating European society: Toward a sociology of European integration. London: Lexington Books. Warleigh, Alex. (2003). Democracy in the European Union. London: Sage.

CHAPTER 2

An Agonistic Approach to the Europeanisation of Public Spheres: Matching ‘Policy with Politics’

1 1.1

The Europeanisation of Public Spheres and the Democratisation of the EU The European Public Sphere: A Democratic Aspiration for the EU From a Deliberative and Agonistic Perspective

The increasing globalisation of governance has raised some questions about the democratic legitimacy of beyond the nation-state institutions, particularly from a public sphere point of view. Prominent authors (Calhoun, 1992; Habermas, 1989) have long argued that the increasing importance of political institutions beyond the nation-state requires, from a deliberative democracy perspective, a public sphere beyond the nationstate, in such a way that there are mechanisms to hold accountable those institutions’ policy—and decision-making. This is particularly the case of the European Union (EU). While a wide range of competences have been transferred from the national to the EU level, the public spheres remain largely based at the national level. Some argue that there is no democratic deficit in the EU, given its essentially intergovernmental nature (Moravscik, 2003). However, departing from a deliberative democracy point of view, the EU’s democratic deficit is not (only) an institutional one, but a social one requiring a European public sphere that keeps the EU’s institutional power in check. European integration has advanced faster and deeper than the sense of a European community © The Author(s) 2021 A. Oleart, Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53637-4_2

13

14

A. OLEART

(Etzioni, 2007) that shares a common public sphere. Following this line of thought, the construction of a global or transnational public sphere is normatively necessary in order to democratically legitimise governance beyond the nation-state by creating spaces of transnational collective will formation. The public sphere is central for a deliberative understanding of democracy. Deliberative democracy views the public sphere and the discourse that circulates within it as crucial in providing input to the polity’s policy—and decision-making process. Therefore, the emergence of a public sphere beyond the nation-state is fundamental for the democratic legitimacy of a polity holding supranational competences, such as the EU. The role of public spheres is to hold accountable the administrative power held by public administrations, connecting citizens with governing institutions. If public spheres remain national, only national governments are held accountable, while supranational institutions continue to have little or no accountability on their administrative power (Steffek, 2010). If policy—and decision-making takes place at the European level, a European public sphere is necessary to hold the decisions accountable. Such a process would match communicative power with administrative power: the former is a mechanism to hold the latter accountable. This process creates the conditions by which governments connect to citizens’ concerns. Public spheres constrain governing institutions through deliberative processes of its citizens. Although it lacks legislative power, the public sphere has the communicative power to shape the actions of public administrations. By doing so, communicative power exerts its role as a counterweight to the administrative power held by executive actors. Public spheres are therefore understood as a source of legitimacy in the collective decision-making process of a polity, providing input to policy-making by including a wide range of actors and views in the process. The public sphere has a structural dimension connected to the political institutions with administrative power in a given territory. For this reason, the European public sphere has been a subject of interest for a long time, both within EU institutions and in academia (Eriksen, 2005, 2007; Eriksen & Fossum, 2002; Morganti & Bekemans, 2012), since it would bridge the gap between EU institutions and European citizens. The European Commission has repeatedly expressed its interest in encouraging a European public sphere of communication. Most notably,

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

15

in the White Paper on a European Communication Policy, which argued that a European public sphere should be based on genuine dialogue between the people and the policymakers and lively political discussion among citizens themselves. People from all walks of life should have the right to fair and full information about the European Union, and be confident that the views and concerns they express are heard by the EU institutions. (European Commission, 2006, p. 4)

However, it can hardly be argued that such a European public sphere of communication exists, given the national fragmentation of the mainstream political debates. While governance has increasingly become supranational in the EU, a European public sphere has not emerged beyond a fragmented and elitist one based essentially in Brussels (Baisnée, 2007; Conrad, 2014; Eriksen, 2007). The lack of a European public sphere is also reflected in the EU elections’ low turnout, which has progressively declined until the 2014 EU elections, when it fell to 42%, only to rise slightly to over 50% in the 2019 EU elections. The lack of popular participation in the EU has led a number of prominent authors to argue that a European public sphere is needed to legitimise the EU (Eriksen, 2005; Fossum & Schlesinger, 2007; Koopmans & Erbe, 2004), since the EU can hardly be legitimate as long as it remains mainly an elitist project (Magnette, 2003). Perhaps Habermas (2001, p. 65) best summarised the need for a European public sphere, arguing that the ‘deficit in democracy can only be eliminated if a European public sphere comes into existence in which the democratic process is incorporated (…) the pan-European political public sphere is the solution to the problem of insufficient social integration in the processes of Europeanization’. A well-functioning European public sphere would be the space where issues of common concern for all European citizens are discussed by a wide range of actors, and therefore, the policy outcomes of EU decisions would be more legitimate, given the public sphere’s role in connecting ordinary citizens with the political institutions that lead the policy and decision-making processes. In this context, the lack of a European public sphere is a democratic deficit for EU institutions, given that a public sphere is necessary for a democratic polity because it sets ‘the frame for the range of what the public of citizens would accept as legitimate decisions in a given case’ (Habermas, 2006, p. 418). While the public sphere

16

A. OLEART

does not possess the administrative power to make binding decisions (a competence held by the political system’s governing institutions), deliberative processes in the public sphere can lead towards the generation of communicative power, which refers to the public deliberation’s capacity to influence a polity’s institutionalised decision-making (Bohman, 2010). However, deliberative democracy (and the concept of the public sphere) has been criticised by a number of authors (Mouffe, 2000; Sanders, 1997) as a theory that has a bias against the presence of women (Fraser, 1992), working-class actors (Kluge & Negt, 2016), and that sets exclusionary standards of discourse, neglecting the crucial role of conflict and emotions in politics. Such standards require actors to follow certain ‘rules’: mainly, that participants in the public sphere ‘aim to arrive at a rationally motivated consensus’ (Cohen, 1997). Therefore, from a strictly deliberative perspective, the public sphere is meant as a space of rational debate, where participants aim at reaching a consensus that is accepted by everyone. However, as Chantal Mouffe has argued (2000, 2013), conflict is inherent to politics. Habermas’ emphasis on rational deliberation and consensus has been subject to criticism by authors such as Duchesne and Haegel (2004) or Mouffe (2013). This criticism is not always justified, since Habermas does not embrace full consensus. The later conceptualisation of Habermas’s (1996) public sphere has little to do with rational discussion in Vienna’s coffee houses during the late nineteenth century, and already acknowledges that the public sphere has a different form in the late twentieth century, given the spread of mass media such as television or the Internet. In Habermas, there is more conflict than its critics acknowledge (see Karppinen et al., 2008), as his public sphere conceptualisation is based on the openness of participation by a wide range of actors, and contesting through deliberation public authorities’ decisions, thereby generating communicative power. That said, critics of deliberative democracy are right in arguing that the consensus-oriented model of the public sphere is biased towards the ‘status quo’, excluding counter-hegemonic discourses to confront hegemonic ones. The democratic theorist Chantal Mouffe has argued that passion and conflict are central to democracy, arguing the following:

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

17

[b]elief in the possibility of a universal rational consensus has put democratic thinking on the wrong track. Instead of trying to design the institutions which, through supposedly ‘impartial’ procedures, would reconcile all conflicting interests and values, the task for democratic theorists and politicians should be to envisage the creation of a vibrant ‘agonistic’ public sphere of contestation where different hegemonic political projects can be confronted. (Mouffe 2005, p. 3)

For Mouffe, pluralism only exists if we recognise conflictual relations between actors holding fundamentally different and opposing views of how society should be. Both Habermas and Mouffe are pluralists but, as pointed out by Mouffe, ‘for them (Habermas and its followers), pluralism goes without antagonism’ (Carpentier & Cammaerts, 2006, p. 972). Plural does not only mean that there are different views, but that they are in conflict with each other, and cannot be reconciled. Mouffe rejects the emphasis that Habermas puts on rationality, consensus and deliberation, because, for her, it neglects the conflictual and emotional dimension inherent to politics. Democracy, however, cannot be based only on conflict, but rather on a particular way of channelling conflict, which Mouffe (2013, p. XII) labels ‘agonism’: ‘a central task of democratic politics is to provide the institutions which will permit conflicts to take an “agonistic” form, where the opponents are not enemies but adversaries among whom exists a conflictual consensus’. The essential difference between antagonistic and agonistic conflict is that, in the latter, the opponents recognise each other as legitimate participants of the same polity, while remaining adversaries. The concepts of agonism and antagonism will be empirically mobilised, and framed in EU terms, in the methodological section of the third chapter. A second criticism put forward is that deliberative democracy focuses only on the procedure of a debate, not taking into account its substance. Mouffe (2013) has developed her theory of democracy based on the recognition of conflict by arguing that, under the pretext of ‘adapting themselves to a globalised world’, the mainstream centre-left Socialist Parties have capitulated to a neoliberal world. Following Mouffe, a democratic polity requires more than a ‘public sphere’1 of rational deliberation and discussion. Namely, it requires the outline of different political choices between fundamentally different alternatives, such as 1 Mouffe uses the term ‘public space’ in order to avoid any connection with Habermas.

18

A. OLEART

challenging the current neoliberal hegemony. This is coherent with deliberative democracy theorists such as Chambers (1995), who argues that the discursive interaction about political issues is a democratic goal in itself, because it makes people more aware of what others think and improves their own reasoning given that they have to defend their positions in the public sphere. The connection between the Europeanisation of public spheres and a substantial debate is facilitated by Tobler (2002, p. 62, cited in Risse, 2010, p. 122), who argued that a transnational public sphere emerges when “competing discourse coalitions start talking to each other across different national and international arenas, thereby forming a common arena of communication”. Despite the fact that Mouffe (2013) situates herself as epistemologically opposed to the Habermasian understanding of democracy, this book departs from a complementary view of the deliberative and agonistic perspectives. Habermas might not have paid enough attention to the role of conflict in the public sphere, but Mouffe’s criticism of Habermas is not entirely legitimate, since it is precisely the criticism of existing political institutions that allows actors the necessary communicative power to keep in check the states’ administrative power. Habermas conceptualised the public sphere as a space of struggle and ‘political confrontation’ (Habermas, 1989, p. 27), where the executive power of governments is challenged. Additionally, following Hammond (2018), an important distinction is to be made between the concrete practice of deliberation and the more abstract theory of deliberative democracy. While the former can be summed up as a set of practices (for instance, rational and truthful discussion), the latter simply assumes that public discourse in the public sphere is central to the democratic legitimacy of a polity’s decision—and policy-making processes. There is a normative assumption in deliberative democracy, but that is not to say that it can be summarised in a perfectionist standard on the settings of public discourse. Rather than focusing on the practice of deliberation, the book takes the broad view that public discourse matters when legitimising political decisions, so that the public sphere can keep in check the administrative power of the EU. To summarise the relationship between deliberative and agonistic models of democracy, agonistic conflict requires elements of deliberation, and deliberation requires a certain degree of conflict: if all actors agree on an issue, there is no meaningful deliberation. Agonistic conflict can in fact stimulate further deliberation in the public sphere, which is conceptualised not as a space of purely rational deliberation (it can involve

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

19

emotional appeals), but rather as a space where conflict takes place and different worldviews are confronted by a wide range of actors. It is not only necessary to have a plurality of views vis-à-vis EU issues, but to have fundamentally opposing points of view that cannot be reconciled, in such a way that citizens do not get the sense that ‘there is no alternative’. There is never full inclusion: there are always frontiers between actors holding opposing views. Conflict is inherent to power, and it cannot be eliminated. However, conflict can be expressed and channelled in different ways. Recognising conflict can in fact revitalise deliberative democracy and discussions over the ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU. As argued by Trenz and Eder (2004, p. 7), ‘criticising the democratic deficit means initiating the process of democratising the EU’. Pluralism does not exist without conflict. The goal of a deliberative democratic debate should be then to express conflict in an agonistic way. In fact, as argued by Blondiaux (2008), conflict enhances deliberation, in that it encourages greater actor participation and makes policies and decisions more influential. In a democratic society, pacification is not about repressing conflict, but channelling conflict in a legitimate manner (Carpentier & Cammaerts, 2006, p. 973). Blocking agonistic debate might actually have negative consequences for public debate, opening the door to an antagonistic form of conflict. In sum, the European public sphere literature has so far paid little attention to the conflictual dimension that is necessary for a wellfunctioning public sphere. The book develops a hybrid conceptualisation of the public sphere, combining a typically Habermasian deliberative approach with Chantal Mouffe’s ‘agonistic democracy’. The aim is to blend together the theories of deliberative and agonistic democracy, which is why the concept of the ‘public sphere’ and its inherent normative implications are embraced. Habermas and Mouffe are not often put together, but, as Karppinen et al. pointed out (2008), such opposition might be superficial and, in fact, the insights of both approaches can be combined. As Karppinen et al. (2008, p. 8) write, ‘the public sphere is best understood as an arena of articulating expressions of both solidarity and difference, and in a general sense, this understanding is shared by both Mouffe and Habermas’. While they hold different perspectives on the public sphere and democracy, ‘neither Habermas nor Mouffe would embrace full consensus or unlimited pluralism’ (Karppinen et al., 2008, p. 11). Therefore, a well-functioning public sphere is conceived in the book as a space where a constellation of actors that have fundamentally

20

A. OLEART

different views confronts each other in a process of public deliberation that is driven by (agonistic) conflict, rather than consensus. 1.2

The Europeanisation of Public Spheres Through the National Media: The EU as an Audience Democracy

As governance grows increasingly global, particularly in the EU, a question emerges: Is it possible for a transnational public sphere to emerge? This is the fundamental question Nancy Fraser (2007) puts forward, asking whether it is possible to construct a public sphere beyond national borders in a ‘post-national’ world. Beyond a few historical events that had a pan-European resonance, such as the Haider case (Van de Steeg, 2006) or the transnational mobilisation against the Iraq war (Habermas & Derrida, 2003), it can hardly be argued that such a European public sphere of communication exists at all. In fact, a single Europewide transnational public sphere where English would be the common language is unlikely to replace the dominant national public spheres any time soon. The lack of a European public sphere and mainstream European media explains why it is more logical to approach the European public sphere by focusing on the extent to which the diverse national public spheres in Europe are Europeanised, as several authors have pointed out (Koopmans & Statham, 1999; Risse 2003, 2010). From this perspective, the aim is to analyse to what extent national media focuses on European issues with a European perspective, and how inclusive those debates are. By referring to the Europeanisation of the national public spheres rather than the creation of a European public sphere, it is assumed that building a single European public sphere is not realistic, at least in the short term. Additionally, as argued by Beetz (2017, p. 476), ‘the EU institutional system primarily creates transnational relationships between national electorates rather than EU citizens’. In this scenario, issues from the EU and the international arena ought to be progressively introduced into the national public spheres, having a certain degree of convergence between countries on such issues of common concern and a similar way of framing them, instead of replacing the national political arenas with a European one. The Europeanisation of public spheres can be conceived as ‘a public sphere constituted by a network of transnational communicative exchange taking place within the existing national media’ (Conrad, 2010, p. 221). Bohman highlights this process’s complexity (2010, p. 21), arguing that

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

21

the process by which the national public spheres must be transnationalised implies ‘fundamentally a transition from a singular to a plural subject, from dêmos to dêmoi’. Following such a view, post-national scholars argue that a pre-constituted demos is not necessary for a transnational public sphere to emerge (Eriksen & Fossum, 2002; Habermas, 2001; Nicolaïdis, 2013), and that networks of communication across borders can play this role. Applied to the EU, the Europeanisation of the public spheres can bridge the gap between the EU and its citizens (Eriksen, 2005; Koopmans & Erbe, 2004; Koopmans & Statham, 2002). As described by Habermas, the solution does not consist in constructing a supranational public sphere, but in transnationalizing the existing national public spheres. For the latter could become more responsive to one another without the need for drastic changes in the existing infrastructure. At the same time, the boundaries of national public spheres would become portals for mutual translations. (…) Their (existing quality newspapers) role would not merely be to provide exposure to European issues and to treat them accordingly, but also to provide information concerning the political positions and controversies which trigger the same issues in the other member states. (Habermas, 2009, p. 183, italics in original)

Transnationalisation or Europeanisation requires greater communication flows beyond national borders, introducing similar frames of reference in different national public spheres. This perspective matches the work of Kinski and Crum (2019), which introduced the notion of ‘transnational representation’ in reference to national actors speaking on behalf of citizens of other national constituencies. From this perspective, the national political arena is not replaced by a European one. Instead, the process of Europeanisation is the interplay between the national public spheres and the elitist, segmented European public sphere, in which members of essentially national political communities interact with members of the European political community, and by doing so, mutually shape each other. Following Coman, Kostera, & Tomini (2014), Europeanisation is understood as a dialectical interaction between the EU and its member states, where both influence and shape each other. The process of European integration impacts the national political spaces, the political arenas and vice versa. Europeanisation must not be confused with European integration, nor with convergence or harmonisation between EU member states. Rather, Europeanisation is a more complex and multidimensional

22

A. OLEART

process, that departs from the assumption that political communities remain essentially based on the nation-state, but are shaped through its interaction with other nation-states and supranational actors. As Bartolini (2005, p. 116) put it, ‘[t]he problem and the fate of the EU cannot be studied adequately without considering the historical legacies of its ingredient: the nation-state’. Therefore, it is not necessary to build a transnational European public sphere, but rather to Europeanise the national public spheres (Risse, 2010), a process that can be empirically traced through the media. While the conceptualisation of the public sphere can be very broad, the theoretical framework in this book connects directly the public sphere with the media, partially inspired by the work of Michailidou and Trenz (2013), who attempt to reconceptualise Manin’s (1997) idea of audience democracy and apply it from a normative perspective to the EU. The transition from parliamentary to audience democracy may not entail a decline of representative politics, but in fact a core component of democracy itself, since it forces political actors to go public and become open to public contestation. Political representation is less about parliamentary procedures, and more about ‘a dynamic communicative process which takes place in the public sphere, filtered and shaped by the media environment’ (Michailidou and Trenz, 2013, p. 271). From this perspective, the health of an audience democracy relies on the quality of public discourse in the mass media (Dryzek and Niemeyer, 2008), and whether the media reflects concerns beyond elitist actors, and where there is a meaningful agonistic ideational conflict. Rather than a simple aggregation of interests of citizens across different EU member states, this might contribute to a process of transnational collective will formation (Olsen and Trenz, 2014). The book looks at the quality of public discourse by assessing whether there has been a meaningful, transnational and agonistic debate in the public sphere around the TTIP negotiations. The mass media is the most relevant space to look at, even though the public sphere can encompass other spaces as well. Therefore, the process of Europeanisation of the public spheres can be seen empirically investigated through the media2 2 ‘New’ media such as social media platforms (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) is not tackled empirically in this book. While social media nowadays plays an increasingly important role in the public spheres, more traditional media platforms are considered more representative spaces of the national public spheres.

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

23

(Valentini & Laursen, 2012), a space that has a profound influence in the well functioning of a democratic society (Caiani & Guerra, 2017; Michailidou & Trenz, 2015). The mass media is considered the public sphere’s central space, although journalists are also understood as active agents of framing issues, which makes the media both an actor and an arena (Heft & Pfetsch, 2012). There are other ways to access the public sphere (e.g. parliaments, universities), but the mass media is the main one. Political knowledge of citizens at large is closely connected to the amount and quality of information provided by the mass media. Mass media plays a central role in providing information about the EU (Fossum & Schlesinger, 2007), and the success at engaging citizens in EU policy-making depends to a large extent on the availability of information in the mass media, as well as in the process of agenda-setting, gatekeeping, priming and framing EU issues (Trenz, Conrad, & Rosen, 2007). The media is a central actor in understanding the way in which citizens perceive and make sense of European integration at the national level, as shown by Díez Medrano (2003), who found close ties between the frames journalists put forward in the media and those of ordinary citizens regarding European integration. Taking into account that ‘attitudes towards the EU are framed by the national circumstances in which people live and their evaluations of these conditions’ (De Vries, 2018, p. 3), the framing of the EU is filtered by the national public spheres and national media. This means that the ‘downloading’ (Börzel, 2002) of EU issues to the national public spheres implies that the media discourse is likely to have variations across countries, and makes national mass media both facilitators and obstacles for European integration and the Europeanisation of public spheres (Díez Medrano & Gray, 2010). The media is also an active agent of the framing of issues, given the capacity of journalists to introduce and frame issues on the public agenda. For this reason, while empirically analysing the Europeanisation of media discourse, the book refers more broadly to the Europeanisation of public spheres. The ideal public sphere where citizens of a community exchange ideas and points of view on issues of common concern is unlikely to exist on a face-to-face basis in modern societies. Rather, such spaces where points of view confront each other exist essentially through the media (Bennett & Entman, 2000). The media plays a central role in the public sphere, being an arena where political actors confront points of view, while journalists are also active agents in the framing of issues, even though there are other crucial spaces for the public sphere, such as parliaments.

24

A. OLEART

The media in Europe remains anchored at the national level, including all types of media platforms (news outlets, radio, television). Several attempts have been made to establish Europe-wide media, both following a top-down—such as Euronews, Euractiv or the EU Observer—and a bottom-up approach (such as Café Babel, a participatory website in several languages that relies on a network of volunteers). However, the reach of these initiatives remains limited to an already Europeanised audience composed by people working professionally on issues that relate in some way to the EU (Morganti & Van Audenhove, 2012), the ‘European society’ that Fligstein (2008) described. The reasons that explain the lack of European mainstream media are several, such as the language and culture diversity, and the resilience of national media systems. In this context, it is the national media that has the capacity to bring European issues to the national public spheres, because the ‘publics’ addressed by the media tend to be national in Europe. A crucial question, then, is how the different national public spheres in Europe are connected, how they relate to each other, and which actors and ideas have access to the European public sphere(s). Several authors have undertaken comparative perspective analyses on the national framing of ‘Europe’ and European issues as their subject of enquiry (Díez Medrano, 2003; Kantner, 2014). The empirical analyses tend to support the idea that the perception of Europe and the EU are crucially mediated by the national political context. This is in large part due to media consumption habits, which show that national media platforms remain hegemonic. From this perspective, the lack of a European public sphere beyond national borders in the EU is not a democratic problem ‘per se’, as long as the national public spheres are Europeanised or ‘transnationalised’ enough for citizens to remain informed and able to participate in the EU policy-making process. As Vivien Schmidt (2006, p. 1) has argued, the problem of democratic legitimacy in the EU is to be found at the national level, rather than at the European level. A European public sphere emerges ‘through the Europeanisation of various, particularly national, public spheres. (The European public sphere) is a social construct and emerges in the process during which people engage one another and debate issues of common concern in public’ (Risse, 2010, p. 125). Then, research tends to focus on the extent to which the diverse national public spheres in Europe become Europeanised (Gerhards, 2000; Koopmans & Statham, 2010; Trenz, 2009; Wessler et al., 2008). This type of research generally concludes

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

25

that EU issues are portrayed from the point of view of EU member states, and therefore, the media reporting has a strong national orientation rather than a European one (see Machill et al., 2006; Trenz, 2004). The working definition of the Europeanisation of public spheres is an arena where EU issues are publicly deliberated across national boundaries at the same time, with similar frames of reference and with a European, rather than national, perspective. In practice, a European public sphere would emerge if and when the same subject is discussed in different national public spheres at the same time with similar interpretive structures, which means framing issues in the same way. 1.3

The EU’s Democratic (and Opposition) Deficit: The Depoliticised Europeanisation of Public Spheres and the ‘Permissive Consensus’

There is an academic consensus when understanding the European integration process until the 1990s as an elite-driven process (Fligstein, 2008; Hooghe & Marks, 2009; Lindberg & Scheingold, 1970), where political elites advanced in EU integration with the general public’s ‘permissive consensus’. The implication of the ‘permissive consensus’ vis-à-vis the EU implies a general lack of popular participation, given the limited range of actors participating in the process and its strong intergovernmental component. The ‘permissive consensus’ responds to a logic of depoliticisation, a concept that has become important in the political science literature since the 2000s (Burnham, 2001; Buller & Flinders, 2005; Kettell, 2008). Burnham portrayed depoliticisation as a process by which political decisions are presented as if they are unquestionable, removing ‘the political character of decision-making’ (Burnham, 2001, p. 128). Buller and Flinders (2005) further developed the concept, understanding depoliticisation as arena shifting, a mechanism by which political responsibility is moved away from ‘politics’, as the process by which a political decision is presented as unchallengeable, technical and/or apolitical, presenting political decisions as if there is no alternative, as merely ‘administrative’ decisions (Hay & Rosamond, 2002). Depoliticisation is here defined as the absence of political conflict in a political process in the public sphere. Depoliticisation is essentially a type of ‘policy without politics’ (Schmidt, 2013). Instead, politicisation is defined as ‘making collectively binding decisions a matter or an object of public discussion’ (Zürn, Binder, & Ecker-Ehrhardt, 2012, p. 74). While there are many

26

A. OLEART

different definitions of politicisation, this has been found most coherent regarding the connection between politicisation and the public sphere. The neofunctionalist vision of European integration (Haas, 1968; Stroby Jensen, 2003) is an essentially depoliticised process, since it is viewed as a gradual process by which integration in one policy area will inevitably lead to a ‘spillover’ effect, integrating other policy areas. According to Haas, the European integration process will lead to a ‘New Europe’ that is essentially a supranational and technocratic authority, where rational deliberation by ‘experts’ will ensure that nationalism does not return. Haas perfectly illustrated this himself, arguing that the ‘advent of supranationality symbolises the victory of economies over polities, over the familiar ethnocentric nationalism which used to subordinate butter to guns, reason to passion, statistical bargaining to excited demands’ (Haas, 1968, p. 159). This is problematic from a deliberative and agonistic democracy perspective, given that the increasing importance of decisions taken at the EU level was not matched with public spheres that focused mainly on national issues (Gerhards, 2000). Arguably, the ‘permissive consensus’ stage of European integration ended partially with the debate around the Maastricht Treaty (1993), which encouraged further critical discourse about European integration. The Maastricht Treaty entailed a substantial transfer of competences from the national level to the European one, which encouraged the salience of debates at the national level about European integration. The debate over the Maastricht Treaty was not only framed as a matter of ‘national sovereignty’, but also about democracy, as Barth and Bijsmans (2018) found in the media discourse in the United Kingdom and Germany. The debates around Maastricht anchored the issue of democracy in debates about the EU and European integration (Schrag Sternberg, 2013, p. 127). However, while the Maastricht Treaty triggered further interest at the national level on European issues, the Europeanisation of public spheres has not structurally changed. Empirical research on the Europeanisation of public spheres has so far indicated that there is a certain degree of Europeanisation, in the sense that similar topics are discussed in a similar way at the same time in different countries (Fossum & Schlesinger, 2007; Trenz, 2008a; Van de Steeg, 2002). This process, combined with the increasing coverage of the EU, has led some authors to argue that there is ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ (De Vreese et al., 2009), contributing to counter the EU’s ‘information deficit’ (Clark, 2014). However, from a discursive point of

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

27

view, executive actors have overwhelmingly dominated the Europeanisation of the national public spheres (Koopmans & Statham, 2010; Wessler et al., 2008). This represents well what is conceived as depoliticised Europeanisation: regardless of how salient a European debate is, it is framed in a depoliticised way, often by executive actors. In this context, it is the EU institutions, and the European Commission in particular, who frame issues in their preferred way (Baygert, 2015). Both in online and offline media, empirical analysis indicates that journalists tend to favour national and European and national executive actors in EU issues (Michailidou et al., 2014), often reproducing the (generally depoliticised) discourse of executive actors without challenging it. This was the case of Portugal (Sousa & Santos, 2014) and Greece (D’Haenens & Joris, 2015; Mylonas, 2014) in the context of the early stage of the Eurozone crisis. Rauh and De Wilde (2018) provided an empirical study of patterns of EU emphasis in four national parliaments, concluding that they have only partially succeeded in becoming a forum for EU accountability, mainly due to the lack of a government-opposition logic, what they conceptualised as an ‘opposition deficit’. The absence of conflict in the Europeanisation of national public spheres is a problem for the EU’s democratic legitimacy from a deliberative and agonistic perspective, given that (the lack of) agonistic conflict and public debate is part of the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’. In the depoliticised Europeanisation, there is a mismatch between ‘policy’ and ‘politics’, where ‘major political decisions are made in executive networks relatively detached from democratic control’ (Kauppi, 2018, p. 20). The ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU is being primarily based on the lack of both Europeanisation and (agonistic) politicisation of European politics. From this perspective, the mass media is the central channel of will formation and contestation of executive action, and therefore a crucial source of legitimacy (Trenz, 2008b). The increasing number of EU Brusselsbased correspondents for national media platforms has nourished the growing coverage of Europe and the EU. The growing visibility and salience, however, is not necessarily accompanied by the politicisation of those issues nor by the presence of non-executive actors (Koopmans, 2007). While the shift of competences has encouraged Europe’s visibility at the national level (Statham, 2010), including news about the European Parliament (Gattermann, 2013), executive actors continue to dominate a generally depoliticised debate, where there is little space for counter-hegemonic ideas to contest executive views.

28

A. OLEART

The depoliticised Europeanisation of public spheres is not necessarily normatively positive for the EU’s democratic legitimacy, given that the Europeanisation of the public spheres is being led by the frames of reference put forward only by executive actors. In consequence, it is not (only) that the EU is lacking visibility and Europeanised coverage at the national level, but rather that in European issues the national public spheres are rarely politicised and are often dominated by executive actors, therefore leaving no space for counter-hegemonic ideas to circulate. While there is a certain convergence of the way in which the EU is discussed at the national level, the voices and ideas of non-state actors (such as civil society or opposition political parties) are often marginalised, which limits the potential for politicisation (Risse, 2010, 2014; Wessler et al., 2008). This convergence of interpretive frameworks in the public sphere when discussing the EU, but without contestation in the public sphere, is a process that is conceptualised as depoliticised Europeanisation. 1.4 ‘Policy Without Politics’ in the EU and the Agency in Politicisation: Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs) The depoliticised Europeanisation of public spheres described above is connected to the dynamics of the EU policy-making, conceptualised by Vivien Schmidt (2006) as ‘policy without politics’. The absence of political conflict in the public sphere (depoliticisation) does not mean that there is no actual political conflict, but rather that political conflict is silenced and dealt with outside the public sphere.3 One mechanism to depoliticise a policy arena is to exclude ‘groups which are likely to disagree with the established policy agenda from the policy-making process’ (Smith, 1991, p. 236). This is what tends to happen in the complex EU policy-making process, where a system of ‘elite pluralism’ (Eising, 2009) or ‘chameleon pluralism’ (Coen & Katsaitis, 2013) among strongly institutionalised actors (Greenwood, 2011, pp. 1−4) is in place. The depoliticisation of the policy-making process is based on structurally excluding contentious actors, which encourages a very technical (as

3 However, although meetings take place behind closed doors in the Council, conflicts among member states are in some occasions staged and emphasised in attempting to show how a minister or a head of state has courageously defended the interests of his/her country vis-à-vis other countries or the EU.

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

29

opposed to ‘political’) process where actors must adapt to the Commission’s framing of issues (Klüver et al., 2015; Oleart & Bouza, 2018a). Interest group participation in the EU is highly technical and professionalised, generally excluding less professionalised social groups. Saurugger (2010) has empirically investigated whether there are differences in the degree of professionalisation depending on the type of interest group, finding that there is no meaningful difference in the degree of professionalisation of EU interest groups depending on the type they belong to (e.g. NGOs, business organisations), despite the fact that it could be assumed that civil society actors are less professionalised and more closely linked to the ‘grassroots’. The highly institutionalised and professionalised EU policy-making encourages a bias towards insider and professionalised actors (KohlerKoch & Eising, 1999). In Brussels, the majority of these are business actors and have a financial advantage vis-à-vis civil society actors in the EU lobbying game. The European Commission has attempted to correct the inequality among interest groups by providing funding for Brusselsbased EU umbrella NGOs that represent social groups at the national level (Sánchez Salgado, 2014). By doing so, the European Commission is a crucial donor supporting the existence of many Brussels-based NGOs. This has been interpreted as a way for the Commission to have civil society supporters4 (Kohler-Koch, 2010; Kutay, 2012), even though business actors generally have wider access to the Commission, given that they have more financial and human resources.5 In this way, European

4 For this reason, several NGOs explicitly reject any possible funding from the European Commission, such as Greenpeace, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) or Amnesty International. However, it is questionable whether NGOs continue to have autonomy once they accept Commission funding, given that public funding can in fact help NGOs to be autonomous, since they will not rely on other sources of funding that may be even more compromising. That said, it is true that European Commission financing is problematic for the independence of Brussels-based NGOs, since some may worry that their funding could disappear or be reduced if they frontally oppose the Commission’s policies. 5 Only NGOs that have access to resources (e.g. CONCORD, who receives funds from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Open Society funded by the billionaire George Soros) are capable of setting up Brussels-based organisations and being part of the EU policymaking process. For this reason, European Commission funding of Brussels-based NGOs can in fact be seen as a way to give organisations autonomy, freeing them from reliance on other funding sources that might be more compromising. However, as has been pointed out by Sánchez-Salgado (2014), despite the European Commission’s efforts to support

30

A. OLEART

civil society (Liebert & Trenz, 2009) actors based in Brussels are rather ‘partners’ of EU institutions, rather than bottom-up organisations that challenge the Commission’s agenda. The depoliticised Europeanisation of public spheres and the discursive domination of executive actors can therefore be connected to the technical and depoliticised EU policy-making process, which generally excludes protest actors, and is dominated by a group of elite Brusselsbased interest group actors that use inside rather than outside lobbying tactics (Kollman, 1998). Given the EU’s generally depoliticised policymaking, the politicisation of the EU depends on the capacity of non-elite actors, often not based in Brussels, to make their voice heard in the European public spheres by taking the EU beyond the Brussels bubble. The process by which an EU issue becomes controversial at the national level must be understood as the consequence of the agency of actors that take EU politics outside of the generally depoliticised EU policymaking. Political actors are producers of frames and narratives, crucially contributing to the construction of political reality (Bouza García, 2017) through the public sphere. However, empirical research on the Europeanisation of social movements (Della Porta & Caiani, 2009) has shown that, despite its slow emerging process, contentious actors tend to channel their EU-level activities through Brussels-based umbrella organisations (Imig & Tarrow, 2001; Marks & McAdam, 1999). The politicisation of a ‘sleeping giant’ (de Vries, 2007; Van der Eijk & Franklin, 2007) such as the EU does not appear naturally nor in a vacuum, but rather as the consequence of strategic action by political actors (Kriesi 2016; Kriesi et al., 2007; Marks & McAdam, 1996; Oleart & Bouza, 2018b). Issues are not politicised in general, but become politicised through ‘episodes of contention’ (De Wilde, 2011, p. 563), where political actors polarise the debate in the public sphere (Hoeglinger, 2016). Actors strategically trigger the politicisation of the EU by targeting particular issues so as to make them controversial (Hooghe & Marks, 2009; De Wilde & Zürn, 2012). From this perspective, a number of authors have studied party manifestos during elections (Hutter & Grande, 2014) or parliamentary debates (Auel & Raunio, 2014; Rauh & De Wilde, 2018), in order to

excluded voices, not all of them actually receive such support. For instance, the efforts to create a European Network of the Unemployed were unsuccessful, although at the national level we do find organisations whose mission is to represent the unemployed.

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

31

identify which issues related to the EU political actors make more salient when elections are approaching. Actors are central to understand the politicisation of EU affairs, and the way in which politicisation takes place. Prior research has pointed out the emergence of actors organised beyond the nation-state in a more or less horizontal way, identified as ‘Transnational Advocacy Networks’ (TANs) (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). A TAN is composed of ‘relevant actors working internationally on an issue, who are bound together by shared values, a common discourse, and a dense exchange of information and services’ (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, p. 2). Actors can strategically mobilise ideas and frames, not only for their intrinsic political weight, but also as an ideational mechanism to bring other actors into the same position. Given the EU’s generally depoliticised policy-making and the lack of a Europe-wide communication infrastructure to circulate EU politics beyond ‘Brussels’, TANs and transnational coalitions are necessary for alternative ideas to expand and circulate throughout Europe. Frames and narratives do not emerge and circulate spontaneously in societies; they are articulated by skilled social actors, capable of putting forward messages that resonate among the public. Contentious actors are central to constructing Europeanised public spheres where issues of common concern for Europeans are discussed. Such a process, by which Europe becomes a matter of controversy in the public sphere, may potentially legitimise the EU by putting forward competing (and opposing) political narratives (such as social democrat versus liberal narratives) in a polity that tends towards consensus, as long as the conflict is ‘agonistic’ in type.

2 2.1

Different Types of Politicisation and Their Implications for European Integration The Third Face of Power: The Battle of Ideas to Define Political Conflict

Ideas, inherent and central to politics, can perform different roles at the same time. Ideas can serve as a framework to understand the world, as a weapon to attack or delegitimise other ideas or as a framework to encourage coalition-building by redefining actors’ perceived self-interests and aligning certain actors together while opposing others (Blyth, 2002). Every political battle confronts ideas in one way or another, and ideas play a crucial role in the dynamics of such battles. Ideas are embedded both in

32

A. OLEART

the policies adopted and in their justification, which makes the study of ideas inherently related to the concept of power. Power has been defined in different ways, which is not surprising given the different dimensions that the concept embodies. Robert Dahl argued that ‘A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do’ (Dahl, 1957, pp. 202–203). Hay (2002, p. 185) defined power as ‘the ability of actors (whether individual or collective) to ‘have an effect’ upon the context which defines the range of possibilities of others’. Despite the differences in the literature, most definitions of power agree on one thing: power is a relation, not an attribute or an object owned by an individual or group. Therefore, power is not something that can be held, but only exercised through relations of domination (Foucault, 1982). Power has three dimensions or ‘faces’ (Lukes 1974). Its first dimension (or ‘face’) could be related to the concept of ‘hard’ power, the capacity to enforce certain decision over others through formal rules. The second face refers to the power of non-decision-making, through which Bachrach and Baratz (1962, p. 952) encourage academics to investigate the ‘mobilisation of bias’ when researching power, rather than focusing only on ‘who rules?’. In doing so, it touches upon the informal capacity of decisionmaking and agenda-setting of certain actors, even if that influence takes place in a subtle and less obvious way than in the first face of power. The third face of power, instead, focuses on the power of ideas, or what has been called ‘ideational power’ (Carstensen & Schmidt, 2016), which refers to the capacity to ‘have an effect’ on actors through ideas. The power of ideas was already present in two of the best-known literary works in the post-war period, most notably through the writings of George Orwell (1949) and Aldous Huxley (1958). Murray Edelman (1985, p. 10) argued that the ‘critical element in political manoeuvre for advantage is the creation of meaning: the construction of beliefs about the significance of events, of problems, of crises, of policy changes, and of leaders. The strategic need is to immobilise opposition and mobilise support’. Ideas are essential to policy-making and politics in general, and have political consequences, even though ideas do not always matter in the same way. The book aims to understand and explain ‘not only that ideas matter, but precisely when, why, and under what conditions they matter’ (Blyth, 2002, p. 18). The central ideational mechanism in politics is the construction (or displacement) of political conflicts. Conflicts over public policies (political

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

33

conflicts) coexist in society. Even though there are many potential opportunities for conflict in society, only a select few of them boil over into public controversy. Out of those conflicts that become visible, they are not all equally visible or important in the public sphere. Therefore, a certain hierarchy of conflicts emerges, in which some conflicts are perceived as more important than others: ‘The outcome of the game of politics depends on which of a multitude of possible conflicts gains the dominant position (…) Every shift of the line of cleavage affects the nature of the conflict, produces a new set of winners and losers and a new kind of result’ (Schattschneider, 1980 [1960], pp. 60−61). Political conflict’s role is to divide people along certain cleavages or axes. Conflicts structure society’s political divisions and therefore define the arena and identities on which political battles are played. The dominant conflict in society will determine to a great extent who wins and who loses political battles. A French nationalist such as Marine Le Pen is likely to encourage the cleavage by which ‘Brussels’ is opposed to ‘France’. On the contrary, a French trade unionist is more likely to encourage the conflict between European workers and employers, regardless of their nationality. These two conflicts (and potentially others) can compete to prevail as the dominant cleavage in French society. The dominating conflict will set the dividing lines along which political actors confront each other. A member of the French working-class could position himself or herself as a nationalist against ‘European technocracy’ or as a European worker against European employers. There is a constant battle for the definition of conflict, which subsequently sets up the dividing lines in society. Actors fight to define which conflict becomes dominant in a public sphere, because the hierarchy of conflicts determines how people are divided and how they can be united. The displacement of conflicts has an important impact for political actors, given its implications for alliances and potential coalitions. The dividing lines determine the arena for political battles, and influences to a great extent the winners and losers. Competition between different conflicts should be understood as a central element in politics, where there is a competition to establish a certain hierarchy of conflicts, which will prioritise certain conflicts and subordinates others. The type of conflict that dominates the public sphere and the actors’ ideas can encourage or discourage a wider involvement (politicisation) of actors or not (depoliticisation), and define whether conflict takes place in an agonistic or antagonistic way.

34

A. OLEART

2.2

Agonistic vs Antagonistic Politicisation of the EU: Policy Contestation as Politics in the Union, and EU Polity Contestation as Politics of the Union

European integration is a complex conflictual process (Hooghe and Marks 2009; Marks & Steenbergen, 2004). While national-level politics are often politicised in a left-right cleavage, politicisation often takes different forms when connected to the EU (Hooghe et al., 2002), and there are different models of political conflict at the EU level (Hix & Lord, 1997; Hutter et al., 2016; Marks & Steenbergen 2004). Arguably, there is no single ideational cleavage that dominates the EU as a political space ‘structuring’ the dividing line between political actors (Bartolini, 2005; Hooghe & Marks, 2018; Maag & Kriesi, 2016). Political conflict’s structuring through an ideational cleavage is a process ‘whereby political conflicts become institutionalised in the sense that actors form stable, routinised patterns of oppositions and coalitions around a limited set of basic conflicts’ (Maag & Kriesi, 2016, p. 207). The lack of a dominant cleavage structuring political conflict is reflected in the mixed results of a wide range of studies on a number of EU arenas, such as party competition in the European Parliament (Hix et al., 2003; Gabel & Hix, 2002). Kriesi et al. (2006, 2008) and Hooghe and Marks (2009) have consistently argued that EU-level politics is increasingly structured around a cultural cleavage that goes beyond the traditional left-right. Such a cleavage places European integration in opposition to the nationstate, in a type of political conflict that has been conceptualised as the ‘transnational cleavage’ (Hooghe & Marks, 2018), characterised by the tension between integration and demarcation (Kriesi et al., 2012), or GAL-TAN (Green-Alternative-Libertarian vs. Traditional-AuthoritarianNationalist). This is explained as an evolution by which ‘the distinction between the realm of economic and cultural politics becomes blurred’ (Häusermann & Kriesi, 2015, p. 206). This predominantly cultural cleavage is often connected to defending national sovereignty and opposing immigration, and often places national identity in opposition to other national or supranational identities. In consequence, this cleavage tends to oppose supporters and opponents of European integration. This integration-demarcation cleavage places globalisation’s ‘winners and losers’ in opposition, situating in opposed poles the highly-skilled

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

35

cosmopolitan workers and the less-skilled workers that face more difficulty competing in a globalising world. From this perspective, Hooghe and Marks (2009) situated radical left—and radical right-wing parties in opposition to global or European integration, constituting an inverted U-curve. Following this view, the radical left blames increasing inequality and the eroding (national) welfare state on European integration, while the radical right focuses on rising immigration to oppose further integration (Van Elsas et al., 2016). Hix and Lord (1997) put forward a different model of political conflict over EU issues in the European Parliament, arguing that conflicts over the EU are two-dimensional, including on the one hand a left-right dimension, and a more-less European integration dimension, and an orthogonal relationship between the two dimensions. The literature on EU politicisation has also attempted to measure politicisation. Grande and Hutter (2016, p. 10) recently suggested a politicisation index, summarised in the following formula: salience x (expansion of actors + polarisation). While this formula is relevant, the book will simply distinguish between agonistic and antagonistic politicisation, inspired by Mouffe’s work. The book’s empirical part will not measure politicisation, and neither suggest an alternative cleavage model of European politics. Instead of attempting to solve the European cleavage theory puzzle, the book attempts to conceptually distinguish between different types of politicisation that can take place over EU issues: agonism and antagonism. This is a distinction of type, and not one of degree. Since the distinction agonistic/antagonistic conflict is operationalised, it is important to underline that these categories have not been applied to an empirical analysis before (to my knowledge). In order to make the distinction between agonistic and antagonistic politicisation in regards to EU affairs, both actors and ideas are considered to be important. As discussed earlier, politicisation does not appear in a vacuum, but rather as the consequence of strategic action triggered by political actors. However, the EU as a polity and its dossiers can be politicised in different ways with different ideas, different types of contestation that can ‘bring politics back in’ (Risse, 2014) on EU issues. The two different types of politicisation are distinguished on the basis of the framing in the media. EU politicisation can take different forms, depending on the way conflict is framed in the public sphere. When conceptualising the different types of EU politicisation, it is important to disentangle the EU as a polity from EU policies. The former refers to the European project as a whole, while the latter refers to public policies

36

A. OLEART

processed at the EU level. Politicisation can be framed as a challenge to the EU as a polity (De Wilde & Trenz, 2012) or to the appropriateness of EU policies. Politicisation challenging the EU as a polity is considered antagonistic, since the EU is not accepted as a legitimate playing field. Instead, EU policy contestation is considered agonistic politicisation. The distinction between agonistic and antagonistic conflict in the EU is made on the basis of what is being challenged, what is at stake. If the EU as a polity is questioned altogether, this is considered an antagonistic challenge because the EU is not accepted as legitimate. If instead the EU’s policies are contested, this is considered agonistic conflict. The agonistic politicisation does not challenge the EU as a polity, but rather legitimises such authority by challenging its policies. The connection between the two dimensions (polity and policy) is important, because the polity is legitimated on the grounds of having a democratic policy-making process. The more democratic the policy-making process, the more legitimacy the polity gains when exercising its authority in policy competences. For instance, the nation-state became democratically legitimate to exercise its authority because it managed to ‘institutionalise social conflict, offer a forum for contestation and communication that is inclusive and sensitive to the aspirations of its subjects, and makes those subjects mutually interdependent in their pursuit of “the good”’ (Dawson & de Witte, 2013, p. 819). In other words, the EU requires agonistic politicisation, in addition to Europeanised public spheres, in order to further legitimate the EU as a polity and ‘empower’ European integration. Then, broadly, the agonistic/antagonistic distinction responds to the following question: Is the conflict constructed and framed on the basis of an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ that are part of the same political community? Agonistic politicisation takes place if conflict is constructed on the basis of an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ that are recognised as part of the same political community, but with fundamentally different political projects. Instead, antagonistic politicisation takes place when conflict is framed in such a way that the ‘us’ and ‘them’ are not legitimate actors in the same political community. Applied to European politics, antagonistic politicisation takes place when the EU as a polity is contested in the public sphere. Instead, agonistic conflict emerges out of a politicisation that is framed as challenging EU policies and therefore does not question the EU as a polity. The type of conflict is greatly influenced by whether the values that drive an EU affair’s politicisation are inclusive and build an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ that is agonistic rather than antagonistic. For instance, if conflict

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

37

is publicly framed as a matter of ‘national sovereignty’, it tends to build an ‘us’ based on national territory that delegitimises non-national actors in the conflict. Not necessarily all conflicts dealing with ‘sovereignty’ are antagonistic, but the mobilisation of ‘national sovereignty’ as a value tends to construct a discursive struggle between the ‘nation’ and the EU. Instead, agonistic conflict constructs an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ that are both part of the same political community. Antagonistic conflict can be illustrated by the 2016 British referendum on EU membership, where the ‘Leave’ campaign’s central slogan was ‘take back control’. A second example is the slogan of the French Front National in the 2014 EU elections: ‘Non à Bruxelles. Oui à la France’. In both examples, EU institutions are not considered legitimate, and the EU as a polity is altogether questioned.6 This antagonistic conflict marks a clear distinction between national in-groups and illegitimate out-groups, such as EU institutions or other foreign national actors. In this type of conflict, ‘national sovereignty’ is generally seen as inherently valuable. Conflicts in which political entrepreneurs use the value of ‘sovereignty’ tend to politicise the EU in antagonistic debate, since this discourse considers EU institutions illegitimate by portraying ‘sovereignty’ as national and not European nor global. Antagonistic politicisation can come along with conflict between executive actors, which remains relatively rare in the EU, given that most conflicts between national governments are channelled behind closed doors in the European Council and the Council of the EU. Antagonistic conflict connects with the existing literature on Euroscepticism (Taggart, 1998), in which some authors distinguish between ‘soft’ Euroscepticism and ‘hard’ Euroscepticism. ‘Hard’ Euroscepticism refers to rejecting the very idea of a united Europe, whereas ‘soft’ Euroscepticism refers to rejecting certain elements of the European project, but not necessarily rejecting its very idea. The problem with Euroscepticism as a concept is that it portrays all ‘resistances’ to European integration (Crespy & Verschueren, 2009) as a form of ‘scepticism’ about the European project, which is why the notion of

6 While such discourse can come from both the right and the left, a nuance needs

to be distinguished, however, to differentiate those EU opponents on the left and the right. Whereas those on the left see the EU as inherently neoliberal and tend to project themselves as ‘internationalists’, those on the right tend to be fuelled by a greater degree of nationalism. Though they have different reasons for opposing the EU, the anti-EU left—and right-wing share their rejection of the EU as a polity.

38

A. OLEART

‘Euroscepticism’ will not be used in this book.7 In fact, Szczerbiak and Taggart (2017) themselves acknowledged however that the term ‘soft Euroscepticism’ is too broad and can lead to an incorrect typology. Leading actors with antagonistic discourse vis-à-vis the EU are UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party), the France’s National Front in France, the Netherlands’ Party of Freedom or Alternative for Germany (AfD). These parties tend to reject the EU as a polity and tend to frame European issues as a matter of ‘national sovereignty’, particularly focusing on immigration as a threat to national identity. This opposition to the European project does not preclude these actors from being neoliberal, as they can advocate for internal liberalism combined with external protectionism (for instance, it is well-known that UKIP’s leaders have advocated privatising the National Health Service on ‘free-market’ grounds). The parties leading this type of opposition to the EU status quo are considerably diverse. While the UKIP is not exactly the same as France’s Front National (renamed in 2018 as the ‘National Rally’8 ), both parties converge in that their ideas focus on the ‘nation’ and ‘sovereignty’, essentially arguing that only ‘national’ political institutions can be democratically legitimate. They often repeat the idea of the nation-state’s opposition to the EU. Accordingly, the usual argument is that the EU entails a loss of national sovereignty. This antagonistic politicisation will likely lead towards a ‘constraining dissensus’, in terms of increased political costs to advance European integration (Hooghe & Marks, 2009), as the Brexit debate suggests, in which national sovereignty is conceptualised as opposed to European integration. In order to illustrate agonistic conflict in the EU, it is central to take into account neoliberalism’s resilience as an economic paradigm (Blyth, 2013; Schmidt & Thatcher, 2013). The neoliberal Radical Centre (Giddens, 1994) has been challenged by actors and ideas on the left side of the political spectrum from an Alter-Europeanist (Della Porta & Caiani, 2009), alter-globalist (Della Porta, 2007) or ‘critical proEuropean’ (Della Porta et al., 2017) perspective, though also by an anti-globalisation attitude. That is, a position to encourage a European and/or global governance, but with an economic paradigm that 7 Contesting EU policies does not necessarily imply scepticism about the European project or the EU, just as contesting the Spanish government does not mean that someone is ‘Spanish-sceptic’. 8 Rassemblement National in French.

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

39

opposes neoliberalism, which they consider to be led by a global elite to benefit multinational corporations at democracy’s expense. A number of scholars have identified (see Díez Medrano, 2009; Crespy, 2016) this social-liberal cleavage in the EU, between those who defend a ‘social Europe’ as opposed to a ‘Neoliberal Europe’. Left-wing intellectuals have long argued for constructing a progressive transnational movement that opposed the global neoliberal project. For instance, Chantal Mouffe (2000, p. 120) has argued that ‘it is only by opposing the power of transnational capital another globalisation, informed by a different political project, that we could have a chance to resist neo-liberalism successfully and to instate a new hegemony’. This alter-globalist perspective challenges neoliberalism and corporate power in society, and should not be simply equated with Keynesianism. Following this perspective, agonistic conflict over the EU takes place when neoliberal ideas are challenged in the public sphere by framing European issues with alternative values and ideas, while the EU as a polity is not questioned. One example of this type of conflict is the Bolkestein Directive (or Services Directive), heavily debated in several EU member states between 2004 and 2006 (Crespy, 2012). The Directive’s opponents positioned themselves as protecting a ‘Social Europe’ against the ‘Neoliberal Europe’ driving the initiative. Another example is the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM), a pan-European political party that aimed to unite the European left through a common anti-austerity (and also pro-European) programme for the 2019 EU elections. Neither movement questioned the EU as a polity, but rather proposed a pan-European approach to contest neoliberal ideas in the public sphere. The distinction between the two types of conflict in the public sphere (agonistic and antagonistic) allows us to better conceptualise politicisation’s relation to legitimacy. Agonistic politicisation could be understood as a type of politics in the union, where the hegemonic policy paradigm (e.g. neoliberalism) may be challenged in the public sphere when issues are framed in an alternative way. Instead, antagonistic politicisation could be understood as a type of politics of the union, since the confrontation of ideas in the public sphere confronts nation-states with each other or with the EU. The distinction is not only based on whether the EU is accepted as a playing field, since not all debates that accept the EU as the playing field are agonistic. We could imagine an EU-level platform of racists united to defend ‘Europe’ or the EU from the ‘migrants’. This rhetoric could trigger politicisation that accepts the EU as a polity, yet remains

40

A. OLEART

antagonistic vis-à-vis social groups within the EU, which are considered to be illegitimate members of the political community. In consequence, the agonistic/antagonistic distinction is based on how issues are framed in the public sphere, taking into account which ideas and values structure conflict. 2.3

The Agonistic Europeanisation of Public Spheres: Towards an ‘Empowering Dissensus’ for European Integration

The agonistic/antagonistic distinction adds nuance to whether the politicisation of EU affairs is inherently positive or negative for the EU’s democratic legitimacy and the European integration process. Empirical research has shown that, while public spheres have been relatively Europeanised in terms of the framing of issues, they remain dominated by executive actors and have left little room for politicisation. This type of Europeanisation has been conceptualised as depoliticised Europeanisation, in which issues are interpreted with similar frames of reference but generally depoliticised. The depoliticised Europeanisation of the public spheres is coherent with the idea of the ‘permissive consensus’ (Lindberg & Scheingold, 1970) under which European integration has traditionally advanced. This type of Europeanisation has negative consequences for the EU’s democratic legitimacy due to the mismatch between supranational authority and legitimacy (Zürn, 2004, 2014). To legitimately exert its authority, the EU requires politicisation, though not all types of politicisation would benefit the EU’s legitimacy. The crucial question is what type of politicisation can enhance the EU’s democratic legitimacy. Based on a combination of the European public sphere literature with Mouffe’s agonism, it has been argued that agonistic politicisation, as well as the Europeanisation of public spheres, is necessary to legitimise the EU. This section will bring together the Europeanisation of public spheres and politicisation, in order to set up a typology of ‘Europeanisations’ of public spheres depending on the type of conflict that takes place, if any. Additionally, this typology will be further connected to the EU’s legitimacy and the future of European integration (Sternberg, 2013). The EU has grown increasingly politicised since the mid-2000s (Hutter et al., 2016; Statham & Trenz, 2013a, 2013b), particularly since the referendums on the 2005 EU constitutional treaty. The EU’s politicisation is unlikely to be stopped or reversed, which means that the ‘permissive consensus’ is increasingly contested, and is unlikely to come

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

41

back. The literature on the EU politicisation has traditionally viewed politicisation very pessimistically, mainly arguing that it would cause ‘terrible tensions’ (Bartolini, 2006, p. 54) that would constrain integration (Hix & Bartolini, 2006). Most notably, Hooghe and Marks (2009) argued that the politicisation of EU issues has led from a ‘permissive consensus’ to a ‘constraining dissensus’, where citizens at the national level question the European project from a nationalist point of view, increasingly seeing the EU as a threat to national identity (Hooghe & Marks, 2004). From this perspective, politicisation is viewed as a threat to the EU as a polity, in that relevant national political parties oppose the European project. The ‘constraining dissensus’ hypothesis views politicisation as putting in danger the European project, given that Europe’s increasing visibility may potentially lead to a confrontation between the EU and its member states.9 Thus, further European integration may be compromised if European issues become politicised and salient in the public sphere, replacing the passive support integration has so far enjoyed. Hooghe and Marks (2009) pointed towards EU politicisation as a strategic tool employed by radical right-wing (Green-Pedersen, 2012; Mudde, 2016) national political parties to encourage national identity politics, and thereby make Eurosceptic and anti-European narratives more salient. Their empirical focus in studying EU politicisation was the role of political parties and national parliaments in the politicisation process. According to them, “most mainstream parties continued to resist politicising the issue. But a number of populist, non-governing, parties smelt blood. Their instinctive Euro-scepticism was closer to the pulse of public opinion” (Hooghe & Marks, 2009, p. 21). This type of politicisation could potentially travel to other European public spheres in a similar way, discursively structuring a transnational conflict between ‘Brussels’ and the nation-states, Europeanising the public spheres while putting into question discursively the EU as a polity. This type of Europeanisation is defined as antagonistic Europeanisation, because while there is an Europeanisation of public spheres, the politicisation is about whether the EU as a polity is deemed to exist or not, and most likely framed as being in opposition to the ‘nation’.

9 This is perhaps best exemplified by the conflict between the European Commission and the Polish government led by the far-right Law and Justice, as well as the anti-EU rhetoric mobilised by the Hungarian government led by Viktor Orban.

42

A. OLEART

The present book takes a different view from the ‘constraining dissensus’ hypothesis, more in line with Börzel and Risse (2009) and Miklin (2014). Similarly to Mouffe’s account of how conflict lies at democracy’s core (what Mouffe labels as ‘agonism’), the book argues that agonistic politicisation may empower European integration, rather than constrain it. Politicising the EU by framing issues in an agonistic way legitimises the EU as a political arena, making EU issues a matter of controversy in European public spheres. The agonistic politicisation is based on contestation of EU policies, rather than the EU as a polity, therefore legitimising the EU as a polity and political playing field. The type of EU politicisation that leads to both Europeanisation and agonistic conflict is conceptualised as agonistic Europeanisation, which would match ‘policy with politics’ (Schmidt, 2019) (Fig. 1). The literature has not yet clearly defined the relationship between politicisation, Europeanisation and democracy. Figure 1 summarises the

Politicisation

No Antagonistic Agonistic Europeanisation Europeanisation Europeanisation

EU policy contestation: EU accepted as a

Empowering Dissensus: Politics in the Union

Limited or no politicisation

Depoliticised Europeanisation

EU polity contestation: the EU is framed as illegitimate and not accepted as a playing

Constraining dissensus: Politics of the Union

No Europeanisation

Mismatch between

Permissive consensus: Policy without politics

Fig. 1 Connection(s) between Europeanisation and (de)politicisation depending on the type of conflict (agonistic/antagonistic) in the European public spheres

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

43

theoretical argument put forward, which brings together literature on the European public sphere and on EU politicisation. The crucial factor that distinguishes different types of Europeanisation (depoliticised, antagonistic or agonistic) and politicisation (agonistic and antagonistic) is how conflict is framed in the public sphere. The graph connects the literature on the Europeanisation of public spheres with that on politicisation of global governance (Zürn, 2014, 2016). The mismatch between the EU’s ‘policies’ and its ‘politics’ is only sustainable as long as there is a ‘permissive consensus’ where there is no politicisation, though that implies a public sphere deficit. The EU has so far relied on such ‘permissive consensus’ to exert its authority, though politicisation began to arise initially in the early 1990s with Maastricht, and in the mid-2000s with the European Constitutional Treaty. In this context, it is important to distinguish between different types of politicisation depending on whether EU policies or the EU as a polity is at stake. Assuming that the Europeanisation of the public spheres can take place with or without politicisation, and with agonistic or antagonistic conflict,10 it is worth differentiating the consequences each type of Europeanisation has for the European integration project. From an antagonistic point of view, the EU as a polity is questioned altogether, often in a framing that opposes the nation-state with the EU. In consequence, this type of politicisation attempts to question the EU as a polity discursively. Instead, from an agonistic point of view, EU policies and processes are challenged in the public sphere, while accepting the EU as a political playing field. This means that this type of (agonistic) politicisation matches the EU’s ‘policies with politics’, as opposed to the depoliticisation of the EU, where there is ‘policy without politics’ (Schmidt, 2013). From a public sphere point of view, the Europeanisation of public spheres is not necessarily positive for the EU’s democratic legitimacy. The antagonistic Europeanisation of public spheres (or antagonistic politicisation without Europeanisation) can lead to a ‘constraining dissensus’ where the EU as a polity altogether is questioned by opposing it to nation-states, or where countries are discursively pitted against each other. Instead, agonistic Europeanisation of public spheres can lead to an ‘empowering dissensus’ (Bouza & Oleart, 2018), where the EU’s policies are contested 10 The different types of politicisations and Europeanisations are ideal types, and empirically, it is possible that they can coexist. For instance, it is possible that the Europeanisation of public spheres took an agonistic form in some countries and an antagonistic in others.

44

A. OLEART

and where there is a match of ‘policy with politics’, and the EU as a playing field is accepted. In fact, an ‘empowering dissensus’ can even reinforce and legitimise the EU’s authority by normalising political conflict within the polity rather than about the polity. This type of politicisation and Europeanisation is positive for the EU’s democratic legitimacy from both deliberative and agonistic conception of democracy and transfers the struggle to the European level, connecting EU citizens with EU institutions and socialising citizens at the national level with the EU policy-making. In consequence, European integration is empowered in a transnational (and rather federal way), by legitimising the authority of EU institutions. Depending on which ideas and values drive politicisation in the public sphere, we can distinguish between agonistic and antagonistic types of politicisation, which in turn has normative consequences. The Europeanisation of public spheres has so far occurred mostly with little contestation in the public sphere, which has been conceptualised as depoliticised Europeanisation. This particular type of Europeanisation is detrimental to the EU’s legitimacy. Instead, the EU’s legitimacy would be enhanced by integrating and institutionalising (agonistic) conflict in the public sphere into its policy-making. The Europeanisation of public spheres through agonistic debate, conceptualised as agonistic Europeanisation, could be more inclusive and empower the voices of non-executive actors, and therefore make the EU more democratic from a deliberative and agonistic perspective. Instead of avoiding conflict, embracing it in EU policymaking would dramatically increase the democratic legitimacy of the EU (Giugni et al., 1998). As Tilly argued, “democracy emerged through political fights, rather than the product of old principles and constitutional innovations on the short term” (Tilly, 2004, p. 9). From a public sphere and agonistic point of view, the solution to the ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU will emerge out of the agonistic Europeanisation of the public spheres. Expressing conflict in an agonistic way in the EU policy-making combined with the Europeanisation of public spheres can contribute to the EU’s democratic legitimacy. Political conflict expressed agonistically has a democratising potential by fostering deliberation and incorporating actors who were previously situated outside the institutions into the political system. When protest actors make demands to EU institutions in an agonistic way (such as to ‘Stop TTIP’, as we will later see), the integration of those demands and actors into institutional EU policy-making legitimises the process and the polity.

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

45

Bibliography Auel, K., & Raunio, T. (2014). Debating the state of the union? Comparing parliamentary debates on EU issues in Finland, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The Journal of Legislative Studies, 20(1), 13–28. Bachrach, P., & Baratz, M. (1962). The two faces of power. American Political Science Review, 56, 947–952. Baisnée, O. (2007). The European public sphere does not exist (At least it’s worth wondering…). European Journal of Communication, December, 22(4), 493–503. Barth, C., & Bijsmans, P. (2018). The Maastricht Treaty and public debates about European integration: The emergence of a European public sphere? Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 26(2), 215–231. Bartolini, S. (2005). Restructuring Europe: Centre formation, system building, and political structuring between the nation state and the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bartolini, S. (2006). Mass politics in Brussels: how benign could it be? Zeitschrift Für Staats-Und Europawissenschaften, 4(1), 28–56. Baygert, N. (2015). The European Union: Storytelling in the creation of a renewed brand. Communication & Languages, 1, 133–151. Beetz, J. P. (2017). A two-tier conception of European Union peoplehood: A realist study of European citizens’ bonds of collectivity. European Law Journal, 23(6), 467–481. Bennett, W. L., & Entman, R. M. (Eds.) (2000). Mediated politics: Communication in the future of democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Blondiaux, L. (2008). Démocratie délibérative vs. démocratie agonistique? Raisons Politiques, 2, 131–147. Blyth, M. (2002). Great transformations: Economic ideas and institutional change in the twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blyth, M. (2013). Austerity: The history of a dangerous idea. New York: Oxford University Press. Bohman, J. (2010). Democracy across borders: From Dêmos to Dêmoi. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Börzel, T. A. (2002). Member state responses to Europeanization. Journal of Common Market Studies, 40(2), 193–214. Börzel, T., & Risse, T. (2009). Revisiting the nature of the beast–politicization, European identity, and postfunctionalism: A comment on Hooghe and Marks. British Journal of Political Science, 39(01), 217–220. Bouza, L., & Oleart, A. (2018). From the 2005 Constitution’s ‘permissive consensus’ to TTIP’s ‘empowering dissensus’: The EU as a playing field for Spanish civil society. Journal of Contemporary European Research, 14(2), 87–104.

46

A. OLEART

Bouza Garcia, L. (2017). The ‘new narrative project’ and the politicisation of the EU. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 25(3), 340–353. Buller, J., & Flinders, M. (2005). The domestic origins of depoliticisation in the area of British economic policy. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 7 (4), 526–543. Burnham, P. (2001). New labour and the politics of depoliticisation. The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 3(2), 127–149. Caiani, M., & Guerra, S. (Eds.). (2017). Euroscepticism, democracy and the media: Communicating Europe, contesting Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Calhoun, C. (Ed.). (1992). Habermas and the public sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press. Carpentier, N., & Cammaerts, B. (2006). Hegemony, democracy, agonism and journalism: An interview with Chantal Mouffe. Journalism Studies, 7 (6), 964– 975. Carstensen, M. B., & Schmidt, V. A. (2016). Power through, over and in ideas: Conceptualizing ideational power in discursive institutionalism. Journal of European Public Policy, 23(3), 318–337. Chambers, S. (1995). Discourse and democratic practices. In S. K. White (Ed.). The cambridge companion to habermas (pp. 233–259). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, N. (2014). The EU’s information deficit: Comparing political knowledge across levels of governance. Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 15(4), 445–463. Coen, D., & Katsaitis, A. (2013). Chameleon pluralism in the EU: An empirical study of the European Commission interest group density and diversity across policy domains. Journal of European Public Policy, 20(8), 1104–1119. Cohen, J. (1997). Deliberation and democratic legitimacy. In James Bohman & William Rehg (Eds.), Deliberative democracy: Essays on reason and politics (pp. 67–91). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Coman, R., Kostera, T., & Tomini, L. (Eds.). (2014). Europeanization and European integration: From incremental to structural change. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Conrad, M. (2010). The missing link in EU democracy? Why a transnational public sphere matters. Icelandic Review of Politics & Administration, 6(2), 207–228. Conrad, M. (2014). Europeans and the public sphere: Communication without community?. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Crespy, A. (2012). Qui a peur de Bolkestein? conflit, résistances et démocratie dans l’Union européenne. Paris: Economica. Crespy, A. (2016). Welfare markets in Europe: The democratic challenge of European integration. London: Springer.

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

47

Crespy, A., & Verschueren, N. (2009). From Euroscepticism to resistance to European integration: An interdisciplinary perspective. Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 10(3), 377–393. D’Haenens, L., & Joris, W. (2015). Crisis of the news: The framing of the Euro crisis and the ‘Greek problem’. In J. Trappel, J. Steemers & B. Thomass (Eds.), European media in crisis (pp. 136–150). New York: Routledge. Dahl, R. A. (1957). The concept of power. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 2(3), 201–215. Dawson, M., & de Witte, F. (2013). Constitutional balance in the EU after the Euro-crisis. The Modern Law Review, 76(5), 817–844. De Vreese, C., Boomgaarden, H., Banducci, S., Semetko, H., & Thomassen, J. (2009). Light at the end of the tunnel: Towards a European public sphere? In J. Thomassen (Ed.), The legitimacy of the European Union after enlargement (pp. 44–64). Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Vries, C. E. (2007). Sleeping giant: Fact or fairytale? How European Integration Affects National Elections, European Union Politics, 8(3), 363–385. De Vries, C. E. (2018). Euroscepticism and the future of European integration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Wilde, P. (2011). No polity for old politics? A framework for analyzing the politicization of European integration, Journal of European Integration, 33(5), 559–75. De Wilde, P., & Trenz, H. J. (2012). Denouncing European integration: Euroscepticism as polity contestation. European Journal of Social Theory, 15(4), 537–554. De Wilde, P., & Zürn, M. (2012). Can the politicization of European integration be reversed? Journal of Common Market Studies, 50(s1), 137–153. Della Porta, D. (Ed.). (2007). The global justice movement: Cross-national and transnational perspectives. New York: Taylor & Francis. Della Porta, D., & Caiani, M. (2009). Social movements and Europeanization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Della Porta, D., Kouki, H., & Fernández, J. (2017). Left’s love and hate for Europe: Syriza, Podemos and critical visions of Europe during the crisis. In M. Caiani & S. Guerra (Eds.), Euroscepticism, democracy and the media: Communicating Europe, contesting Europe (pp. 219–240). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Díez Medrano, J. (2003). Framing Europe: Attitudes to European integration in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Díez Medrano, J. (2009). The public sphere and the European Union’s political identity: European identity. In J. T. Checkel & P. J. Ketzenstein (Eds.), European identity (pp. 81–107). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

48

A. OLEART

Díez Medrano, J., & E. Gray. (2010). Framing the European Union in national public spheres. In R. Koopmans & P. Statham (Eds.), The making of a European public sphere: Media discourse and political contention (pp. 195–220). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dryzek, J. S., & Niemeyer, S. (2008). Discursive representation. American Political Science Review, 481–493. Duchesne, S., & Haegel, F. (2004). La politisation des discussions, au croisement des logiques de spécialisation et de conflictualisation. Revue Française de Science Politique, 54(6), 877–909. Edelman, M. (1985). Political language and political reality. American Political Science Association (APSA), 18(1) (Winter), 10–19. Eising, R. (2009). The political economy of state-business relations in Europe: Interest mediation, capitalism and EU policy making. London: Routledge. Eriksen, E. O. (2005). An emerging european public sphere. European Journal of Social Theory, 8(3), 341–363. Eriksen, E. O. (2007). Conceptualising European public spheres: General, segmented and strong publics. In F. John Erik & P. Schlesinger (Eds.), The European Union and the public sphere: A communicative space in the making? (pp. 23–41). London: Routledge. Eriksen, E. O., & Fossum, J. E. (Eds.). (2002). Democracy in the European Union: integration through deliberation?. London: Routledge. Etzioni, A. (2007). The community deficit. Journal of Common Market Studies, 45(1), 23–42. European Commission. (2006). White paper on a European communication policy. COM(2006) 35 final version, Brussels. Fligstein, N. (2008). Euroclash: The EU, European identity, and the future of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fossum, J. E., & Schlesinger, P. (2007). The European Union and the public sphere: A communicative space in the making? In J. E. Fossum & P. Schlesinger (Eds.), The European Union and the public sphere (pp. 15–34). London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power: Critical inquiry, 8(4), 777–795. Fraser, N. (1992). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere (pp. 109–142). Cambridge: MIT Press. Fraser, N. (2007). Special section: Transnational public sphere: Transnationalizing the public sphere: On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world. Theory, Culture & Society, 24(4), 7–30. Gabel, M., & Hix, S. (2002). Defining the EU political space: An empirical study of the European elections manifestos, 1979−1999. Comparative Political Studies, 35(8), 934–964.

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

49

Gattermann, K. (2013). News about the European Parliament: Patterns and external drivers of broadsheet coverage. European Union Politics, 14(3), 436–457. Gerhards, Jürgen. (2000). Europäisierung von Ökonomie und Politik und die Trägheit der Entstehung einer europäischen Öffentlichkeit. In M. Bach (Ed.), Die Europäisierung nationaler Gesellschaften (Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 40/2000) (pp. 277–305). Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Giddens, A. (1994). Beyond left and right: The future of radical politics. Cambridge: Polity. Giugni, M. G., McAdam, D., & Tilly, C. (Eds.). (1998). From contention to democracy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Grande, E., & Hutter, S. (2016). Introduction: European integration and the challenge of politicisation. In S. Hutter, E. Grande, & H. Kriesi (Eds.), Politicising Europe (pp. 3–31). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Green-Pedersen, C. (2012). A giant fast asleep? Party incentives and the politicisation of European integration. Political Studies, 60(1), 115–130. Greenwood, J. (2011). Interest representation in the European Union. London: Macmillan International Higher Education. Haas, E. (1968). Technocracy, pluralism and the New Europe. In J. Nye (Ed.), International regionalism. Boston: Little Brown. Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1996). Between facts and norms: Contributions to a discourse theory of law and ethics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, J. (2001). Why Europe needs a constitution. New Left Review, 11(September-October), 5–26. Habermas, J. (2006). Political communication in media society: Does democracy still enjoy an epistemic dimension? The impact of normative theory on empirical research. Communication Theory, 16(4), 411–426. Habermas, J. (2009). Europe: The faltering project. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, J., & Derrida, J. (2003). February 15, or what binds Europeans together: A plea for a common foreign policy, beginning in the core of Europe. Constellations, 10(3), 291–297. Hammond, M. (2018). Deliberative democracy as a critical theory. Critical review of international social and political philosophy, 1–22. Häusermann, S., & Kriesi, H. (2015). What do voters want? Dimensions and configurations in individual-level preferences and party choice. In P. Beramendi, S. Häusermann, H. Kitschelt, & H. Kriesi (Eds.), The politics of advanced capitalism (pp. 202–230). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hay, C. (2002). Political analysis: A critical introduction. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

50

A. OLEART

Hay, C., & Rosamond, B. (2002). Globalization, European integration and the discursive construction of external economic constraints. Journal of European Public Policy, 9(2), 147–167. Heft, A., & Pfetsch, B. (2012). Conditions of the emergence of a European public sphere: Political actors and mass media under scrutiny. In L. Morganti & L. Bekemans (Eds.), The European public sphere—From critical thinking to responsible action (pp. 147–164). Brussels: P.I.E. Lang. Hix, S., & Bartolini, S. (2006). Politics: The right or the wrong sort of medicine for the EU?. Paris: Notre Europe. Hix, S., Kreppel, A., & Noury, A. (2003). The party system in the European Parliament: Collusive or competitive? Journal of Common Market Studies, 41(2), 309–331. Hix, S., & Lord, C. (1997). Political parties in the European Union. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Hoeglinger, D. (2016). Politicizing European integration: Struggling with the awakening giant. London: Springer. Hooghe, L., & Marks, G. (2004). Does identity or economic rationality drive public opinion on European integration? Political Science and Politics, 37 (3), 415–420. Hooghe, L., & Marks, G. (2009). A postfunctionalist theory of European integration: From permissive consensus to constraining dissensus. British Journal of Political Science, 39(1), 1–23. Hooghe, L., & Marks, G. (2018). Cleavage theory meets Europe’s crises: Lipset, Rokkan, and the transnational cleavage. Journal of European Public Policy, 25(1), 109–135. Hooghe, L., Marks, G., & Wilson, C. J. (2002). Does left/right structure party positions on European integration? Comparative Political Studies, 35(8), 965– 989. Hutter, S., & Grande, E. (2014). Politicizing Europe in the national electoral arena: A comparative analysis of five West European countries, 1970–2010. Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(5), 1002–1018. Hutter, S., Grande, E., & Kriesi, H. (2016). Politicising Europe: Integration and mass politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huxley, A. (1958). Brave new world. New York: Harper Colophon Books. Imig, D., & Tarrow, S. (Eds.). (2001). Contentious Europeans: Protest and politics in an emerging polity. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Kantner, C. (2014). The European public sphere and the debate about humanitarian military interventions. European Security, 23(4), 409–429. Karppinen, K., Moe, H., & Svensson, J. (2008). Habermas, Mouffe and political communication: A case for theoretical eclecticism. Javnost-the Public, 15(3), 5–21.

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

51

Kauppi, N. (2018). Toward a reflexive political sociology of the European Union: Fields, intellectuals and politicians. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Keck, M., & Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in International politics. New York: Cornell University Press. Kettell, S. (2008). Does depoliticisation work? Evidence from Britain’s membership of the exchange rate mechanism, 1990–1992. The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 10(4), 630–648. Kinski, L., & Crum, B. (2019). Transnational representation in EU national parliaments: Concept, case Study, research agenda. Political Studies. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0032321719848565. Kluge, A., & Negt, O. (2016). Public sphere and experience: Analysis of the bourgeois and proletarian public sphere. London: Verso Books. Klüver, H., Mahoney, C., & Opper, M. (2015). Framing in context: How interest groups employ framing to lobby the European commission. Journal of European Public Policy, 22(4), 481–498. Kohler-Koch, B. (2010). Civil society and EU democracy: ‘Astroturf’ representation? Journal of European Public Policy, 17 (1), 100–116. Kohler-Koch, B., & Eising, R. (Eds.). (1999). The transformation of governance in the European Union. London: Routledge. Kollman, K. (1998). Outside lobbying: Public opinion and interest group strategies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Koopmans, R. (2007). Who inhabits the European public sphere? Winners and losers, supporters and opponents in Europeanised political debates. European Journal of Political Research, 46(2), 183–210. Koopmans, R., & Erbe, J. (2004). Towards a European public sphere? Innovation, 17 (2), 97–118. Koopmans, R., & Statham, P. (1999). Political claims analysis: Integrating protest event and political discourse approaches’. Mobilization, 4(2), 203–221. Koopmans, R., & Statham, P. (2002). The transformation of political mobilisation and communication in European public spheres: A research outline. Online: http://europub.wz-berlin.de. Accessed 17 July 2018. Koopmans, R., & Statham, P. (Eds.). (2010). The making of a European public sphere: The Europeanization of media discourse and political contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriesi, H. (2016). The politicization of European integration. Journal of Common Market Studies, 54, 32–47. Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Dolezal, M., Helbling, M., Höglinger, D., Hutter, S., & Wüest, B. (2012). Political conflict in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Lachat, R., Dolezal, M., Bornschier, S., & Frey, T. (2006). Globalization and the transformation of the national political space:

52

A. OLEART

Six European countries compared. European Journal of Political Research, 45(6), 921–956. Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Lachat, R., Dolezal, M., Bornschier, S., & Frey, T. (2008). West European politics in the age of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriesi, H., Tresch, A., & Jochum, M. (2007). Going public in the European Union: Action repertoires of Western European collective political actors. Comparative Political Studies, 40(1), 48–73. Kutay, A. (2012). Europeanisation of Civil Society through the sponsored European publics. Javnost-the Public, 19(1), 19–34. Liebert, U., & Trenz, H. J. (2009). Civil society and the reconstitution of democracy in Europe: Introducing a new research field. Policy and Society, 28(1), 1–9. Lindberg, L. N., & Scheingold, S. A. (1970). Europe’s would-be polity: Patterns of change in the European community. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Lukes, S. (1974). Power: A radical view. London: Macmillan. Maag, S., & Kriesi, H. (2016). Politicisation, conflicts and the structuring of the EU political space. In S. Hutter, E. Grande, & H. Kriesi (Eds.), Politicising Europe: Integration and mass politics (pp. 207–239). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Machill, M., Beiler, M., & Fischer, C. (2006). Europe-topics in Europe’s media: The debate about the European public sphere: A meta-analysis of media content analyses. European Journal of Communication, 21(1), 57–88. Magnette, P. (2003). European governance and civic participation: Beyond elitist citizenship? Political Studies, 51(1), 144–160. Manin, B. (1997). The principles of representative government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marks, G., & McAdam, D. (1996). Social movements and the changing structure of opportunity in the European Union. West European Politics, 19(2), 164– 192. Marks, G., & McAdam, D. (1999). On the relationship of political opportunities to the form of collective action: The case of the European Union. In D. della Porta, H. Kriesi & D. Rucht (Eds.), Social movements in a globalizing world (pp. 97–111). New York: Macmillan. Marks, G., & Steenbergen, M. R. (Eds.). (2004). European integration and political conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Michailidou, A., De Wilde, P., & Trenz, H. J. (2014). The internet and European integration: Pro-and anti-EU debates in online news media. Berlin: Barbara Budrich. Michailidou, A., & Trenz, H. J. (2013). Mediatized representative politics in the European Union: Towards audience democracy? Journal of European Public Policy, 20(2), 260–277.

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

53

Michailidou, A., & Trenz, H. J. (2015). The European crisis and the media: Media autonomy, public perceptions and new forms of political engagement. In H. J. Trenz, C. Ruzza, & V. Guiraudon (Eds.), Europe’s prolonged crisis: The making or the unmaking of a political union (pp. 232–250). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Miklin, E. (2014). From ‘sleeping giant’ to left–right politicization? national party competition on the EU and the Euro crisis. Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(6), 1199–1206. Moravscik, A. (2003). Le mythe du déficit démocratique européen. Raisons Politiques, 10, 87–105. Morganti, L., & Bekemans, L. (2012). The European public sphere—From critical thinking to responsible action. Brussels: P.I.E. Lang. Morganti, L., & Van Audenhove, L. (2012). Communication and information strategies and policies for the European public sphere: Between rhetoric and facts. In L. Morganti & L. Bekemans (Eds.), The European public sphere— From critical thinking to responsible action (pp. 121–128). Brussels: P.I.E. Lang. Mouffe, C. (2000). The democratic paradox. London: Verso. Mouffe, C. (2005). On the political. London and New York: Routledge. Mouffe, C. (2013). Agonistics: Thinking the world politically. London: Verso. Mudde, C. (Ed.). (2016). The populist radical right: A reader. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. Mylonas, Y. (2014). Crisis, austerity and opposition in mainstream media discourses of Greece. Critical Discourse Studies, 11(3), 305–321. Nicolaïdis, K. (2013). European demoicracy and its crisis. Journal of Common Market Studies, 51(2), 351–369. Oleart, A., & Bouza, L. (2018a). Democracy at stake: Multipositional actors and politicization in the EU civil society field. Journal of Common Market Studies, 56(4), 870–887. Oleart, A., & Bouza, L. (2018b). Overcoming the taboo: Disputes over European values via the European citizens’ initiative. In F. Foret & O. Calligaro (Eds.), European values: Challenges and opportunities for EU governance (pp. 157–173). New York: Routledge. Olsen, E. D., & Trenz, H. J. (2014). From citizens’ deliberation to popular will formation? Generating democratic legitimacy in transnational deliberative polling. Political Studies, 62, 117–133. Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. London: Secker and Warburg. Rauh, C., & De Wilde, P. (2018). The opposition deficit in EU accountability: Evidence from over 20 years of plenary debate in four member states. European Journal of Political Research, 57 (1), 194–216.

54

A. OLEART

Risse, T. (2003). An emerging European public sphere? Theoretical clarifications and empirical indicators. Available online: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/ ~atasp/texte/030322_europe_public.pdf. Accessed 15 September 2016. Risse, T. (2010). A community of Europeans? Transnational identities and public spheres. New York: Cornell University Press. Risse, T. (2014). European public spheres: Politics is back. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sánchez Salgado, R. (2014). Rebalancing EU interest representation? Associative Democracy and EU funding of civil society organizations. Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(2), 337–353. Sanders, L. (1997). Against deliberation. Political Theory, 25(3), 347–376. Saurugger, S. (2010). The social construction of the participatory turn: The emergence of a norm in the European Union. European Journal of Political Research, 49(4), 471–495. Schattschneider, E. E. (1980 [1960]). The semisovereign people. Boston: Wandsworth. Schmidt, V. A. (2006). Democracy in Europe: The EU and national polities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schmidt, V. A. (2013). Democracy and legitimacy in the European Union revisited: Input, output and “throughput”. Political Studies, 61(1), 2–22. Schmidt, V. A. (2019). Politicization in the EU: between national politics and EU political dynamics. Journal of European Public Policy, 26(7), 1018–1036. Schmidt, V. A., & Thatcher, M. (Eds.). (2013). Resilient liberalism in Europe’s political economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schrag Sternberg, C. (2013) A struggle for EU legitimacy: Public contestation, 1950–2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, M. J. (1991). From policy community to issue network: Salmonella in eggs and the new politics of food. Public Administration, 69(2), 235–255. Sousa, H., & Santos, L. A. (2014). Portugal at the eye of the storm: Crisis austerity and the media. Javnost-the Public, 21(4), 47–61. Statham, P. (2010). What kind of Europeanized public politics?. The making of a European public sphere: Media discourse and political contention. In R. Koopmans & P. Statham (Eds.), The making of a European public sphere: Media discourse and political contention (pp. 277–306). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Statham, P., & Trenz, H. J. (2013a). How European Union politicization can emerge through contestation: The constitution case. Journal of Common Market Studies, 51(5), 965−980. Statham, P., & Trenz, H. J. (2013b). The politicization of Europe: Contesting the constitution. London: Routledge. Steffek, J. (2010). Public accountability and the public sphere of international governance. Ethics & International Affairs, 24(1), 45–68.

2

AN AGONISTIC APPROACH TO THE EUROPEANISATION …

55

Sternberg, C. (2013). The struggle for EU legitimacy: Public contestation, 1950– 2005. New York: Springer. Stroby Jensen, C. (2003). Neo-functionalism. In M. Cini (Ed.), European Union politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Szczerbiak, A., & Taggart, P. (2017). Contemporary research on Euroscepticism: The state of the art. In B. Leruth, N. Startin, & S. Usherwood (Eds.), The routledge handbook of Euroscepticism (pp. 11–21). Abingdon: Routledge. Taggart, P. (1998). A touchstone of dissent: Euroscepticism in contemporary Western European party systems. European Journal of Political Research, 33(3), 363–388. Tilly, C. (2004). Contention and democracy in Europe, 1650–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tobler, Stefan. (2002). Transnationale Kommunikationsverdichtungen im Streit um die internationale Steuerpolitik. Berliner Debatte Initial, 13(5/6), 57–66. Trenz, H. J. (2004). Media coverage on European governance: Exploring the European public sphere in national quality newspapers. European Journal of Communication, 19(3), 291–319. Trenz, H.-J. (2008a). Measuring Europeanisation of public communication: The question of standards. European Political Science (Working Paper, 1/2008). Trenz, H.-J. (2008b). Understanding media impact on European integration: Enhancing or restricting the scope of legitimacy of the EU? Journal of European Integration, 30(2), 291–309. Trenz, H.-J. (2009). In search of a European public sphere: Between normative overstretch and empirical dis-enchantment. In I. S. Moring (Ed.), Manufacturing Europe: Spaces of Democracy, diversity and Communication (pp. 35–52). Nordicom: Göteborg. Trenz, H.-J., Conrad, M., & Rosén, G. (2007). The interpretative moment of European journalism: The impact of media voice in the ratification process. RECON Report Series 02/2007. ARENA: University of Oslo. Trenz, H.-J. and Eder, K. (2004). The democratising role of a European public sphere: Towards a model of democratic functionalism. Journal of European Social Theory, 7 (1), 5–25. Valentini, C., & Laursen, B. (2012). A privileged channel for the EU’s political communication. In L. Morganti & L. Bekemans (Eds.), The European public sphere—From critical thinking to responsible action (pp. 129–146). Brussels: P.I.E. Lang. Van de Steeg, M. (2002). Rethinking the conditions for a public sphere in the European Union. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(4), 499–519. Van de Steeg, M. (2006). Does a public sphere exist in the European Union? An analysis of the content of the debate on the Haider case. European Journal of Political Research, 45(4), 609–634.

56

A. OLEART

Van der Eijk, C., & Franklin, M. N. (2007). The sleeping giant: Potential for political mobilization of disaffection with European integration. In W. van der Brug & C. van der Eijk (Eds.), European elections and domestic politics: Lessons from the past and scenarios for the future (pp. 189–208). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Van Elsas, E. J., Hakhverdian, A., & Van der Brug, W. (2016). United against a common foe? The nature and origins of Euroscepticism among left-wing and right-wing citizens. West European Politics, 39(6), 1181–1204. Wessler, H., Peters, B., Brüggemann, M., Kleinen, K., & Sifft, Stefanie. (2008). Transnationalization of public spheres. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Zürn, M. (2004). Global governance and legitimacy problems. Government and Opposition, 39(2), 260–287. Zürn, M. (2014). The politicization of world politics and its effects: Eight propositions. European Political Science Review, 6(1), 47–71. Zürn, M. (2016). Opening up Europe: Next steps in politicisation research. West European Politics, 39(1), 164–182. Zürn, M., Binder, M., & Ecker-Ehrhardt, M. (2012). International authority and its politicization. International Theory, 4(1), 69–106.

CHAPTER 3

A Media-Centred Approach to Analyse the Politicisation and Europeanisation of TTIP

The second chapter has reviewed the literature on the European public sphere and Europeanisation and has argued that the normative perspective has so far not paid enough attention to the importance of (agonistic) conflict for the EU’s democratic legitimacy. While emphasising the Europeanisation of the public spheres has been a traditional approach in the literature, the chapter has argued that an additional element needs to be considered: conflict. In this way, politicisation is a necessary ingredient for the EU’s democratic legitimacy, in addition to the Europeanisation of public spheres. As long as it takes place without conflict in the public sphere (depoliticised Europeanisation), it will not have positive implications for the EU’s democratic legitimacy. Bridging the deliberative and agonistic conception of democracy, conflict is not inherently positive for democracy, but only if it takes place in a certain way (agonistic rather than antagonistic). This chapter moves on to situate TTIP in context, along with its (neoliberal) ideological foundations and the historical contestation over trade policy. It is important to identify the ideational paradigm on which TTIP is based, since this will facilitate to later identify when a frame reproduced in the media is depoliticised, agonistic or antagonistic. The chapter also describes the methodology and data sets used for the empirical chapters.

© The Author(s) 2021 A. Oleart, Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53637-4_3

57

58

A. OLEART

1 The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in Context 1.1

The Neoliberal Paradigm’s Hegemony in Europe: The Economic Autonomy Vis-à-Vis the Political Sphere

Ideas can be structured in such a way that they conform to a ‘policy paradigm’ (Berman, 2013; Blyth, 2013; Carstensen & Matthijs, 2017; Hall, 1993; Kuhn, 1970). A policy paradigm is the framework within which policy-makers operate, and defines the problems to solve, and the goals to pursue (Hall, 1993, p. 279). Keynesianism and neoliberalism (also called monetarism) could be considered such paradigms. Policy paradigms are political not only in partisan terms (currently, Keynesians tend to stand on the left, and neoliberals on the right), but also in how they shape both the general public and elite understanding of the mainstream political spectrum at a given time. Essentially, paradigms shape political conflict’s ‘acceptable’ structure within a historical period. Our understanding of what the ‘centre-right’ and ‘centre-left’ stand for is shaped by the hegemonic policy paradigm. Policy paradigms can encompass both the mainstream ‘right’ and ‘left’. This means that what was understood as ‘left’ and ‘right’ in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s is not necessarily the same as it was during the 1990s, 2000s and early 2010s. The dominance of a ‘policy paradigm’ constitutes what will be called ‘hegemony’, understood as the ‘ruling ideas’ (Ban, 2016) of a political community. Hegemony is equated to ‘common sense’, understood as a ‘conception of the world which is uncritically absorbed by the various social and cultural environments in which the moral individuality of the average man is developed’ (Gramsci, 1978, p. 419). Hegemony is the ideological cement that universalises a particular worldview, although always remaining dynamic and open to change through contestation. Following Gramsci, Foucault described the meaning of governing as ‘to structure the possible field of actions of others’ (Foucault, 1982, p. 221). Paradigms are temporarily hegemonic, in that a particular paradigm will occupy the mainstream political space for a certain period. Paradigm changes do not take place as the result of a concrete event, but rather through a ‘gradual change with transformative results’ (Streeck & Thelen, 2005, p. 9) or through a ‘punctuated evolution’ (Hay, 2002, p. 163). For instance, Keynesianism can be considered as the dominant policy paradigm in the post-World War II decades in Europe and the UK, and it

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

59

‘specified what the economic world was like, how it was to be observed, which goals were attainable through policy, and what instruments should be used to attain them’ (Hall, 1993, p. 279). A paradigm’s hegemony, or its loss of hegemony, is not a ‘natural’ process, but rather requires the initiative and action of skilled political actors. Until the 1970s, Keynesianism’s hegemony in Europe and the US encompassed both the right and the left, as is well exemplified by the 1971 quotation attributed to Richard Nixon, the US Republican (rightwing on the political spectrum) president, that ‘we are all Keynesians now’ (Weisbrot, 2008). Similarly, but on the opposite side of the spectrum, Peter Mandelson, British EU Commissioner for Trade between 2004 and 2008, and one of the most important members of Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ (the British ‘left’), said in 2002 that ‘we are all Thatcherites now’ (Tempest, 2002), referring to the economic paradigm (neoliberalism) pushed by the ‘Iron Lady’. These two cases exemplify the paradigms’ relevance in delimiting boundaries in the mainstream political spectrum. The spectrum’s mainstream right-wing space during the 1960s probably had more social-democratic values than Europe’s mainstream Socialist Parties in the early 2010s. The Union for the Defence of the Republic (UDR), the Gaullist right-wing party that won the French legislative elections in 1968 and 1973 (and governed from 1968 to 1978), was arguably more Keynesian in economics than François Hollande’s Socialist Party during its mandate as French president (2012–2017). This is due to a fundamental paradigm shift that took place during the last years of the 1970s and 1980s, when neoliberalism replaced Keynesianism. The process of one paradigm replacing another entails a change in a community’s political discourse and ‘common sense’. A paradigm’s reproduction or contestation depends on how actors frame issues in the public sphere. Hall (1993) paid attention not only to elite actors’ policy discussions, but also to certain media pundits’ influence in spreading certain ideas to the public. Hall argued that new ideas become powerful once they coincide with a political community’s ‘structure of political discourse’. The media’s role in this process is fundamental, as a mediator between political elites and the general public. Paradigms are not only associated with concrete policy options, but with a worldview that public discourse reproduces by framing political issues. This is how paradigms become associated with framing. The neoliberal paradigm frames the debate by situating economics and politics as separate spheres, as if the

60

A. OLEART

‘market’ functions autonomously, is self-referential and its only consequences for policy are economic output and numbers, ignoring other dimensions, such as inequality or the environment. A paradigm shift is unlikely to take place if public discourse does not question the hegemonic paradigm in the public sphere. Public discourse and the way in which it frames issues are therefore central elements in determining which policy paradigms become or remain hegemonic. As Peter Hall argues, the public sphere plays a central role in reproducing and consolidating a particular policy paradigm in a polity: Although we habitually acknowledge its presence, we rarely incorporate an adequate appreciation of the importance of the media into our analyses. In this case, the British press did not simply transmit the range of views to be found among economists about the direction of economic policy; it magnified the prominence given to monetarist doctrine and catapulted monetarist thinking on to the public agenda. The press is both a mirror of public opinion and a magnifying glass for the issues that it takes up. (Hall, 1993, p. 288)

The public sphere is crucially linked to political elites’ ideas. Blyth (2002) conceived this process as a ‘Great Transformation’, borrowing the title of Karl Polanyi’s popular book (1964). Providing an ideational perspective to this concept, Blyth studied two ‘great transformations’. The first took place in the early 1930s, when the Western world questioned free-market ideas, and replaced them with Keynesian ones. The second took place in the late 1970s and all through the 1980s, when neoliberalism replaced the Keynesian ideational policy paradigm, led politically by Reagan and Thatcher, and intellectually by Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. Paradigm shifts (or ‘Great Transformations’) do not happen from one day to the next, but through complex phases when alternatives challenge hegemony by mobilising adherents and demobilising adversaries. They take place in moments of ‘interregnum’ (Bauman, 2012), which Gramsci (1978, p. 276) defines as consisting ‘precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’. One paradigm’s replacement by another takes place when political entrepreneurs challenge the hegemonic paradigm by proposing alternative values that find resonance in the public sphere. The process by which the dominant policy paradigm comes under pressure and is eventually replaced by another is closely related to the windows

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

61

of opportunity that offer political entrepreneurs the chance to be heard, and introduce new ideas into the mainstream. Moments of perceived crisis can be fertile opportunities for political entrepreneurs to put forward an alternative set of ideas that challenges the hegemonic ones. In the thirty years after World War II, mainstream right- and left-wing parties in Western European countries generally supported the welfare state, and the Keynesian paradigm. The idea that the government had to provide basic services (e.g. health care, education), regulate to protect the standards of living (e.g. workers’ rights) and offer its citizens a safety net (e.g. unemployment benefits) was rarely challenged. In the name of valuing competitiveness and individual freedom, Margaret Thatcher broke this consensus by bringing neoliberalism into British government in 1979, normalising that the idea that the market, not the state, should provide almost everything to citizens. The neoliberal free-market trinity (privatisation, deregulation and cuts to social spending) promoted by Milton Friedman (2009) was marginal in Western Europe until the Iron Lady took power in the UK. Thatcher’s paradigm change (Hall, 1993) was further reproduced by Blair’s New Labour government in 1997. In spite of New Labour’s differences from Thatcherism (Fairclough, 2000), freemarket ideas travelled from Thatcher to Blair: it was the market and not the state who should provide for most of citizens’ wants and needs. The neoliberal economic and political project is based on transferring economic and political control from the state towards the ‘market’. This, however, does not mean diminishing the state’s role. Instead, as Hindess argues (2004), neoliberalism is an ideology that changes the rationality of how governments use the state’s administrative power, overcoming the post-World War II Keynesian consensus (Peck & Tickell, 2002). Rather than simply eliminating the state or reducing it dramatically, neoliberalism puts the state at the market’s service, viewing the market’s logic as a more efficient way of governing actors’ behaviour in the political system. Neoliberalism became hegemonic across Europe during the last decade of the twentieth century. Fukuyama’s End of History (Fukuyama, 1992) is the best example of la pensée unique (the ‘single thought’), referring to the dogma that neoliberalism is the only possibility, as Thatcher and Schroeder stated: ‘There is no Alternative’ (TINA). The hegemony of TINA is what Anthony Giddens (1994, 1998) called the Radical Centre or the third way, what Chantal Mouffe (2013) has called the consensus of the centre and what Tariq Ali (2015) has called the Extreme

62

A. OLEART

Centre. So-called left-wing (or rather, centre-left) parties started explicitly rejecting the anti-capitalist dimension that had always existed in socialdemocracy until the 1970s. As Chantal Mouffe (2013) argued, under pretext of ‘adapting themselves to a globalised world’, they capitulated to a neoliberal world. Bill Clinton in the US, Tony Blair in the UK, Gerhard Schröder in Germany, Romano Prodi in Italy, Felipe González in Spain or François Mitterrand in France drove the former social-democrats’ transition towards the Third Way in their respective countries. The Great Transformation is reflected in that neoliberal ideas travelled across the spectrum and became mainstream on both the centre-right and centre-left. Neoliberal ideas not only became dominant in the 1990s, but have been resilient in Europe, including after the 2008 financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis (2010–2011). As Schmidt and Thatcher indicate (2013, p. 341), ‘what is striking is how often neoliberal ideas have been resilient in the past 30 or so years in political discourse and policy debates in Europe’. The neoliberal Radical Centre has encouraged the popular perception that there is no basic difference between centre-left and centre-right parties. It is as if the difference between centre-right and centre-left parties in Europe is a choice between Pepsi and CocaCola.1 People have a vote, but not a voice.2 Following Mouffe (2013), this ‘consensus of the centre’ has very negative consequences for democratic politics, because modern democracies are increasingly controlled by a small elite that is closely connected to corporate interests. In economic policy, there is no agonistic conflict because neoliberalism remains to a large extent unchallenged in the mainstream. Europe’s lack of agonistic debate has contributed to depoliticise politics. Political questions are dealt by ‘experts’, because they tend to be considered technical in nature, instead of political. Rather than an ideology that opposes state and public intervention, neoliberalism introduces a new way of governing society, using the state to grant the ‘market’ more importance and where ‘politics’ is most of the times an unnecessary obstacle to the efficiency of the self-regulating ‘market’.

1 This example was put forward by Chantal Mouffe in several lectures. 2 This was one of the slogans at the 2011 Indignados movement in Spain.

3

1.2

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

63

TTIP: A Neoliberal Trade Policy Project

After World War II (WWII), international trade was discussed in the negotiation rounds opened through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), signed in 1947 with the main aim to reduce tariffs between countries, which were considered ‘barriers’ to trade. Although the GATT initially included only nation-states, the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957 added a new player: the European Commission (EC). When the Treaty of Rome (1957) established the EEC, its founding member states agreed to observe common external tariffs and a common international trade policy (Elsig, 2002; Meunier, 2005). The European Commission, always under the Council of the EU’s supervision, was given the right to speak on the member states’ behalf on issues of international trade, including the right to negotiate international trade agreements. Such agreements initially dealt with tariffs, subsidies and anti-dumping issues, the central elements of negotiations within the GATT. However, international trade negotiations progressively evolved into ‘non-tariff barriers’ and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) protection. The Tokyo Round (1973–1979) included ‘standards’ within the framework of the negotiations for the first time, leading towards normalising ‘non-tariff barriers’ or ‘behind-the-border’ issues as a subject of international trade negotiations. Led by US President Bill Clinton’s administration, GATT evolved in 1995 into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), encouraging trade liberalisation around the world under the neoliberal ideology of liberalising trade and ‘freeing’ markets. The creation of the WTO established a permanent forum for progressive international trade liberalisation dealing with both tariff and non-tariff barriers.3 As non-tariff issues were progressively introduced into the agenda of international trade agreement negotiations, social, environmental and health regulations became part of the discussions. From the start, the EC had the competence to negotiate international trade negotiations within the EU, but, given its limited competences in other policy areas, the EC by itself could hardly negotiate anything beyond customs and tariffs. The

3 The WTO introduced non-tariff barriers into the international trade agenda, but did not achieve much in practice. This is why bilateral trade agreements like TTIP replaced the negotiations that used to take place within a multilateral forum such as the WTO, as will be explained later.

64

A. OLEART

EEC evolved through various treaties, each of which transferred additional competences from the national to the European level. The 1986 Single Market Act and the 1992 Maastricht Treaty were the most relevant treaty changes, creating a single market in the EU and giving the EC further competences in a wide range of policy areas. Within the EU, this evolution initiated discussions on whether certain issues fell under exclusive or mixed competences (Meunier, 2000; Meunier & Nicolaidis, 1999). In fact, as Woll argued (2008, p. 90), the European Commission negotiates more with EU member states than with all third countries combined. The European Commission is, however, not an intergovernmental forum of EU member states, but can rather be considered a policy entrepreneur (Crespy & Menz, 2015) pursuing a direction that all member states can accept. The 2009 Treaty of Lisbon, which made Foreign Direct Investment an exclusive EU competence, gave the EC further power as a policy entrepreneur. The EU’s entrepreneurship regarding international trade negotiations is reflected in the action of Leon Brittan, EU Trade Commissioner between 1993 and 1999, called for a ‘Millenium Round’ of the WTO in 1996. Brittan’s successor as European Trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy4 (1999–2004), continued to pursue the launch of a new negotiation round, which eventually led to the Doha Development round in 2001 (Van den Hoven, 2004). Once Lamy became Director-General of the WTO in 2005, the new EU Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson (British Commissioner between 2004 and 2008, appointed by Tony Blair’s New Labour government), launched the ‘Global Europe’ (SilesBrugge, 2014) agenda in 2006, which saw the liberalisation of trade and services as enhancing competitiveness for EU companies, which would result in a boost of ‘jobs and growth’. The crucial difference between Lamy’s Doha Development round and Mandelson’s ‘Global Europe’ agenda is that the former aimed to reach multilateral agreements within the WTO, whereas the latter assumed that the Doha Development round was unsuccessful in deepening further international trade liberalisation. The change had important strategic implications, given that the EU ‘Global Europe’ agenda pursued bilateral negotiations, through Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with particular countries, rather than through multilateral forums such as the WTO. This

4 Lamy would later become WTO Director-General (2005–2013).

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

65

is what Morse and Keohane (2014) labelled ‘contested multilateralism’ (or ‘counter-multilateralism’), in which a reduced number of countries aim to make agreements among themselves and then encourage the others to follow the rules established in such agreements without being part of the negotiations. This strategic change is explained by the incapacity to avoid the blocking power of a number of countries, such as Brazil or China, in multilateral forums, such as the WTO. The blockage of agreements within the WTO encouraged governments to target agreements outside of it. The blockage of any advance through the WTO in 2007– 2008 led to a new generation of free-trade agreements, including TTIP, CETA and TiSA, outside of the WTO framework, but with the same objective of trade liberalisation. De Ville and Orbie (2014) have shown through a discourse analysis of EU Trade commissioners that neoliberal ideas have been resilient since Leon Brittan all along to Karel de Gucht, the Dutch EU Trade Commissioner between 2009 and 2014 that launched the TTIP negotiations. As Van den Hoven also argued (2004, p. 187), ‘EU trade policy is framed within a broader European free trade ideology’. Therefore, the ideas driving EU trade policy since the late 1990s have remained constant. However, while the ideas in EU trade policy have not changed since the late 1990s, the strategies have changed: from multilateral negotiations within the WTO to bilateral agreements between countries. While the ‘Global Europe’ framework focused more narrowly on market access (rather than on a more comprehensive regulatory alignment) with countries that had relatively closed economies, the ultimate objective to increase the competitiveness of European companies is shared. The connection between internal and external policy is blurry, given that, as the literature that refers to ‘21st century trade politics’ (De Ville & Siles-Brügge, 2016; Young, 2016; Young & Peterson, 2006), international trade negotiations involve domestic regulatory regimes. The ‘barriers’ to trade are, rather than external tariffs, divergent regulations touching upon a wide range of policy areas, as well as the protection of foreign investment. In this process, the boundaries between foreign and domestic policy in EU trade policy have become blurry. The TTIP negotiations started in 2013, but the idea of a ‘transatlantic marketplace’ is much older. In 1990, the EU and the US signed the ‘Transatlantic Declaration’, by which both of them agreed to ‘promote market principles, reject protectionism and expand, strengthen and further open the multilateral trading system’ (European Parliament,

66

A. OLEART

1990). The Transatlantic Declaration did not materialise in anything concrete, beyond the New Transatlantic Agenda in 1995, which led to a number of mutual recognition agreements in limited sectors of the economy. Leon Brittan had already put forward the idea of a ‘New Transatlantic Marketplace’, aiming at reducing trade barriers to trade (Pollack & Shaffer, 2001), but this idea did not materialise. Reducing barriers between the EU and the US was meant to make companies on both sides of the Atlantic more ‘competitive’ in the global market, therefore creating ‘jobs and growth’. From this perspective, a free-trade agreement such as TTIP would benefit both small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as transnational corporations. The free-trade agenda of EU Trade Commissioners such as Leon Brittan, Pascal Lamy and Peter Mandelson indicates that the EU’s neoliberal agenda comes from internal neoliberal pressures rather than the US (Crouch, 2014). Additionally, international trade negotiations such as TTIP are only one of the means to promote the neoliberal agenda. In November 2011, the European Commission announced that the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) would establish a High-Level Working Group (HLWG) on Jobs and Growth, co-chaired by EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht and US Trade Representative (USTR) Ron Kirk. Under the umbrella of the HLWG, the EC launched three public consultations during 2012. The first was named ‘Initial General Public Consultation on EU-US High-Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth’, the second ‘Public consultation on the future of EU-US trade and economic relations’ and the third ‘EU and US call for input on regulatory issues for possible future trade agreement’. For two of the three public consultations, the list of respondents is publicly available on the EC’s website. Close cooperation between businesses and the European Commission is visible in these consultations’ participant lists (De Ville & Siles-Brügge, 2016, pp. 71–73), where mainly business organisations participated and several sectorial business organisations from both the EU and the US undertook joint submissions, such as the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) and the American Chemistry Council (ACC); the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA); or the European Services Forum (ESF) and the US Coalition of Services Industries (CSI), among others. However, the two crucial business actors are the cross-sector business umbrella organisations of the EU and the US, BusinessEurope and the US Chamber of Commerce,

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

67

which made a joint submission in the two consultations where data is publicly available, indicating a strategic alliance to support each other’s efforts to lobby for the type of trade agreement that they want on both sides of the Atlantic. The prominence of business organisations vis-à-vis civil society and trade unions confirms the already-established argument that the latter group of actors have very little influence on EU trade policy through inside lobbying mechanisms (Dür & De Bièvre, 2007). As a result of the three public consultations and internal work by the TEC, on 11th February 2013, two days before Obama announced the start of the TTIP project in the State of the Union address, the TEC’s High-Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth released its final report. It was stated that “we believe that we can do more to strengthen the contribution of trade and investment to fostering jobs, growth, and competitiveness in both economies” (European Commission, 2013a). On 12th February 2013, President Barack Obama formally announced the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in his 2013 State of the Union address. EU Trade Commissioner, Karel de Gucht, presented it on 21st February 2013 at the Committee on International Trade (INTA) of the European Parliament, in Brussels. Karel de Gucht argued that it will create a tremendous impact on jobs and growth on both sides of the Atlantic. (…) Together, we will form the largest free trade zone in the world. This deal will set the standard – not only for our future bilateral trade and investment but also for the development of global rules. (…) It also confirms our attachment to open markets and multilateral rules and trade liberalisation. The answer to the crisis is the opposite of protectionism. (European Commission, 2013b, emphasis added)

The project of a ‘transatlantic marketplace’ had been decades in the making, and already had a name: Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA). However, the European Commission chose ‘TTIP’ rather than ‘TAFTA’ as its name, perhaps because the latter calls to mind the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1993, a trade agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico that arguably has had rather negative connotations in the US. In addition, TAFTA also sounded similar to

68

A. OLEART

the unpopular Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), rejected by the European Parliament in 2012. In terms of concrete content, TTIP deals essentially with three areas: market access,5 regulatory cooperation to tackle non-tariff barriers and Foreign Direct Investment protection.6 Regulatory cooperation refers to the way in which non-tariff barriers between the EU and the US can be reduced (for a longer discussion on the role of regulatory cooperation on TTIP, see De Ville & SilesBrügge, 2017). Regulatory cooperation can follow two paths. The first is harmonising rules and standards on both sides of the Atlantic. In this vein, negotiators would come to an agreement on the common rules to be applied on both sides of the Atlantic. The second way is mutual recognition, meaning that standards on one side of the Atlantic are accepted on the other, without necessarily agreeing on common standards. In the words of Nicolaidis and Shaffer (2005, p. 264), mutual recognition refers to ‘creating conditions under which participating parties commit to the principle that if a product or service can be sold lawfully in one jurisdiction, it can be sold lawfully in any other participating jurisdiction’. In TTIP, different modes of regulatory cooperation could be combined, depending on the sectors. Certain sectors could implement mutual recognition, whereas others could take the path of harmonisation. However, as Young and Peterson (2014, p. 161) indicated, both businesses and the European Commission generally preferred mutual recognition, because it implies no additional costs for businesses. This might be explained by Joel Trachtman’s arguments (2007, p. 783), which suggest that ‘mutual recognition is by its nature purely deregulatory’, in a perspective similar to that of De Ville and Siles-Brügge (2016), who argue that mutual recognition may allow firms to bypass the highest standards. Mutual recognition is a type of regulatory cooperation that would not lower EU or US standards, but it would allow companies to simply comply with the standards of either side of the Atlantic. 5 Market access refers essentially to opening the public procurement market from both sides of the Atlantic to each other, since traditionally such markets have remained closed to its own companies. 6 The first dimension of TTIP will not be explained further, given that it is rather straightforward to understand. The other two dimensions, non-tariff barriers and FDI protection, require further explanation.

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

69

The third and final element, protecting Foreign Direct Investment, is based on the idea that the public judicial system is not safe enough for foreign investors. FDI protection is the most innovative aspect of TTIP, given that it is the first time that an FTA negotiated by the EU has the word ‘investment’ in its title (the ‘I’ of TTIP), partly due to the fact that FDI became an exclusive EU competence7 since the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon.8 Broadly, FDI protection mechanisms allow individual investors or companies to sue national governments for discriminatory practices to protect their investment abroad in ad hoc arbitration tribunals. The concrete mechanism that was approved by the EU member states’ mandate is the Investor-to-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), which has been included in thousands of international treaties, including NAFTA. It is not a permanent legal court, but a mechanism by which each legal action taken by foreign investors creates a temporary court. Traditionally, ISDS mechanisms have been justified on the basis that certain countries do not have the necessary legal safety for foreign investors. However, investment protection mechanisms have received many criticisms over time. Van Harten (2005, p. 600) argued that ISDS tribunals ‘provide significant advantages to multinational enterprises at the expense of governmental flexibility’. Rather than forcing governments to pay millions to multinational companies, investment protection mechanisms such as the ISDS presented in TTIP could discourage governments from regulating a particular policy area in order to avoid litigation costs of litigation and potential fines or settlements, providing a context of ‘regulatory chill’ (De Ville & Siles-Brügge, 2016), given that governments can in some cases choose to avoid certain policies in order to avoid conflict with investors. In TTIP, after a public consultation the EC replaced ISDS with the Investment Court System (ICS), which is a

7 While FDI is officially an exclusive EU competence, a large legal and political debate has taken place due to the contestation of ISDS in TTIP and CETA. In consequence, it remains unclear whether FDI is an exclusive or mixed competence, given that CETA had to be ratified by national parliaments precisely because the agreement’s investment protection mechanism was considered to touch upon domestic competences, making CETA a mixed agreement. 8 However, before the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Commission had an arrangement with the Member States known as the Minimum Platform, which allowed the Commission to negotiate investment-market access issues. This is exemplified by the EU-Korea FTA, a trade agreement negotiated before the Lisbon Treaty that came into force and prominently featured investment-market access.

70

A. OLEART

slightly different version of ISDS that gives governments more weight visà-vis the investors in selecting arbitrators, even though the mechanism’s principles remain the same. Overall, TTIP followed the neoliberal paradigm. Rather than building common standards on a range of sectors across the Atlantic, it focused on reducing or eliminating of ‘non-tariff barriers’. As by De Ville and SilesBrügge put forward (2016, p. 131), TTIP ‘is driven by both a philosophy and a discourse that idealise the efficient operation of markets and seek to minimise the constraints imposed by democratic decision-making in public policy, which is seen as inherently susceptible to capture by special interests and hence inefficient policy outcomes’. Coherently with the neoliberal paradigm, the market is seen as self-regulating and the goal is to ‘free’ it from public intervention in order to eliminate as many barriers as possible between countries, conceived as ‘economies’. Rather than a traditional trade agreement aiming to reduce customs between the EU and the US, TTIP targets domestic regulations, viewing them as ‘obstacles’ or non-tariff barriers to trade. This is exemplified by the fact that, as a result of the previous waves of trade liberalisation since World War II, the tariffs applied between the EU and the US (European Commission, n.d.) were on average under 3% as of 2013. Therefore, given the small tariffs applied, the ‘obstacles’ to trade were regulations rather than tariffs. In this sense, TTIP differs from other trade agreements not only because of its size, but also qualitatively, in that it targets domestic regulations, conceived as ‘red tape’. This is new, in that the term ‘non-tariff barrier’ has evolved to potentially cover many domestic policy dimensions, such as environmental or consumer protection regulations. This is a crucial ‘redefinition of the common-sense concept of “trade barrier”’ (Lang, 2011, p. 224). Under the philosophy that initiated TTIP, economics and politics are viewed as independent spheres. The ‘economy’ is a space of competition between private actors that should be touched as little as possible by politics. Regulation of the economic sphere can then be interpreted as an obstacle for innovation, investment or trade. This makes clear that in TTIP the EC is focused on reducing production and shipping costs for businesses, without necessarily creating common standards that apply in both the EU and the US. The blurry boundaries between foreign and domestic policy make EU trade policy a potential source of conflict, given they can touch upon social, environmental or labour standards. This can explain the fact that international trade negotiations became a

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

71

catalyst for protests at the global level during the late 1990s and early 2000s (Aaronson, 2002). As Rodrik (2011, p. 67) argued, trade policy ‘is politically contentious because it has important domestic distributional consequences and because it generates clashes between values and institutions in different nations’. International trade policy achieved its most visible expression in the 1999 ‘Battle of Seattle’ (Meunier, 2003). The WTO Ministerial Conference became the first mass protest against liberalising international trade, which framed trade liberalisation as a threat to democracy (Crespy, 2016, p. 172), an inclusive framing that glued together a wide range of actors: “At the 1999 Seattle protests what most surprised and puzzled observers was that groups previously thought to be in opposition to each other - trade unionists and environmentalists, church groups and anarchists, and so forth - acted together without any central, unifying structure that subordinates or sets aside their differences” (Hardt & Negri, 2004, pp. 217–218). A wide range of political actors criticised international trade liberalisation for its secretive procedures, its impact on developing countries and its neoliberal economic paradigm. According to the critics, trade liberalisation is more concerned with ‘reducing barriers’ that would promote ‘competitiveness’ for big companies, rather than with creating global rules in fields of the environment, workers’ rights or consumer protection. Therefore, including a wide range of actors through politicisation, including many trade unions and civil society actors, can partly be understood as a reaction to the inclusion of ‘non-tariff barriers’ (Winslett, 2016). As argued by Meunier (2003, pp. 69–70), the politicisation of EU trade policy can be explained by combining different elements: the EU’s perceived democratic deficit and big business’s perceived influence on the negotiations compared to civil society actors and trade unions. The fact that DG Trade is the EC Directorate-General that manages trade negotiations also encourages protest, given that it is one of the most corporatist in the European Commission (Coen & Katsaidis, 2013), offering better access to business actors than to civil society or trade unions, and even less (or none) to non-institutionalised civil society actors. The most clear example of the politicisation of EU trade policy, and the biggest precedent to the TTIP negotiations, is the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a trade agreement signed by the US, the EU, Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea that dealt primarily with intellectual property rights. Following the leaking of documents by Wikileaks in 2008 on ACTA, it

72

A. OLEART

became a matter of public discussion (Dür & Mateo, 2014). After it was signed in 2011, the European Parliament rejected it on the 4th July 2012 by 478 votes to 39, with 165 abstentions, after mass protests led by a very broad coalition of NGOs and social movements (Crespy & Parks, 2017). Analysing social movements’ influence on EU policy and the mechanisms through which they act, Parks (2015, see Chapter 5) found that the frames used against ACTA based on certain EU values such as fundamental rights, rule of law and democracy at large were crucial in shaping public opinion in Europe against ACTA (Mercea, 2017). The mass protests against ACTA resulted from civil society actors’ long-standing mobilisations in the context of international trade negotiations, which have been the basis of the alter-globalisation movement. Such movement, also called the ‘Global Justice Movement’ (Della Porta, 2007), is a loosely connected network formed by actors based in different countries that met regularly at the European and World social forums and staged punctual protests, and organised institutionally through the Seattle to Brussels Network (S2B). S2B members include organisations from across Europe, including both Brussels-based organisations like Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE) or Greenpeace’s EU unit; and nationally based groups like Global Justice Now (UK), War on Want (UK), Ecologistas en Acción (Spain), ATTAC France or ATTAC Germany, among others. This network, rather than a movement, aims to promote ‘beyond-the-nation solidarity links’ (Johnson & Laxer, 2003, p. 43) at both the national and transnational levels. The members of the S2B network have traditionally criticised trade liberalisation negotiations on the basis that neoliberal ideas are opposed to democracy, in a framing that civil society actors prefer, given its inclusiveness. The protests were not driven necessarily as a push for less global governance (or ‘anti-globalisation’), but rather as an attempt to democratise global governance with a different political architecture that is sensitive to other interests beyond corporate ones. These actors do not necessarily oppose the general idea of globalisation or the European project, but oppose the type of globalisation and EU that is being developed due to its neoliberal bias. Consequently, they argue for a ‘globalisation from below’ or ‘Europe from below’ (Della Porta & Caiani, 2009). Neoliberal globalisation, it is argued, benefits multinational corporations that have open access to policy- and decision-makers.

3

2

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

73

Framing Analysis of Media Content in the TTIP Debate 2.1

A Framing Perspective

The empirical chapters display a framing analysis of media content. The essence of the framing perspective is the scrutiny of how issues are constructed discursively in the public sphere (Gamson, 2004). Issues can be discussed in different ways, and actors strategically define issues in particular ways according to the way they see the world. The framing perspective does not take frames as given, but as socially constructed by agents. As Pan and Kosicki argue (2005, p. 177), framing ‘means adopting an interpretive framework for thinking about a political object’, and agents have an interest in defining the terms and interpretive frameworks to be used when discussing an issue. The framing approach is inherently political, given that ‘to study framing is to study power: the power to shape — and distort — public perceptions; the power to promote — or marginalise — competing perspectives on public problems; and the power, therefore, to promote or inhibit the political goals of various societal groups’ (Lawrence, 2010, p. 278). The construction of a frame that reproduces a neoliberal view of the world will focus on the ‘economy’ as a separate realm from politics, will tend to reduce reality to numbers and will prioritise values such as ‘growth’ or ‘competitiveness’, making political issues only a matter of economic output. Instead, a counter-hegemonic point of view can be reproduced by framing issues in a different way, prioritising values such as ‘democracy’, the defence of the environment or ‘equality’, introducing a social dimension that cannot be reduced to numbers. In terms of identifying frames, a ‘frame repeatedly invokes the same objects and traits, using identical or synonymous words and symbols in a series of similar communications that are concentrated in time’ (Entman et al., 2009, p. 177). Frames are part of a communicative process that helps audiences organise thoughts and order their interpretation of particular issues. The frames put forward by ‘frame sponsors’ (Van Gorp, 2010) are not neutral and are circulated to encourage a particular interpretations and understandings of reality that favour their preferred policy position. Framing is a relational and dynamic process: frames do not operate in a vacuum, but within a discursive environment where they compete for hegemony in the public sphere. In consequence,

74

A. OLEART

it is also an effect of framing when actors use their opponents’ language and frames. Actors strategically frame issues in their preferred manner, while being aware that they will compete with the frames sponsored by other actors. Framing is a battle of ideas between different actors who seek to encourage their preferred understanding of the issue in the public sphere. Actors’ success in framing an issue ultimately depends on how the frames resonate in the public sphere. Framing then entails an ideological competition to introduce the hegemonic frames in the public sphere, where actors strategically use their existing symbolic resources to gather support for their cause. The resonance of frames put forward by political actors in the public sphere depends to a large extent on how the frames fit with the culture and characteristics of the community addressed. Frames’ resonance depends on the extent to which it connects with the culture and the community characteristics in which it is deployed. A frame’s strength in the public sphere not only depends on its circulation in a ‘pure’ way, but also in how a frame influences the articulation of the public debate as a whole. Reproducing a frame with the opposite claim is understood as a counter-frame, an important concept because, as George Lakoff (2014) argues, the more a frame is used by its adversaries in the form of a counter-frame, the more it is activated and strengthened. In practice, this means that if an actor counters a frame by denying it, that frame is reinforced in the public sphere. For instance, as Lakoff (2014) suggests, when Richard Nixon said ‘I am not a crook’ during the Watergate scandal, he in fact reinforced the frame put forward by his political opponents, who argued that he was indeed a crook. A sign that a frame has become hegemonic is when it is used not only by its proponents, but also by its opponents. The power of frames lies in the fact that negating them activates and strengthens them. The more a frame is negated, the more it is activated. When an actor starts using its rival’s words and frames, even while negating them, that actor in fact activates and strengthens its rival frames, while undermining its own. Instead of assuming the rival’s frame, actors can reframe the debate by putting forward alternative frames. Reframing the public debate of an issue changes the way in which people understand the issue. A change of language is needed to change the dominant frames through which people see and understand the world. Reframing puts aside the dominant frame by pushing an alternative frame into the public sphere. Rather than a marketing exercise, framing and reframing an issue is about

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

75

providing an alternative interpretive framework to encourage a particular understanding of the issue at stake. Much of framing research has focused on its effects, tracking to what extent frames influence the way people think.9 However, this book departs from the assumption that actors tap into existing discourses and frames circulating in the public sphere. Such frames are not ‘naturally’ present, but are put forward by actors using symbolic resources, a perspective that is particularly relevant when analysing the public debate surrounding the TTIP negotiations in Spain, France and the UK, countries that have had historically a different relationship with European integration. The circulation of (agonistic) frames in the European public sphere generates communicative power, forcing the administrative power holders to react, a process in which ‘policy meets politics’. This connection between framing and communicative power follows a previous academic conceptualisation (Conrad & Oleart, 2019), and connects the empirical research question with the normative one. The argument made in this section is that the generation of communicative power in public deliberation can be observed by tracing the way in which frames circulated in the European public spheres, given that the resonance of agonistic frames in the public spheres is a key ingredient for the generation of communicative power. 2.2

Methodology and Data Sets: Framing Analysis of Media Content on TTIP

This book studies the politicisation and Europeanisation of public spheres around a particular EU policy dossier, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), one of the ten policy priorities of the Juncker Commission (2014–2019). In contrast to the Europeanisation of public spheres led by a depoliticised interpretive framework (conceived as ‘Depoliticised Europeanisation’ in the previous chapter), the debate around TTIP negotiations between the EU and the US has been unusually salient, Europeanised and plural at the national level, giving voice to a number of non-governmental actors that in the past have rarely had access to the public sphere on EU issues. 9 Even though, as Katz argues (1959), research on media effects should not be about how media content influences people, but about what people do with the frames circulating in the public sphere.

76

A. OLEART

The TTIP negotiations between the EU (led by the European Commission, who received a mandate by the 28 EU member states) and the US were initially received in June 2013 by specialised mainstream political parties and economic newspapers such as the Financial Times with great hope. TTIP, a trade agreement that largely followed the dominant neoliberal policy paradigm but with unprecedented ambitions (De Ville & Siles-Brugge, 2016), was presented as an opportunity to increase business competition and free trade, creating ‘jobs and growth’. However, almost four years later, a technical and European issue like TTIP had become a politicised topic in several national public spheres in Europe (Eliasson & Huet, 2019), despite the fact that all national governments initially supported the project. Despite the issue’s highly technical and complex nature, mainstream debates of TTIP included civil society actors speaking out against the negotiations, both at the national and EU levels. In addition, the European Commission opened participatory mechanisms to certain civil society actors, changed some of its proposals (such as the initial investors’ protection mechanism or the negotiations’ transparency, which were enhanced) and adopted some of its ideas in their discourse. The TTIP debate is interesting to study because the negotiations became a matter of public controversy in several EU member states at the same time. Due to the difficulties of operationalising a Europe-wide research, three countries have been selected to analyse the Europeanisation of the national public spheres on TTIP. The degree and type of Europeanisation of the public spheres in the TTIP debate is empirically analysed in the national contexts of Spain, France and the UK, which constitute the three case studies of the book. Why does the book specifically focus on these three countries to analyse the politicisation of TTIP in the media? These three countries are interesting subjects of study because historically the three countries have had different attitudes vis-à-vis the EU. The way of ‘framing Europe’ (Díez Medrano, 2003) in the three countries corresponds to the three types of conflict (agonistic, antagonistic or no conflict at all) that have been laid out in the previous chapter. While having historically different attitudes towards the EU (the empirical chapters include a brief discussion about the relationship of the each of the countries analysed with the EU), the campaign against TTIP resonated in a relatively similar way across the three countries. The media data set covers the period from the 11th of February 2013 until the 12th of November 2016. I have taken the 11th of February 2013 as the initial

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

77

date because on that day the High-Level Working Group (HLWG) on Jobs and Growth published its final report, recommending the launch of trade negotiations between the EU and the US. The time frame ends the 12th November 2016, the day after the EU Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström, announced the ‘freezing’ of the negotiations. Scholars have measured politicisation by taking into account an issue’s salience, the expansion of the actors involved and the polarisation of the opinions expressed (De Wilde, Leupold & Schmidtke, 2016). This way of measuring politicisation has been operationalised by Rauh (2016) or Hutter, Grande, and Kriesi (2016) and has also received criticism (Kauppi, Palonen, & Wiesner, 2016). The authors’ quantitative emphasis makes it difficult to combine with an ideational analytical perspective, whose focus is on the discourse and ideas that circulate in the public sphere. The perspective on the politicisation of the EU in this book will focus on the media discourse, and therefore will prioritise a more qualitative approach to the simple measuring of politicisation. The empirical analysis developed in this book is based on a media content analysis, tracking how TTIP was framed in the different news outlets from different countries. The analysis measures not only what is present and absent from the texts, but also how, to what extent and when certain frames are included or excluded. The goal of the media content analysis is to find out which frames are present in the Spanish, French and British national media, and how do they evolve over time? In order to measure the degree and type of conflict (agonistic, antagonistic or depoliticised), the frames are categorised depending on the type of politicisation that they illustrate. The framing analysis provides an illustration of the communicative power generated through the circulation of agonistic frames in the public sphere, by describing which frames (and counter-frames) were most present on a longitudinal perspective, coding the frames’ presence in a binary way (1-0). The data from news outlets gathered for the content analysis comprises two dimensions, both of which are considered ‘text’. The first dimension is the written elements, and the second is the visual elements. The written dimension includes the article’s title, subtitle and main body. The visual dimension includes the articles’ main image, since their format generally features one main image (although in some cases more) that is central to the article. Due to time constraints, but also with the idea that the collecting data aims to grasp the central content

78

A. OLEART

produced on TTIP, the main image10 of each article is taken into account. Each media article has been divided between the headlines (involving the article’s title, subtitle and image) and the body, so as to trace the hierarchy of frames in the news media. The tracing of the hierarchy of frames will allow to identify which frames are foregrounded (appearing in the headlines), and which ones are backgrounded (appearing only in the body of the article). This methodology builds on the work of Conrad and Oleart (2019). In order to analyse how the frames are prioritised in the media from a qualitative perspective, establishing a framing ratio. The hierarchy of TTIP frames in the media is analysed by considering three elements of each article11 : the title, the subtitle and the main image.12 This ensures a proper balance that takes into account the quantity of frames, and a qualitative framing approach, where the hierarchy of frames is tracked. The media content analysis is complemented with interviews13 with all the stakeholders involved in TTIP, including the European Commission officials, MEPs, anti-TTIP activists, trade union representatives and journalists. The media data set is composed of all media articles relevant to TTIP published in nine online quality news outlets, three from each of the countries selected: France, Spain and the UK. The focus on quality platforms, and not in British tabloids, is justified on the basis that, despite their mass circulation among the British population (meaning they could easily be considered ‘mainstream’), there are no comparable tabloids in Spain and France, and in addition they are not considered reliable news sources, in some cases by its own readers (Barnett, 1998; Franklin, 1994; Lloyd, 2004; Sparks, 1991). The selected news outlets have a relationship of functional equivalence across their respective countries (Hofstede,

10 Except for a few exceptions, most of the media articles collected have one image, the one that accompanies the article. 11 When the subtitle and/or the image of the article is absent, the remaining elements will be taken into account. 12 The image taken is the one portrayed in the articles collected. 13 All the interview excerpts cited in the book were included with the consent of the

interviewees, who were aware of the purpose of the interview, and that their comments could ultimately be used as part of published research. The interviews were generally given on the condition of anonymity, and the interviewees whose names are mentioned gave explicit consent to be cited personally.

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

79

1998), meaning each one plays a similar role in their respective countries. The selected news outlets do not represent the entire national public spheres, given the division within public spheres. However, given the methodological limitations, the sample gathered can be considered relevant for the study of the three national public spheres. Additionally, quality news outlets are a consistent choice ‘in virtue of their tendency to produce more opinion pieces than other newspapers. These pieces are particularly well-suited for in-depth qualitative analysis owing to their tendency to explicate positions in more detail. (…) If these ideas do not resonate in these opinion pieces, then they are unlikely to resonate in other parts of the public debate’ (Beetz, 2015, p. 40). While the selection of these (online) news outlets has a bias towards reaching highly educated people (perhaps as opposed to television), the news outlets chosen are considered to be crucial ‘framers’ of European issues. This is because the news outlets selected tend to have an influence on the coverage in other media spaces, since journalists in television or radio often use news outlets to decide the topics to cover and how they are covered. In this way, the selected news outlets do not represent the national public spheres as a whole, but play a central role in them, particularly when dealing with European issues. Additionally, prior research has indicated that ‘the online EU sphere mirrors the Europeanisation of offline news spheres’ (Michailidou, 2017, p. 246). In the same way that offline media suffered from a national fragmentation of public spheres, empirical analysis of online media indicates the same tendency (De Wilde, Michailidou, & Trenz, 2013). In consequence, the selection of (national) online news outlets is coherent with an attempt to analyse the Europeanisation of public spheres. The media data set has been directly collected through the news outlets’ online archives. Online news outlets do not perfectly represent the national public spheres, but are the forums best-positioned to represent the discourses circulating in society for an empirical analysis. First, not all of the media selected are available in print. Therefore, it is more consistent to select the online version of all the media selected rather than combining printed and online media. Second, digital media platforms are gaining ground as sources of news about national and European political issues over the printed press (Eurobarometer, 2017). In fact, empirical research has shown that European citizens increasingly consume news online, and that the most-read print newspapers have generally succeeded at transforming their platforms into digital ones, even though the media

80

A. OLEART

industry is a rapidly changing environment. Technological progress and the Internet’s rise situate digital media as central sources of information and ideas for citizens. This is not to say that digital versions will entirely replace printed newspapers, radio and television, but they will certainly play an important role in the media landscape in the future and progressively gain influence. The particular choice of news outlets has been guided primarily by the respective publications’ political orientation, corresponding to different ‘general political tendencies’ (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 27) and the type of public they reach. For each country, a leading economic, a leading quality mainstream and a leading progressive online news outlet have been chosen.14 The three categories correspond broadly to three different types of publics, following the typology put forward by Gabriel Almond (1960): a general public, an attentive public and a policy elite public. The general public is the sector of society that does not pay much attention to political issues beyond episodes of crisis, and this public corresponds to the one mainstream news outlet reach. The attentive public is an informed sector of society that, considering the importance of politics for the daily life of people, regularly reads several news outlets and tends to have a critical perspective. The attentive public matches with the progressive news outlet category, which reaches an informed group of people generally critical with governments. Lastly, the policy elite public is that sector of the population that is closely involved in the policy-making process, such as policy- and decision-makers, lobbyists or business elites, which corresponds to the economic media (Heinderyckx, 1998). The news outlets selected are considered the flagship for each community that the different media address. The three online news outlets in each country have been chosen on the basis of functional equivalence in their respective countries, which means that they play a similar role in their respective (national) public spheres. The following online news outlets were selected. Within the leading economic news outlet category: Expansión in Spain, Les Échos in France and the Financial Times in the UK. Within the leading mainstream news outlet category: EL PAÍS in Spain, Le Monde in France and the BBC 14 For practical reasons, a leading right-wing news outlet was not chosen for each country. The three news outlets selected for each country address different audiences. An additional platform would not have brought much added value and would have put the feasibility of empirical analysis in question.

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

81

in the UK. And within the leading progressive news outlet category: eldiario.es in Spain, Médiapart in France and The Guardian in the UK. The three online news outlet per country are supposed to cover a wide range of that country’s ideological spectrum, as well as reach different publics. The general readership of the online written journals is broadly equivalent across countries, according to the Alexa global and national rank.15 The British journals have more readers and reach a wider audience, most likely because they are written in English, the most widely used language in various fields, including newspaper and book publishing. The specific media content selected are all articles published by the nine news outlets selected that refer directly (whether explicitly or implicitly) to TTIP in the headlines, be it in the title, subtitle or the main image. Content concerning TTIP present in the news outlets that is not written, such as videos, cartoons or podcasts, has been automatically excluded, as well as articles that have less than 100 words have also been excluded. This parameter excludes content that simply leads to another link or announcement. This decision has been made for two reasons. The first is the difficulty of dealing with different types of content, and the second is the research-time constraints. The current selection allows for in-depth analysis of how TTIP has been discussed as a central topic in different news outlets from different countries. This is a pragmatic choice to limit the scope of the corpus. Given that the essence of the book is how TTIP was framed in different spaces of the public spheres, it is enough to limit the corpus to those articles where TTIP is the central topic, as assured by the criteria.16 Finally, it must be noted that the BBC is not only a written platform, but also a television and radio broadcaster. To level the playing field, only written articles from the BBC website have been taken into account, excluding radio or video content produced on the topic of TTIP. The BBC written news outlets’ format is generally similar to the other platforms, the main difference being that the articles are often unsigned, which resembles news agency practices (Table 1).

15 Alexa (www.alexa.com) is one of the leading companies that provide web traffic data and analytics, and it is a good way of measuring websites’ global traffic rank, as well as their national rank. The ranking position numbers correspond to June 2017. 16 It would certainly be interesting to track topics that mention TTIP as background, tracing where and in which contexts TTIP is present beyond articles that refer to it explicitly. However, the book aims to analyse how TTIP was discussed. Therefore, it is

82

A. OLEART

Table 1 News outlets selected, its characteristics and the number of articles analysed News outlet

Country

Type of news outlet

Alexa global rank

Alexa national rank

Content accessed via

Articles selected

Les Échos Médiapart Le Monde Expansión eldiario.es EL PAÍS Financial Times The Guardian BBC Total

France France France Spain Spain Spain UK

Economic Progressive Mainstream Economic Progressive Mainstream Economic

3376 9695 545 2383 2908 408 1392

97 335 16 50 60 11 194

Directly Directly Directly Directly Directly Directly Directly

126 62 141 26 291 123 119

UK

Progressive

158

17

Directly

106

UK

Mainstream

106

6

Directly

55 1049

The selected articles have been classified on the basis of genre and classified into four categories: editorials, interviews, opinion articles and information articles.17 Whereas editorials and interviews are straightforward, the border between ‘opinion’ and ‘information’ articles is in some cases blurry. In the current corpus, every article that is not explicitly an opinion article (e.g. situated in the ‘Opinion’ section) has been classed as an information article. Opinion articles are often classified as such in the news outlet where they appear and are often written by columnists and/or guest writers, rather than the correspondents and reporters coherent to include content where TTIP is dealt as a central topic and exclude content that deals with TTIP only secondarily. 17 The corpus contains one exception, for both format and practical reasons. This is because Médiapart publishes very few ‘opinion’ articles, focusing instead on in-depth investigative journalism rather than opinions. An opinionated space is nonetheless present, but it is left mainly to Médiapart ’s readers, who may publish articles in a space called ‘Le Club’ (‘The Club’). ‘Le Club’ differs from opinion articles in other journals, as a space of free expression for Médiapart ’s members, and its content does not engage the editorial board. Therefore, ‘Le Club’ is not considered part of Médiapart ’s official space, but rather a space where its members put forward their opinions without editorial filter. Given the enormous total number of articles on TTIP published in ‘Le Club’ (about 320), only those published within the blog ‘Les Invités de Médiapart ’ have been included, because they were invited by Médiapart.

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

83

Fig. 1 Steps in the identification and coding of the framing analysis

who author information articles. The difference between information and opinion articles is therefore not based on the idea that information articles are ‘objective’ and opinion pieces are ‘subjective’, given that all journalism contains a certain degree of subjectivity. However, the degree of subjectivity and objectivity and the way they are expressed distinguish the two types of content.18 Empirical research about the Europeanisation of the national public spheres has been undertaken using different methods. Koopmans and Statham (1999, 2010) used political claims-making analysis, as well as Statham and Trenz (2013a, 2013b) and De Wilde (2013). De Wilde et al. (2013) applied representative claims-making, while Hutter and Grande (2014) applied core-sentence analysis. Given the strong ideational focus of the book, however, an inductive framing analysis is the methodological choice made. The identification of a frame (see David et al., 2011 for a wider discussion on frame analysis methodological choices) responds to the following question: What is TTIP about? The framing analysis of the media content is developed on an inductive basis. The frames are identified based on the texts analysed through successive rounds of coding, rather than pre-defining the possible frames and attempting to identify them in the texts. The technique followed to identify and code the frames is summarised in Fig. 1. 18 For example, in opinion articles we tend to observe personal pronouns, exclamation marks and other explicit elements that denote subjectivity, unlike in information articles.

84

A. OLEART

Once identified, the frames are situated in different categories: depoliticised, agonistic, antagonistic and process frames. The distinction between agonistic and antagonistic frames is inspired by Mouffe, but adapted for the operationalisation of the framing analysis of the TTIP debate. The categories of frames are distinguished depending on whether the frames challenge TTIP, and on what grounds. If TTIP is framed as a ‘technical’ matter about numbers, it has been included within the depoliticised frames. If TTIP is challenged on the basis of ‘policy’, and with a counterhegemonic view from the neoliberal perspective, it has been understood as agonistic. If TTIP is used to challenge the EU as a polity, and TTIP is framed as a matter of ‘national sovereignty’ against the EU or ‘Brussels’, it will be included as an antagonistic frame, since the political community is in this case imagined as only the nation-state, and the EU is not accepted as a legitimate political arena. The goal of the media framing analysis is to measure the presence and absence of frames on TTIP per article, newspaper and country, which have been coded through Nvivo in a binary way (1-0), whether frames are present or not in the headlines and/or the body of the articles. In this way, only frames are coded, and not actors.19 The most problematic methodological choice when qualitatively coding frames in a corpus is drawing the frames’ boundaries. It is difficult to delimit where a reference to a frame starts and where does it end, and therefore requires certain criteria. The criteria for identifying the frames must find a middle ground: if the definition is too wide, frames will be found everywhere and will be impossible to distinguish. But if it is too narrow, it will be impossible to find a pattern of frame references given each text’s specificities. This puzzle has been solved inductively through successive rounds of coding. The framing analysis of media content uses a particular formula to measure the frames’ presence in the public sphere. The mere presence of frames in a news article tells us little about the frames’ hierarchy and the way in which they are prioritised by journalists. To tackle this challenge, I have separated each media article’s headlines, images and body. The book analyses the hierarchy of TTIP frames in the media by considering the

19 Although it may have proven interesting to analyse the extent to which actors are quoted directly and how they appear in media texts, it would follow a different logic, and require an effort that would put the research’s feasibility into question.

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

85

three elements of each article that constitute the headlines20 : the title, subtitle and the accompanying image. To enable this, each media article has been split into two text files (one containing the headlines—which includes article’s title, subtitle and image—and the other containing the article’s body), which have been coded separately on a binary basis (10) of whether each frame is present or not. To facilitate the presentation of the empirical results, the description of the framing of TTIP in each country uses a formula that adequately takes into account the hierarchy of frames. Assuming that the frames present in the title, subtitle and image (the headlines) are hierarchically more important than those in the articles’ body, the formula is the following: the frames present in the headlines have been attributed a value of 2, while the frames present in the articles’ body have a value of 1. Combined, they make up the framing ratio of TTIP in the public sphere that will be displayed in the graphs.21 A frame that is present both in the headlines and in the body would therefore have a total value of 3 for one article. The formula is the following: Framing Ratio of TTIP = (Presence of frames in the headlines × 2) + Frames in the articles’ body 30 = (10 × 2) + 10 The framing ratio is a useful measure to capture the politicisation and framing of TTIP: the more articles that are published and the more frequency a particular frame has, the higher the framing ratio. If a frame is present in every headline and body of the article in a data set of 10 articles, the framing ratio is 30. Equally, if a frame is present in every headline and body of the article in a data set of 100 articles, the framing ratio is 300. In consequence, an important rise of the framing ratio of a particular frame indicates not only an increase in the frequency of the frame, but also an increase in the data set on which the ratio is based.

20 When the subtitle and/or image for the article is absent, the remaining elements will be taken into account. 21 The framing ratio of TTIP will be used to simplify and illustrate the framing analysis. The complete results of the coding of articles can be found in the Annex.

86

A. OLEART

In the empirical chapters, the framing ratio is displayed in two ways. First, it is displayed in linear charts with the absolute terms of the framing ratio, comparing the presence of different frames over time. Second, the framing ratio is displayed as an overall weight in relation to other frames: if two frames are equally present, they will be displayed as having 50% each. In this second type of chart, the framing ratio does not represent the overall weight of a frame in percentage terms, but rather its weight in relation to the frames displayed and compared with. The hierarchy of frames on TTIP is analysed inductively, and more than one frame can be considered prioritised, since for example the image may contain something different from what is prioritised in the title and subtitle. There has been no distinction made between images and headlines, since they have been integrated into the same frames, leaving no uniquely ‘visual frames’. For example, images of protests with prominent signs reading ‘STOP TTIP’ have been coded as references to the mass opposition frame. Images of protests often involve a wide variety of people: young and old, women and men. This humanises the protestors and implies that the opposition to TTIP is much wider than a group of radical left-wing activists. If, additionally, the protest images are accompanied by a message reading ‘Trading away democracy’, the image has also been coded in the corresponding frame corporations vs democracy (frames are described later on). ‘Trading away democracy’ frames TTIP as undemocratic, and, accompanied by protest images, implies that citizens need to get engaged in order to stop it.22 Images have also been coded separately after creating a number of visual categories. The images’ individual categorisation accompanying the media articles on TTIP contributes to the study of the EU’s visual identity in the public sphere, which has not yet received sufficient attention from academic research. The EU’s identity and socially constructed discourse is shaped by the images circulating in the public sphere. Lastly, in addition to the aforementioned methods, some additional context and personal perspectives are provided through semi-structured interviews with a wide range of actors involved in the TTIP negotiations and its media coverage: the journalists that participated in TTIP coverage 22 A number of images are rather neutral, simply indicating that TTIP is an agreement involving both the EU and the US. This image is often represented by EU and US flags, pins or in the form of a puzzle. This type of images has simply not been coded as a reference to any frame.

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

87

by writing about it, European Commission officials involved in the negotiations, civil society (and trade union) actors that campaigned against TTIP, elected representatives at both the national and European level, and business lobbyists that lobbied the Commission in favour of TTIP and also tried to influence its representation in the media. The semi-structured interviews aim to develop a better understanding of politicisation’s relationship with Europeanisation, and provide additional elements to explain how TTIP was discussed in the European public spheres. The interviews are integrated into the narration of the results in the empirical chapters. The interviews followed a deductive path, moving from general questions (e.g. what do you think about the debate that has taken place on TTIP?) towards more concrete questions, and were organised in three parts. The first part dealt with general questions about the TTIP negotiations’ process. The second focused on actors’ relationships to other actors, including the media. The third part focused on how the interviewees assessed the success of the battle of ideas regarding TTIP, and which actors were most successful in winning the narrative on TTIP in the public sphere and why. The interviews play a complementary role to the empirical analysis of media texts. 2.3

Content and Process Frames, and Visual Categories

The framing of TTIP in the three countries displayed in the next chapters is based on the presence (and absence) of a range of frames. This subsection describes the range of frames23 and visual categories identified inductively in the media texts, the presence of which is described through figures and tables in the empirical chapters. It also contains examples of each of the frames described. The description of the frames is situated here in order to facilitate the cross-national comparisons, which will help to determine to what extent there has been a Europeanisation of the public spheres in the case of TTIP, under what frames this process has taken

23 As a disclaimer, the references to other trade agreements, such as CETA, TiSA or

to globalisation as a whole have not been coded, unless they are connected to TTIP. The frame categories have been created after an inductive framing analysis of the media content after successive rounds of coding. In consequence, while the frame categories are here described ‘a priori’, the frame categories have been created through successive rounds of coding following an inductive approach.

88

A. OLEART

place, and what type of Europeanisation (see Fig. 1 in Chapter 2) took place in the transnational TTIP debate. The frames identified are divided into two categories, content and process frames. Content frames are those that describe what TTIP is about, and they are in turn divided into three subcategories: opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic. The opportunity frames are generally positive about TTIP, while the agonistic and antagonistic frames are negative about it. That said, while portraying a negative image of TTIP, agonistic frames do not challenge the EU as a polity nor encourage a confrontation between nation-states, but rather engage critically with the negotiations’ content. Instead, antagonistic frames oppose the negotiations on the basis of national sovereignty, implying that the EU is not legitimate to negotiate trade agreements on behalf of its member states. The second category is process frames, which are not necessarily positive or negative on the content of TTIP, but rather focus on the negotiation process, rather than on the agreement’s content. There is one frame, namely lack of transparency, that has been situated as an agonistic frame— while it focuses on the process of negotiations, it often appears alongside other agonistic frames, in most cases embedded within the master frame corporations vs democracy. The section includes statements that have been coded as belonging to each of the frames. 2.3.1 Content Frames: Opportunity Frames The opportunity frames refer to those frames and counter-frames that present TTIP as an opportunity for Europe. The opportunity frames are not entirely depoliticised, particularly the second one given its geopolitical aspect. However, in both cases TTIP is framed as an opportunity that has little or no disadvantages, and its support should not be controversial, and is to the benefit of ‘Europe’. Within this category, the following opportunity frames and counter-frames have been identified: a. an economic opportunity that would growth/counter-frame: Not jobs and growth; b. an opportunity for global leadership.

bring

jobs

and

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

89

Among the opportunity frames, references are made to TTIP as an economic opportunity that might generate jobs and stimulate growth, as well as viewing TTIP as an opportunity for the EU to strengthen its position in international trade and thereby to promote European standards in a globalised economy. The jobs and growth frame makes TTIP a matter of economic output, suggesting the interpretation that it will have a positive economic impact, creating jobs and economic growth. Within the jobs and growth frame, regulations are resignified as ‘red tape’ or ‘technical barriers to trade’, because this frame interprets TTIP as a question of economic output and ignores other dimensions, such as the environment, consumer safety or corporations leverage vis-à-vis governments. This is the dominant frame used by both the European Commission and business organisations from both the EU and US, and it is based on a strong economic message. The jobs and growth frame views TTIP from neoliberal lens, reducing discussions to a battle of numbers where all that matters is the amount of jobs and growth created, and where the economy is considered self-referential and governments’ goal is to ‘free’ the market from intervention. The jobs and growth frame has a counter-frame, not jobs and growth. This counter-frame confronts and counter-argues the idea that TTIP would bring economic benefits (the jobs and growth frame). This counter-frame is based on technical terms and thus depoliticised. Rather than an autonomous frame, it is a reaction to the jobs and growth frame, which accepts the frame and counters it by questioning whether TTIP will create the promised jobs and growth. Frame jobs and growth ‘The chief US negotiator Dan Mullaney said the ultimate goal is to “create opportunities for job creating trade and investment”’. Source: BBC, ‘US and EU ‘make progress’ in free trade area talks’ BBC, 03 October 2014. Counter-frame Not jobs and growth: ‘A study of the TTIP published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London comes to slightly higher figures for the EU and US. Completion of the TPP and TTIP might raise US real incomes by 1 per cent of GDP. This is not nothing, but it is not large’. Source: Martin Wolf, ‘The embattled future of global trade policy’, FT, 12 May 2015.

90

A. OLEART

Secondly, the global leadership frame suggests that TTIP will help the EU strengthen its position in the global stage, since European businesses will become more competitive vis-à-vis other global players, such as China, as well as set global standards. This geopolitical frame focuses on the US and EU capacity to maintain global leadership from both an economic and regulatory perspective. From this perspective, the EU needs to address a changing world before it is too late by creating a transatlantic community that can extend Western influence on the long term (see Oleart & Bouza García, 2019), when the focus of economic exchanges is moving to the Pacific. Following this frame, the EU and US must reach an agreement quickly in order to stop China from global domination. TTIP is then portrayed as an opportunity to create a privileged area with the US that will both set an example and influence the behaviour of other global actors. In consequence, this frame argues that TTIP will have only winners and no losers within the EU-US alliance. TTIP is in the interest of ‘Europe’. According to this frame, the emphasis on the ‘sharing of values’ between EU and US values implies that other countries do not share those values. TTIP will have ‘losers’, but they are ‘others’, such as China or Russia. This frame’s political consequence is to often situate those opposing TTIP within the EU as ‘Eurosceptics’, ‘anti-European’ or ‘anti-West’. Frame global leadership ‘A proposed transatlantic trade and investment pact offers Europe an opportunity to avoid geopolitical irrelevance’. Source: Philip Stephens, ‘China is giving Europe a harsh lesson in geopolitics’, FT, 13 June 2013.

2.3.2 Content Frames: Agonistic Frames Agonistic frames refer to those frames and counter-frames that imply a negative interpretation of TTIP, portraying it in a fundamentally different way from the official narrative. For this reason, the category does not include the not jobs and growth frame, because it is simply a response to the opportunity framing of TTIP, rather than an autonomous and challenging frame. All agonistic frames challenge the neoliberal paradigm on which the agreement is based, but in different ways and with different degrees. Among the agonistic frames, there is a master frame, corporations vs democracy, that is considered to be agonistic, because attempts to reframe TTIP in a fundamentally different way as a policy, but not the

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

91

EU as a polity. Corporations vs democracy is a master frame because it can narrate all the other threat frames under it. a. Agonistic master frame: corporations vs democracy; b. TTIP is a challenge to standards/counter-frame: an agreement that will not lower EU’s standards; c. Threat to public services/counter-frame: an agreement that is not a threat to public services; d. A threat connected to the creation of private arbitration courts or private tribunals/counter-frame: an agreement that will protect investors and preserve government’s right to regulate; e. Lack of transparency/counter-frame: a transparent and balanced negotiation process. The agonistic master frame is corporations vs democracy, which portrays TTIP as a project driven by big multinational corporations, suggesting the interpretation the power they would gain from TTIP threatens democracy in Europe. It is a divisive framing that places the interests of ‘corporations’ or ‘big businesses’ in opposition to those of ‘citizens’ and ‘democracy’ at large. This frame is therefore much more aggressive than the frames identified and described earlier, encouraging collective action to stop the ‘Trojan Horse’ that is TTIP. This frame goes to the root of the capitalist system, the private power that the ‘capitalist class’ (represented by big multinational corporations) systemically exerts over democracy and citizens at large. While frontally opposing TTIP, this frame does not differentiate between national and non-national actors, but between ‘corporations’ and ‘European citizens’ or ‘democracy’. This master frame does not question the EU as a polity and not even the European Commission’s authority to negotiate international trade agreements. In consequence, this is an agonistic frame vis-à-vis the opportunity frame jobs and growth. The corporations vs democracy frame does not operate in a vacuum, but serves as a master frame that can include other frames in its narrative, such as challenge to regulatory standards, threat to public services, lack of transparency or private tribunals. In this way, the corporations vs democracy frame contests TTIP as politics in the Union, rather than politics of the Union. The corporations vs democracy frame is sponsored by civil society actors and trade unions, and it is the dominant frame among actors connected to the alter-globalisation movement.

92

A. OLEART

Frame corporations vs democracy ‘When everything has been globalised except our consent, corporations fill the void. In a system that governments have shown no interest in reforming, global power is often scarcely distinguishable from corporate power. It is exercised through backroom deals between bureaucrats and lobbyists. This is how negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) began’. Source: George Monbiot, ‘Give and take in the EU-US trade deal? Sure. We give, the corporations take’, The Guardian, 10 March 2014.

The challenge to standards frame portrays TTIP as a challenge to certain regulatory standards. While this frame does not necessarily oppose the TTIP project as a whole, it frames it very differently from those frames that support the negotiations. Instead of focusing on the agreement’s potential economic output, and thereby entering a battle of numbers, this frame portrays TTIP as a matter of domestic regulations dealing with the environment, labour standards or consumer and food safety— for instance, touching upon genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The challenge to standards frame has a counter-frame, not lowering standards. According to this counter-frame, TTIP will not reduce European’s regulatory standards in any domain. The rationale is that TTIP will increase economic growth, create jobs and will not lower EU standards. The not lowering standards counter-frame is mainly sponsored by the European Commission and national governments defending TTIP from its critics. Frame challenge to standards ‘The anti-poverty campaign group War on Want have accused the officials negotiating the deal of trying to remove regulatory barriers that provide important social safeguards and environmental protection’. Source: Katie Allen, ‘EU-US trade deal could add £10bn to UK economy a year, claims minister’, The Guardian, 01 September 2014. Counter-frame Not lowering standards: ‘We are clear about the bedrock principles of our negotiations. We will never negotiate a deal that would lower our high standards on food safety, health or environmental protection; or allow products on to the European market that can’t be sold today’.

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

93

Source: Cecilia Malmström and Jonathan Hill, ‘Don’t believe the antiTTIP hype – increasing trade is a no-brainer’, The Guardian, 16 February 2015.

The third agonistic frame is threat to public services, which suggests that TTIP could lead to the privatisation of certain public services. This frame is almost exclusively present in the British public sphere, where it largely refers to the threat that TTIP poses for the National Health Service (NHS). The threat to public services frame has a counter-frame, no threat to public services. According to this counter-frame, TTIP will not harm public services, which are ‘excluded’ from the negotiations, and the agreement will not lead to their privatisation. Frame threat to public services ‘Anti-TTIP campaigners claim one million people have signed a petition against the deal, mainly because of worries that it could open the door to US health companies running parts of the NHS’. Source: Rowena Mason, ‘Corporate wolves’ will exploit TTIP trade deal, ‘MPs warned’, The Guardian, 15 January 2015. Counter-frame No threat to public services: ‘The European Commission says the specific fears about possible constraints on future NHS policies are misplaced’. Source: Andrew Walker, ‘EU and US trade talks to resume’, BBC, 14 July 2014.

The fourth agonistic frame is private tribunals, which focuses on the investment protection mechanisms negotiated within TTIP.24 This frame implies frontal opposition to the inclusion of an investment protection mechanism, but does not imply a frontal opposition to TTIP as a whole. The private tribunals frame interprets TTIP as a matter of creating parallel private arbitration courts that could allow foreign investors to challenge new regulations that may decrease their profits. While this frame overlaps with the corporations vs democracy frame on several occasions, it is differentiated in that it only focuses on the creation of private arbitration courts within TTIP, rather than on TTIP as a whole. The private tribunals frame

24 The ISDS mechanism will evolve into the Investment Court System (ICS).

94

A. OLEART

has right to regulate as its counter-frame. This counter-frame argues that the investment protection mechanism in TTIP will both protect investors and preserve governments’ right to regulate. While emphasising states’ right to regulate, this frame hints that governments should take investors’ interests into account to protect foreign investment. Frame private tribunals ‘A highly controversial part of TTIP involves dispute resolution, allowing companies to take a government to an international court. Critics say an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) would benefit corporations at the expense of democracy’. Source: BBC, ‘MPs seek more detail on controversial US-EU trade talks’, BBC, 25 March 2015. Counter-frame Right to Regulate: ‘Announcing the public consultation, EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said “governments must always be free to regulate so they can protect people and the environment”’. Source: BBC, ‘Free trade: EU frets over US investment talks’, BBC, 22 January 2014.

The last agonistic frame is lack of transparency, which focuses on the TTIP negotiations as a process that lacks transparency and balanced interest representation in its consultation processes, where business interests are better-positioned to influence the content than civil society organisations or trade unions. Its counter-frame is transparent process, which responds to the lack of transparency frame by countering the criticism that the negotiations lacked transparency, arguing that the TTIP negotiations have followed a transparent and balanced negotiation process, in which a wide range of stakeholders, and not only business actors, have been consulted. Frame lack of transparency ‘The deal, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), is being negotiated behind the closed doors at the European commission, between EU bureaucrats and delegates from the US’. Source: Matthew Taylor, ‘Two-third of voters in Tory marginals want NHS exempt from US trade pact’, The Guardian, 07.08.2014. Counter-frame Transparent process

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

95

‘The EU Trade Commissioner, Karel de Gucht, said he was “delighted EU governments have chosen today to make the TTIP negotiating mandate public - something I’ve been encouraging them to do for a long time. It further underlines our commitment to transparency as we pursue the negotiations. And it allows everyone to see precisely how the EU wants this deal to work”’. Source: BBC, ‘EU reveals US trade talks agenda in key TTIP document’, BBC, 09 October 2014.

2.3.3 Content Frames: Antagonistic Frames The antagonistic frames category refers to only one frame, the threat to sovereignty. Like agonistic frames, this category challenges executive actors’ framing of TTIP. However, the frame not only contests TTIP and its framing, but opposes the EU as a polity, and often puts the EU against nation-states, or puts nation-states against each other. This frame mobilises antagonistic opposition to TTIP, since the EU is seen as inherently illegitimate to negotiate trade agreements on behalf of its member states. In consequence, it does not see the EU as a legitimate polity or political arena. The different types of references to ‘sovereignty’ make this frame complex, sometimes combining it with the corporations vs democracy frame, thereby combining agonistic and antagonistic conflict at the same time in certain particular contexts. The threat to sovereignty frame’s presence (or absence) is taken as an indicator of antagonistic politicisation. Actors opposing further European integration,25 such as the French Front National, often used this frame to introduce the idea that TTIP surrendered the national sovereignty of France to the EU, therefore encouraging an ideational battle between national identities with the potential to pit countries against each other, or the member states against the EU. That said, some NGOs or farmers, such as those reclaiming ‘food sovereignty’, have also used this frame. While it approaches ‘sovereignty’ differently, merely defending the value of sovereignty situates the playing field as a matter of sovereignty, thereby potentially reproducing the 25 Sponsors of the TTIP as a threat to sovereignty frame do not necessarily come only from the extreme right, such as Marine Le Pen’s Front National. As Chapter 1 describes, the left side of the spectrum also includes actors opposing European integration, as exemplified by the ‘Lexit’ campaign in the UK’s 2016 EU membership referendum, arguing for a left-wing Brexit.

96

A. OLEART

conflict between the EU and the nation-state. This antagonistic frame is an effort of politics of the Union, rather than politics in the Union. Frame threat to sovereignty ‘Brussels has kept quiet about a treaty that would let rapacious companies subvert our laws, rights and national sovereignty’. Source: George Monbiot, ‘This transatlantic trade deal is a full-frontal assault on democracy’, The Guardian, 04 November 2013.

2.3.4 Process Frames Process frames are those that focus on the TTIP negotiations as a process, rather than their content, as do the three categories described above. Process frames can come from either the political actors involved or the journalists themselves, and they are not necessarily positive or negative about the agreement’s content. Within this category, two frames have been identified: a. Horse race b. Mass opposition. The first process frame is the horse race, which focuses on the negotiations’ regular updates and viability of success, including the disagreements between executive actors participating in the negotiations. Executive actors’ disagreements on TTIP tend to refer to the EU on the one hand and the US on the other. However, this frame also includes disagreements among EU member states (e.g. ‘France demands the negotiations to stop’). This is a typical journalistic frame equivalent to the horse race frame during an election, which focuses on each candidate’s chances to win, rather than on their policy differences. Applied to TTIP, this frame focuses on the horse race of TTIP, assessing the tactics mobilised by the negotiating parties, and its difficulties in taking the negotiations forward. This frame’s umbrella includes a certain diversity, as it includes regular updates on the negotiations’ status (e.g. ‘EU and US continue negotiating TTIP in the 6th round’).

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

97

Frame horse race ‘Today in Washington, Michael Froman, the US trade representative, will sit down with Karel De Gucht, his opposite number at the EU, to review the progress they have made towards the goal of sealing a Transatlantic Trade and Investment’. Source: FT View, ‘No time to waste on transatlantic trade’, FT, 16 February 2014.

The second process frame is the mass opposition frame, which focuses on the widespread opposition to TTIP. This frame is connected to the mass demonstrations against TTIP and does not focus on the content of TTIP, but rather on the diverse non-governmental opposition to it. While this frame may overlap with the horse race on certain occasions, the difference lies in the fact that the mass opposition frame focuses on non-governmental actors’ opposition to TTIP, while the former only includes that of executive actors. This frame has been coded most prominently when images of demonstrations against TTIP or references to such demonstrations are present. Frame mass opposition ‘More than three million people in Europe have signed a petition against the deal while an estimated 250,000 people marched in Berlin last weekend against the proposals’. Source: Phillip Inman, ‘Prospect of TTIP already undermining EU food standards, say campaigners’, The Guardian, 18 October 2015.

2.3.5 Visual Categories: Building a Visual Imagery of TTIP While the frames referenced by the articles’ images have been coded as part of the framing analysis (e.g. images of protests have been coded as contributing to the mass opposition frame), the images have also been coded individually by a different set of categories that do not correspond to the frames described above. The images matter because they help to construct TTIP in the public imaginary, and sometimes support a particular frame, even though that is not always the case. The categories have been created to simplify as much as possible the wide range of images that the nine analysed news outlets published on

98

A. OLEART

the TTIP debate. Unlike in the framing analysis, only one code has been attributed to each image. And, on occasions when an image could be coded in two different categories, the following hierarchy has been used: When executive actors appear alongside other actors, such as MP/MEPs or business actors, the image has been coded in the latter. When images are present of many people protesting or marching against TTIP with signs referring to it as a threat to public services or corporations vs democracy, it has been coded in the former. The categories should not be understood as frames and do not correspond inherently to frames, although in some cases they can have also been coded as belonging to a frame. The first category includes all images related to protests. In this category, we find images of flyers announcing a demonstration, Greenpeace actions situating a massive poster against TTIP in Madrid or people marching in the streets. Images emphasising violence in the protests would have had a separate category, but this was unnecessary given the absence of such images. All the images included in this category have been coded as references to the mass opposition frame. The second category is MPs/MEPs. This category includes images of MPs, MEPs and regional representatives, such as mayors or regional MPs, but also images of parliaments, including the European Parliament. The third category is ‘trading goods’, a category that includes images of the manufacturing and trade of goods, as well as graphs of the exchanges between the EU and US. Images in this category have also been coded as references to the jobs and growth frame, situating TTIP as a matter of economics. The fourth category is executive actors, which can include EU-level actors such as Commission representatives or national-level actors such as Prime Ministers or Presidents. This category has not been coded as horse race nor any other frame. While it could have been coded as such, these images have been thought to provide symbolic authority to the articles’ claims, rather than correspond to any particular frame. The category ‘public services’ includes images mainly of British National Health Service (NHS) personnel, given the UK anti-TTIP campaign’s close relationship with the campaign to defend the NHS. Images coded in this category have also been coded as belonging to the threat to public services frame. The category ‘food safety and environment’ includes images of food and the environment, which has been coded in most cases as belonging to the challenge to regulatory standards frame. Finally, the ‘others’ category includes a wide range of images that are difficult to categorise, and have

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

99

little relevance. They include flags of the EU, US and European countries, puzzles with EU and US colours, or images of individuals and other images that do not correspond to the categories described above.

Bibliography Aaronson, S. A. (2002). Taking trade to the streets: The lost history of public efforts to shape globalization. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Ali, T. (2015). The extreme centre: A second warning. London: Verso Books. Almond, G. (1960). The American people and foreign policy. New York: Praeger. Bachrach, P., & Baratz, M. (1962). The two faces of power. American Political Science Review, 56, 947–952. Ban, C. (2016). Ruling ideas: How global neoliberalism goes local. New York: Oxford University Press. Barnett, S. (1998). Dumbing down or reaching out: Is it tabloidisation wot done it? The Political Quarterly, 69(B), 75–90. Bauman, Z. (2012). The crisis of leadership in an era of interregnum: Reflections ˇ on politics in the light of Václav Havel’s departure. Sociologický Casopis/Czech Sociological Review, 563–567. Beetz, J. P. (2015). Stuck on the Rubicon? The resonance of the idea of demoicracy in media debates on the EU’s legitimacy. Journal of European Public Policy, 22(1), 37–55. Berman, S. (2013). Ideational theorizing in the social sciences since “policy paradigms, social learning, and the state”. Governance, 26(2), 217–237. Blyth, M. (2002). Great transformations: Economic ideas and institutional change in the twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blyth, M. (2013). Austerity: The history of a dangerous idea. New York: Oxford University Press. Carstensen, M. B., & Matthijs, M. (2017). Of paradigms and power: British economic policy making since Thatcher. Governance, 2017, 1–17. Coen, D., & Katsaitis, A. (2013). Chameleon pluralism in the EU: An empirical study of the European Commission interest group density and diversity across policy domains. Journal of European Public Policy, 20(8), 1104–1119. Conrad, M., & Oleart, A. (2019). Framing TTIP in the wake of the Greenpeace leaks: agonistic and deliberative perspectives on frame resonance and communicative power. Journal of European Integration, 1–19. Crespy, A. (2016). Welfare markets in Europe: The democratic challenge of European integration. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Crespy, A., & Menz, G. (2015). Commission entrepreneurship and the debasing of social Europe before and after the Eurocrisis. Journal of Common Market Studies, 53(4), 753–768.

100

A. OLEART

Crespy, A., & Parks, L. (2017). The connection between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition in the EU. From ACTA to the financial crisis. Journal of European Integration, 39(4), 453–467. Crouch, C. (2014). Democracy at a TTIP’ing point: Seizing a slim chance to reassert democratic sovereignty in Europe. IPPR Progressive Review, 21(3), 176–181. David, C. C., Atun, J. M., Fille, E., & Monterola, C. (2011). Finding frames: Comparing two methods of frame analysis. Communication Methods and Measures, 5(4), 329–351. De Ville, F., & Orbie, J. (2014). The European Commission’s neoliberal trade discourse since the crisis: Legitimizing continuity through subtle discursive change. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 16, 149–167. De Ville, F., & Siles-Brügge, G. (2016). TTIP: The truth about the transatlantic trade and investment partnership. Cambridge: Polity. De Ville, F., & Siles-Brügge, G. (2017). Why TTIP is a game-changer and its critics have a point. Journal of European Public Policy, 24(10), 1491–1505. De Wilde, P. (2013). Representative claims analysis: Theory meets method. Journal of European Public Policy, 20(2), 278–294. De Wilde, P., Leupold, A., & Schmidtke, H. (2016). Introduction: The differentiated politicisation of European governance. West European Politics, 39(1), 3–22. De Wilde, P., Michailidou, A., & Trenz, H. J. (2013). Contesting Europe: Exploring Euroscepticism in online media coverage. Colchester: ECPR Press. Della Porta, D. (Ed.). (2007). The global justice movement: Cross-national and transnational perspectives. New York: Taylor & Francis. Della Porta, D., & Caiani, M. (2009). Social movements and Europeanization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Díez Medrano, J. (2003). Framing Europe. Attitudes to European Integration in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Dür, A., & De Bièvre, D. (2007). Inclusion without influence? NGOs in European trade policy. Journal of Public Policy, 27 (1), 79–101. Dür, A., & Mateo, G. (2014). Public opinion and interest group influence: How citizen groups derailed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Journal of European Public Policy, 21(8), 1199–1217. Eliasson, L. J., & Huet, P. G. D. (2019). Civil society, rhetoric of resistance, and transatlantic trade. Springer. Elsig, M. (2002). The EU’s Common Commercial Policy: Institutions, Interests and Ideas. Aldershot: Ashgate. Entman, R. M., Matthes, J., & Pellicano, L. (2009). Nature, sources, and effects of news framing. In K. Wahl-Jorgensen & T. Hanitzsch (Eds.), The handbook of journalism studies (pp. 175–190). London: Routledge.

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

101

Eurobarometer. (2017, Automn). Media use in the European Union, Standard Eurobarometer, 88. European Commission. (2013a, February 11). Final Report: High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth. Available at http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/ docs/2013/february/tradoc_150519.pdf. Accessed 20 May 2018. European Commission. (2013b, February 21). Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: Opening free trade negotiations with the United States. Available at http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-13-147_en.htm. Accessed 20 May 2018. European Parliament. (1990). Transatlantic declaration on EC-US relations. Available online: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/124320/trans_ declaration_90_en.pdf. Accessed 20 May 2018. Fairclough, N. (2000). New labour, new language? London: Psychology Press. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777–795. Franklin, B. (1994). Packaging politics: Political communication in Britain’s media democracy. London: Edward Arnold. Friedman, M. (2009). Capitalism and freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. New York: Free Press. Gamson, W. A. (2004). Bystanders, public opinion, and the media. In The Blackwell companion to social movements (pp. 242–261). Oxford: Blackwell. Giddens, A. (1994). Beyond left and right: The future of radical politics. Cambridge: Polity. Giddens, A. (1998). The third way: The renewal of social democracy. Cambridge: Polity. Gramsci, A. (1978). Selections from political writings, 1921–1926 (Q. Hoare, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hall, P. A. (1993). Policy paradigms, social learning, and the state: The case of economic policymaking in Britain. Comparative Politics, 1993, 275–296. Hallin, D. C., & Mancini, P. (2004). Comparing media systems: Three models of media and politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2004). Multitude: War and democracy in the age of empire. New York: The Penguin Press. Hay, C. (2002). Political analysis: A critical introduction. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Heinderyckx, F. (1998). L’Europe des médias. Bruxelles: Université Libre de Bruxelles. Hindess, B. R. R. (2004). Liberalism–what’s in a name? In W. Larner & W. Walters (Eds.), Global governmentality (pp. 35–51). London: Routledge. Hofstede, G. (1998). Attitudes, values and organizational culture: Disentangling the concepts. Organization Studies, 19(3), 477–493.

102

A. OLEART

Hutter, S., & Grande, E. (2014). Politicizing Europe in the national electoral arena: A comparative analysis of five West European countries, 1970–2010. Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(5), 1002–1018. Hutter, S., Grande, E., & Kriesi, H. (2016). Politicising Europe: Integration and Mass politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johnston, J., & Laxer, G. (2003). Solidarity in the age of globalization: Lessons from the anti-MAI and Zapatista struggles. Theory and Society, 32(1), 39–91. Katz, E. (1959). Mass communication research and the study of popular culture: An editorial note on a possible future for this journal. Studies in Public Communication, 2, 1–6. Kauppi, N., Palonen, K., & Wiesner, C. (2016). The politification and politicisation of the EU. Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory, 19(1), 72–90. Koopmans, R., & Statham, P. (1999). Political claims analysis: Integrating protest event and political discourse approaches’. Mobilization, 4(2), 203–221. Koopmans, R., & Statham, P. (2010). Theoretical framework, research design, and methods. In R. Koopmans & P. Statham (Eds.), The making of a European public sphere. Media discourse and political contention (pp. 34–59). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. (2014). Don’t think of an elephant! Know your values and frame the debate. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing. Lang, A. (2011). World trade law after neoliberalism: Re-imagining the global economic order. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lawrence, R. G. (2010). Researching political news framing: Established ground and new horizons. In P. D’Angelo & J. A. Kuypers (Eds.), Doing news framing analysis: Empirical and theoretical perspectives (pp. 265–285). London: Routledge. Lloyd, J. (2004). What the media are doing to our politics. London: Constable. Mercea, D. (2017). Building contention word-by-word: Social media usage in the European stop ACTA movement. In M. Barisione & A. Michailidou (Eds.), Social Media and European politics: Rethinking power and legitimacy in the digital era (pp. 105–122). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Meunier, S. (2000). ‘EU trade policy: The ‘exclusive’ versus shared competence debate. In M. G. Cowles & M. Smith (Eds.), The state of the European Union: Risks, reform, resistance, and revival (pp. 325–346). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meunier, S. (2003). Trade policy and political legitimacy in the European Union. Comparative European Politics, 1(1), 67–90. Meunier, S. (2005). Trading voices: The European Union in international commercial negotiations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

3

A MEDIA-CENTRED APPROACH TO ANALYSE …

103

Meunier, S., & Nicolaïdis, K. (1999). Who speaks for Europe? The delegation of trade authority in the European Union. Journal of Common Market Studies, 37 (3), 477–501. Michailidou, A. (2017). Twitter, public engagement and the Eurocrisis: More than an echo chamber? In M. Barisione, & A. Michailidou (Eds.), Social media and European politics: Rethinking power and legitimacy in the digital era (pp. 241–266). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Morse, J. C., & Keohane, R. O. (2014). Contested multilateralism. The Review of International Organizations, 9(4), 385–412. Mouffe, C. (2013). Agonistics: Thinking the world politically. London: Verso. Nicolaidis, K., & Shaffer, G. (2005). Transnational mutual recognition regimes: Governance without global government. Law and Contemporary Problems, 68(3/4), 263–317. Oleart, A., & Bouza García, L. (2019). La lutte narrative pour la signification et la politisation de «l’Europe» dans les négociations du TTIP: le récit de l’Europe bouclier contre le populisme transnational. Politique européenne, 66(4), 16–42. Pan, Z., & Kosicki, G. M. (2005). Framing and understanding of citizenship. In S. Dunwoody, L. B. Becker, D. M. McLeod, & G. M. Kosicki (Eds.), The evolution of key mass communication concepts: Honoring Jack M. McLeod (pp. 165–204). New York: Hampton Press. Parks, L. (2015). Social movement campaigns on EU Policy: In the corridors and in the streets. London: Springer. Peck, J., & Tickell, A. (2002). Neoliberalizing space. Antipode, 34(3), 380–404. Polanyi, Karl. (1964). The great transformation. Boston: Beacon Press. Pollack, M. A., & Shaffer, G. C. (Eds.). (2001). Transatlantic governance in the global economy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Rauh, C. (2016). A responsive technocracy? EU politicisation and the consumer policies of the European Commission. Colchester: ECPR Press. Rodrik, D. (2011). The globalization paradox: Why global markets, states, and democracy can’t coexist. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ryner, M., & Cafruny, A. (2016). The European Union and global capitalism: Origins, development and crisis. Macmillan International Higher Education. Schmidt, V. A., & Thatcher, M. (Eds.). (2013). Resilient liberalism in Europe’s political economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siles-Brügge, G. (2013). The power of economic ideas: A constructivist political economy of EU trade policy. Journal of Contemporary European Research, 9(4), 597–617. Siles-Brügge, G. (2014). Constructing European Union trade policy: A global idea of Europe. Springer.

104

A. OLEART

Sparks, C. (1991). Goodbye, Hildy Johnson: The vanishing “serious press”. In P. Dahlgren & C. Sparks (Eds.), Communication and citizenship: Journalism and the public sphere. London: Routledge. Statham, P., & Trenz, H. J. (2013a). How European Union politicization can emerge through contestation: The constitution case. Journal of Common Market Studies, 51(5), 965–980. Statham, P., & Trenz, H. J. (2013b). The politicization of Europe. Contesting the Constitution. London: Routledge. Streeck, W., & Thelen, K. A. (Eds.). (2005). Beyond continuity: Institutional change in advanced political economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tempest, M. (2002, June 10). Mandelson: We are all Thatcherites now. The Guardian. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ 2008/jan/25/wereallkeynesiansagain. Accessed 19 June 2018. Trachtman, J. P. (2007). Embedding mutual recognition at the WTO. Journal of European Public Policy, 14(5), 780–799. Van den Hoven, A. (2004). Assuming leadership in multilateral economic institutions: The EU’s ‘development round’ discourse and strategy. West European Politics, 27 (2), 256–283. Van Gorp, B. (2010). Strategies to take subjectivity out of framing analysis. In P. D’Angelo & J. A. Kuypers (Eds.), Doing news framing analysis: Empirical and theoretical perspectives (pp. 84–109). New York: Routledge. Van Harten, G. (2005). Private authority and transnational governance: the contours of the international system of investor protection. Review of International Political Economy, 12(4), 600–623. Weisbrot, M. (2008, January 25). We’re all Keynesians–Again. The Guardian. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jan/25/ wereallkeynesiansagain. Accessed 19 June 2018. Winslett, G. (2016). How regulations became the crux of trade politics. Journal of World Trade, 50(1), 47–70. Woll, C. (2008). Firm interests: How governments shape lobbying on global trade. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Young, A. R. (2016). Not your parents’ trade politics: The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations. Review of International Political Economy, 23(3), 345–378. Young, A. R., & Peterson, J. (2006). The EU and the new trade politics. Journal of European Public Policy, 13(6), 795–814. Young, A. R., & Peterson, J. (2014). Parochial global Europe: 21st century trade politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 4

Framing TTIP in Spain

1 The (Lack of) EU Politicisation in Spain and Its ‘Permissive Consensus’: Europe as a Path to Modernisation In Spain, the contestation of the EU and its policies has traditionally been very weak. Once the Francoist dictatorship ended in 1975, there was a concern that, from a social, economic, cultural and political point of view, Spain was lagging behind other Western European countries. According to Díez Medrano (2003), many Spanish citizens took a selfcritical perspective, blaming their own country for its position vis-à-vis other (Western) European countries. For Spanish people, the European project represented the path towards modernisation, leaving behind the isolation of the Francoist dictatorship (1939–1975). In this way, European integration has largely been seen in Spain as an opportunity for political and economic modernisation. In the words of Díez Medrano (2003, p. 145), support for European integration was motivated by ‘the desire to break with Spain’s international isolation and irrelevance’. During Spanish democracy’s early days after 1975, there was a certain idealisation of European integration in Spain. A dictatorship had just ended, and an attempted ‘coup d’état’ in 1981 further encouraged the perspective that European integration was the way forward for democracy against the background of the Spanish nationalist dictatorship led by Franco. According to Díez Medrano (2003, pp. 151–152), ‘Spain’s © The Author(s) 2021 A. Oleart, Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53637-4_4

105

106

A. OLEART

modernisation and democratic stability arguments in fact weighed more in the decision to support membership than did economic ones’. During the early days of Spanish post-Francoist democracy, it was left-wing actors, rather than the right, who supported ‘rejoining’ Europe politically, socially and culturally. This process ultimately led to the accession of Spain to the European Economic Community in 1986, under the leadership of the Socialist Prime Minister Felipe González, who rose to power in 1982. To a great extent, the mainstream but rather progressive newspaper EL PAÍS ‘contributed to the construction of pro-European attitudes as a project of the left, which contrasted to the isolationist and anti-European project of the right’ (Díez Medrano, 2003, p. 152). Progressively, however, Spain’s right-wing ideological space also accepted the European integration project. Both the left and right’s acceptance of the European integration process led to a situation of a ‘permissive consensus’ (Lindberg & Scheingold, 1970) in Spain, where the EU is hardly controversial, and the majority of the population passively accepts it without popular participation. The ‘permissive consensus’ in Spain is well-exemplified by the national referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty (ECT) (2005). The Treaty received overwhelming support (82% yes) but experienced the weakest mobilisation in Spanish political participation history (the turnout was of 42%). The mainstream political parties, Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) and Partido Popular (PP), government and leader of the opposition, and the two biggest trade unions, Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) and Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) supported the ‘yes’ vote for the Constitutional Treaty, while civil society actors in most cases remained silent; an attitude coherent with the idea of the ‘permissive consensus’. There was a small coalition opposing the Treaty, composed of actors strongly involved in the alter-globalisation movement, such as Ecologistas en Acción (EeA) or ATTAC Spain (Bouza & Oleart, 2018). However, unlike the campaign for the ‘non’ in France (supported by the left-wing of the French Socialist Party), the Spanish campaign against the European Constitution failed to achieve support among political parties beyond the radical left-wing party Izquierda Unida (IU). EU affairs suffered a slight politicisation in Spain during the 2011 Indignados movement, a strongly decentralised network of alterglobalisation, youth and internet activists (Flesher Fominaya, 2015). The 2011 Indignados movement had a strong European dimension—with up

4

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

107

to 200,000 people demonstrating across the country against the ‘Euro pact’ on 19 June 2011, Spain’s first mass demonstration concerning an EU issue (Ortega Dolz, 2011). The politicisation was agonistic rather than antagonistic vis-à-vis the EU, as it is reflected by one of the protest’s slogans: ‘Europe for the citizens and not for the markets’. The critical perspective vis-à-vis the EU in Spain continued after the Indignados movement. This is reflected in the 2014 EU elections, where Podemos, a newly formed left-wing party founded by activists from the Indignados movement, received over a million votes (8% of the total voters). While the EU elections remain a matter of essentially national politics, Podemos put forward an ambitious anti-austerity programme with a strong European dimension, suggesting, among other policy proposals, to stop TTIP, to increase the European Parliament’s role in the European Central Bank’s (ECB) decision-making process, or to create a European public rating agency. Combined with the 10% vote share received by Izquierda Plural, the traditional left-wing party to the left of the Socialist PSOE, it indicated a spark of contestation vis-à-vis the EU led by a social critique from the left. In 2020, Podemos joined PSOE in a coalition government. However, despite this process, the politicisation of EU affairs remains limited to few episodes, such as TTIP. In sum, since the Francoist dictatorship fell in 1975, the Spanish debate of the EU has been characterised by a traditionally positive but depoliticised vision of the European project. This is illustrated by the fact that not one political party that questions the European integration process as a whole has been represented in the Spanish Parliament, neither from the left nor the right, and few political actors have politicised EU policies at all. Combined with the historically low salience of EU issues and the involvement of only a few professionalised organisations along with some alter-globalisation activists, the Spain’s political debate about the EU fits well with the idea of the ‘permissive consensus’. However, the 2011 Indignados movement had a strong European and left-wing dimension, and this vision was represented in the 2014 EU elections with the emergence of Podemos. The late politicisation of the EU in Spain indicates a progressive introduction of EU issues in the Spanish national public sphere. While it is too early to tell to what extent this trend will continue, the analysis of the TTIP debate in Spain will contribute to a better understanding of the framing of ‘Europe’ in Spain, and how it relates to subsequent events, such as the politicisation of the EU in the response to the COVID-19 crisis in 2020.

108

A. OLEART

2

The Evolution of the Agonistic TTIP Debate in the Spanish Public Sphere 2.1

Overview of the TTIP Debate in Spain

The Spanish sample is composed of 440 media articles that refer to TTIP in their headlines or main image. The Spanish sample is larger than the French or British samples, largely due to the wide TTIP coverage given by the progressive news outlet eldiario.es, who published almost twice as many articles as the economic Expansión and the mainstream EL PAÍS combined. This is a first indication that TTIP as an issue was pushed into the public sphere mainly from the left. A closer look at the article types reveals the great extent to which TTIP became controversial in the Spanish public sphere, given the considerable number of opinion articles, particularly in the mainstream EL PAÍS and the progressive eldiario.es . This indicates that news outlets did not simply report news about the negotiations, but rather opened their platforms to a number of perspectives on TTIP. Regardless of whether the articles were positive or negative on TTIP and the way they framed it, the mere fact that so many opinion articles were published indicates that a substantial debate around the issue, led to a great extent by the progressive eldiario.es. This confirms that TTIP became controversial in Spain essentially from the left, while the economic journal, Expansión, published hardly any opinion articles (Table 1). The articles’ chronology in the three Spanish outlets (see Fig. 1, which shows articles published per semester in each of the three news outlets) reveals that TTIP became an increasingly important in the Spanish political agenda over time. The TTIP negotiations were not a salient issue when they were announced (February 2013) nor when they formally Table 1 Number of articles sampled by article type and news outlet from the Spanish media News outlet Expansión eldiario.es EL PAÍS Total

Information

Opinion

Interview

Editorial

Letter

Total

23 172 76 271

3 103 34 143

0 16 6 22

0 0 4 4

0 0 3 3

26 291 123 440

4

EL PAIS

eldiario.es

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

109

Expansión

100

80

60

40

20

0 13 01

13 02

14 01

14 02

15 01

15 02

16 01

16 02

Fig. 1 Chronological evolution by semester of the number of articles sampled in the three Spanish news outlets (In the horizontal axis, the numbers refer to the year and the semester: e.g. ‘13 01’ = first semester of 2013)

began (June 2013), but rather became a salient issue over time, and particularly from the last months of 2014 onwards. Interestingly, the progressive eldiario.es , published its first article on TTIP in September 2013, while EL PAÍS and Expansión started their TTIP coverage in March and July 2013, respectively. However, eldiario.es began to give it much more extensive coverage in the second semester of 2014. This coverage peaked in May 2016 during the Greenpeace leaks, an episode that will be built upon later on. Despite the fact that EL PAÍS had exclusive access in Spain to the Greenpeace leaks, eldiario.es was the most prominent publisher of articles on TTIP during May 2016. In contrast, the economic Expansión did not cover TTIP in a salient way at any moment during the negotiations, not even during the Greenpeace leaks that will be discussed later. This might indicate that Spanish business and financial elites were not as interested as those in France and the UK, as we shall see in the next chapters. Overall, agonistic frames (corporations vs democracy, challenge to standards, private tribunals and lack of transparency) overwhelmingly drove the TTIP debate in Spain, mainly introduced by the progressive eldiario.es. Opportunity frames (jobs and growth and global leadership) remain present as a whole, while the antagonistic frame (threat to

110

A. OLEART Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Threat to Sovereignty

Global leadership Private tribunals

Challenge to standards Lack of Transparency

EL PAIS

eldiario.es

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 2 Framing Ratio (R) in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled Spanish news outlets (The graphs include in the same category both the frames and their counter-frames [in case a frame has a counter-frame])

sovereignty) is marginal. The Spanish TTIP debate was dominated by references to agonistic frames challenging the negotiations, focusing on its potential threat to standards and the undemocratic power of multinational corporations. Additionally, the process frame mass opposition is also widely present in the Spanish media. This is a first indication that the TTIP debate was not driven by the negotiations’ conflict-ridden character between the European and the American negotiators, but rather by the agreement’s content, and the mass opposition it faced across Europe and particularly in Spain. In consequence, the Spanish media’s dominant story on TTIP manifests in that it is a trade agreement likely to lead to dismantling, bypassing or lowering established standards in areas such as the environment, food safety or consumer protection. Particularly in the progressive eldiario.es , it is argued that big corporations drive the negotiations’ process, they are its main beneficiaries, and are also lobbying for it behind closed doors. This is reflected in the Fig. 2, that illustrates the visibility of each of the seven content frames presented in Chapter 3.1 The bigger the coloured portion of the frame, the more present (in percentage 1 There is one content frame missing, namely threat to public services, because it is broadly marginal in comparison with the rest of agonistic frames and would complicate the visualisation of the figure.

4

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

111

terms and in relation to the other frames) it was in the sampled news outlets. The progressive eldiario.es makes agonistic frames more salient than EL PAÍS and Expansión. The most visible frames in eldiario.es articles are all agonistic: challenge to regulatory standards, corporations vs democracy and private tribunals. The opportunity frames are generally present but not dominant, and, insofar as they are, they are found in the mainstream EL PAÍS and the economic Expansión. The jobs and growth is mostly present in the economic Expansión and the mainstream EL PAÍS, and less so in eldiario.es . The mainstream EL PAÍS is distinguished by its emphasis on the global leadership frame, providing a geopolitical point of view that is generally absent in both eldiario.es and Expansión. While the opportunity frames are present in EL PAÍS and Expansión, the antagonistic threat to sovereignty frame is particular to eldiario.es, since it is almost absent in the mainstream EL PAÍS and Expansión. The variety of frames, the prominence of agonistic frames vis-à-vis opportunity frames and the general absence of the antagonistic threat to sovereignty frame indicate prima facie that the TTIP debate in Spain was not politicised in an antagonistic way. In that case, EU member states would be pitted against each other, or member states with the EU, and national sovereignty would be at stake. Instead, the corporations vs democracy frame’s wide presence, especially in the progressive eldiario.es, is a first indication of the rather agonistic character of the TTIP debate in Spain. The emerging discourse opposes the neoliberal framing of TTIP by executive and business actors with a socially oriented frame that indicates a different paradigm based on different values, such as the defence of democracy. In contrast to the agonistic frames proposed by the progressive eldiario.es, EL PAÍS and Expansión take a more depoliticised and neoliberal point of view. The overall presence of frames by news outlet, however, is only an initial snapshot of the story told in the Spanish public sphere all throughout the TTIP negotiations. The progressive evolution of TTIP framing over time tells us a more complete story about the TTIP debate in the Spanish public sphere. The framing analysis broken down by semester indicates a clear turning point from the first semester of 2015 onwards in the way that TTIP was framed. Figure 3 illustrates well this process, whereby the number of articles increases by a significant number as of the first semester of 2015, and alongside the increase in the number of articles, the presence of the master frame corporations vs democracy

112

A. OLEART

Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy

Global leadership Threat to sovereignty

125

100

75

50

25

0 13 01 (3) 13 02 (13) 14 01 (28) 14 02 (25) 15 01 (88) 15 02 (97)

16 01 (113)

16 02 (73)

Fig. 3 Framing ratio (vertical axis) evolution over time by semester of the leading opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic frames in the three Spanish news outlets sampled (the brackets in the horizontal axis indicate the number of articles in each semester)

rises to prominence. The opportunity frames are somewhat prominent and dominant in the early stages of the TTIP debate, but from January 2015 onwards they remain secondary in comparison with the agonistic master frame, corporations vs democracy. At the same time, the antagonistic frame threat to sovereignty is marginal across the duration of the negotiations. As for the process frames (horse race and mass opposition), a similar dynamic can be observed. Initially, the process frame that dominated the Spanish conversation on TTIP was the horse race, whereby the coverage is framed by how the trade negotiations are taking place. Instead, from the first semester of 2015 onwards, the mass opposition frame emerges to dominate the discussion. As of 2015, the media coverage of TTIP in Spain is no longer about the state of play of the negotiations, but instead about the growing opposition to the agreement, an opposition driven mainly by the agonistic corporations vs democracy frame (Fig. 4).

4

Horse Race

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

113

Mass opposition

140

105

70

35

0 13 01 (3)

13 02 (13)

14 01 (28)

14 02 (25)

15 01 (88)

15 02 (97) 16 01 (113) 16 02 (73)

Fig. 4 Framing ratio over time by semester of the process frames in the sampled Spanish news outlets

In consequence, the entire Spanish TTIP debate can be divided in two distinguishable periods, and even though each news outlet has some differences, the periods in TTIP framing broadly hold across the three news outlets. The first period corresponds broadly to the three initial semesters, from the first semester of 2013 (13 01) to the end of September 2014. During this period, there is a broad balance between opportunity and agonistic frames with the opportunity frame jobs and growth and the agonistic challenge to standards as the most prominent. At this point, however, the agonistic master frame corporations vs democracy remains secondary, and the salience of the issue is low. This first period, which covers the announcement and start of the negotiations, corresponds to how EU affairs are traditionally covered at the national level, with a low level of salience, and in a relatively non-contentious way, keeping EU affairs relatively inconspicuous and allowing executive actors’ perspective to be challenged, but not in salient and frontal way. In this first period (from the start of the negotiations in February 2013 until September 2014), the progressive eldiario.es was already putting forward agonistic frames in the public sphere, but the mainstream EL PAÍS and the economic Expansión were not picking up those frames. The second period (from October 2014 until the end of the negotiations, in November 2016) does not only imply a dramatic increase in the number of articles published, as it has been pointed out earlier, but also a

114

A. OLEART

Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Threat Sovereignty

Global leadership Private tribunals

Challenge to standards Lack of Transparency

Period 1

Period 2

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 5 Framing ratio by period in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled Spanish news outlets

shift in the way in which TTIP is framed. Figure 5 illustrates the framing ratio presence of the two leading opportunity frames and the four leading agonistic and antagonistic frames by period.2 The distribution in the visibility of frames indicates the shift in the narrative about TTIP in the two periods: in the first one the weight of opportunity and agonistic frames are broadly similar, whereas in the second one the agonistic frames become more dominant. The second period, which begins in October 2014, demonstrates a dramatic shift in the framing of TTIP, as does the way in which it is represented visually. The start of the second period in October 2014 coincides with the first mass demonstration against TTIP (which took place in Germany), and launch of the STOP TTIP ECI. From that moment onwards, the coverage progressively became much wider and much more agonistic. The turning point is the representation of Europe’s first protests against TTIP, even if they did not take place in Spain (at first, from 2015 onwards there are several demonstrations against TTIP in Spain, reported by the media). Three frames dominated this period, as the next subsections will make clear: mass opposition, corporations vs democracy and challenge to regulatory standards. The chronology points 2 The framing ratio is displayed as an overall weight in relation to other frames: if two frames are equally present, they will be displayed as having 50% each. In consequence, the framing ratio does not represent the overall weight of a frame in relation to all the frames, but only in relation to those displayed and compared with in the figure.

4

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

115

out how agonistic frames steadily increased over time, particularly that of corporations vs democracy, which grows in parallel with the mass opposition frame. These three frames helped to build a story or narrative about TTIP, emplotting other frames and events under them: corporations are attempting to reduce regulatory standards against the interests of citizens, and that is why TTIP is opposed by an increasingly bigger coalition of diverse actors, including civil society actors, trade unions, political parties and citizens in general. These three frames remain the most-emphasised until the negotiations’ end in November 2016, while the jobs and growth frame progressively disappears over time. The two periods can also be distinguished by the images that accompany the sampled articles (see Table 2). Whereas during the first period there is not a single image of a protest, not even in the left-wing eldiario.es, and executive actors clearly dominate the visual imagery of the TTIP negotiations, this radically changes during the second period, when protest images become overwhelmingly present. Additionally, images of institutional non-executive actors thrive during this second period, as do images of NGO and trade union representatives, academics or journalists. This represents a shift in the story told about TTIP in the Spanish context. During the first period, the media reporting focuses mainly on the update of the negotiations, whereas during the second period the story is about the increasing protests and unpopularity of TTIP among the citizenry. The two periods will be analysed and described individually. Table 2 Presence of imagesa by visual categories and by period in the Spanish news outlets

Images in the Spanish media Mass opposition MPs/MEPs Trading goods Executive actors Food safety and environment Others

Period 1 (51)

Period 2 (389)

Total (440)

0 1 3 29 0

118 53 9 42 22

118 54 12 71 22

7

47

54

a The number of images coded in the table(s) differs from the total

number of articles, because not all the articles contained an image

116

A. OLEART

Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Threat to Sovereignty

Global leadership Private tribunals

Challenge to standards Lack of Transparency

EL PAIS

eldiario.es

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 6 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled Spanish news outlets during the first period

2.2

February 2013 to September 2014: The Initial TTIP Debate Framed Through a Neoliberal Discourse

In the first period of TTIP media coverage in Spain, this topic remained relatively inconspicuous, given the low salience of articles published on the subject. However, in this period agonistic frames are already present, even if they are not hegemonic. This is illustrated by how the opportunity jobs and growth frame is in general the most present one, even though the agonistic Challenge to Standards is not far behind (Fig. 6). The first article on TTIP in Spain appeared on the 13th of March 2013 in EL PAÍS. It was an information article written by the Spanish news agency EFE, and to a large extent reflects the way in which TTIP was covered during this first period. The picture that accompanies the article shows European Commission President José Manuel Durão Barroso, and EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht. The image represents the symbolic authority of the executive EU branch, the European Commission. In EL PAÍS, 19 out of the 21 initial articles3 on TTIP were information articles written by the news agency EFE and are largely descriptive using the horse race process frame and reproducing depoliticised frames. Following a similar pattern, Expansión published its first TTIP article on the 8th of July 2013, and eldiario.es did not publish 3 The last of these 21 articles was published on the 26th of March 2014.

4

117

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

its first TTIP article until the 3rd of September 2013. During the first period in the Spanish public sphere (February 2013–September 2014), neither of the Spanish news outlets paid TTIP much attention. Articles during the first period focus on updates regarding the negotiations and tend to reproduce the point of view put forward by executive actors, the jobs and growth frame. In consequence, the reporting’s nature is rather technocratic. The executive-led coverage during this period is partly explained on the basis that TTIP in general is not salient in terms of the number of articles published, not even in the left-wing eldiario.es. This indicates the rather depoliticised coverage on TTIP circulating in the Spanish public sphere during the first period in comparison with the second, as it will be discussed later. This corresponds to the traditional way of covering EU issues. Agonistic frames start to appear, but the agonistic master frame corporations vs democracy is underrepresented in comparison with the second period. The images published within this initial period of the TTIP debate in Spain also illustrate the agreement’s lack of contestation. In the three Spanish news outlets, executive actors overwhelmingly dominate the visual imagery on TTIP, as becomes clear in Table 3. Executive actors’ dominance during the first period in putting forward the neoliberal frame is perhaps more obvious in the context of how EL PAÍS framed TTIP over time. Whereas from 2015 onwards agonistic frames dominate the TTIP debate, during the first four semesters (2013 and 2014) the jobs and growth frame leads the way. So while the jobs and growth frame is the most-referenced in EL PAÍS, proportionally the majority of those references correspond to the first four semesters Table 3 Presence of images by visual category in Spanish news outlets during the first period Images in the Spanish media Period 1 Mass opposition MPs/MEPs Trading goods Executive actors Food safety and environment Others

EL PAÍS (30)

eldiario.es (17)

Expansión (4) Period 1 (51)

0 1 3 19 0

0 0 0 7 0

0 0 0 3 0

0 1 3 29 0

0

7

0

7

118

A. OLEART

covered, until the end of 2014. From that moment onwards, the dominance of the frame is progressively reduced in comparison with the agonistic master frame Corporations vs Democracy, which ends up being the most dominant by the end of the negotiations during the second semester of 2016 (Fig. 7). The first period of the Spanish TTIP debate also stood out from the perspective of the process frames. The first period focuses less on the content of TTIP or the opposition to the agreement by civil society actors, and instead regularly reported on updates in the negotiations’ state of play. The horse race frame is a higher priority for EL PAÍS and Expansión than for the progressive eldiario.es . In fact, coverage at the mainstream EL PAÍS focused on the negotiations’ process, rather than the content of TTIP. The increasing protests that took place during the second period of the TTIP debate in the Spanish public sphere change the story that is told about the trade agreement in the second period. Whereas during the first period the articles focus on the negotiation updates (the horse race frame), during the second period the story told is increasingly about the growing protests and unpopularity of TTIP (the mass opposition frame) (Fig. 8). Jobs and Growth

Corporations vs democracy

25

20

15

10

5

0 13 01 (3)

13 02 (11) 14 01 (13)

14 02 (8)

15 01 (19) 15 02 (16) 16 01 (32) 16 02 (21)

Fig. 7 Framing ratio evolution over time by semester of the leading opportunity and agonistic frames in EL PAÍS

4

Horse race

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

119

Mass opposition

Period 1

Period 2

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 8 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the process frames by period in the Spanish public sphere

The generally low salience of TTIP during this initial period, and its dominant neoliberal framing, makes it consistent with the idea of the ‘permissive consensus’ vis-à-vis the EU. In consequence, TTIP is not truly politicised during this period in the Spanish public sphere. This can be partly explained on the basis that the two leading Spanish political parties, Partido Popular (PP) and Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), government and leader of the opposition respectively, supported the agreement, as did the two biggest trade unions, Comisiones Obreras4 (CCOO) and Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), which remained passively supportive of it. During this first period, the Spanish TTIP debate showed few signs of mass opposition and unpopularity among citizens of Spain or beyond—something that changes in the second period. 2.3 European and National Protests Introduce TTIP into the Mainstream: Agonistic Politicisation Emerges in Spain The Spanish public sphere’s quiet stage on TTIP lasted until the end of September 2014. From October 2014 onwards, there is a radical change in the way in which TTIP is discussed in the Spanish media, as Fig. 9 4 Spanish trade union Comisiones Obreras announced its opposition to TTIP in September 2014 (CCOO, 2014), while the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) did not announce its opposition until 2016.

120

A. OLEART

Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Threat to Sovereignty

Global leadership Private tribunals

Challenge to standards Lack of Transparency

EL PAIS

eldiario.es

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 9 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled Spanish news outlets during the second period

makes clear. The three news outlets share a common process of politicisation. Whereas the neoliberal jobs and growth frame was leading in its overall presence during the first period, during the second period agonistic frames are dominant, including the agonistic master frame corporations vs democracy. Agonistic frames in the Spanish context come from the left-wing eldiario.es, that pushes the agonistic corporations vs democracy as the central interpretive framework to understand TTIP more than any other news outlet. However, as we will see later on, over time this contentious frame travels to the mainstream platform EL PAÍS and the economic Expansión, whose editorial lines generally favoured TTIP. Figure 9 of the second period also points out the lack of dominance of opportunity frames, that only remain hegemonic in the economic Expansión, and the marginality of the antagonistic threat to sovereignty frame. The progressive news outlet eldiario.es is the space that drove the radical change in the TTIP media coverage in Spain, as the platform which most strikingly intensified its attention to TTIP given how its coverage resonated (see Fig. 1). Pablo García, Brussels-based correspondent for eldiario.es during the TTIP negotiations explained in an interview that

4

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

121

in early 2015, the leading topic is Greece. But then we realised that every time we published something on TTIP, it was widely read. This is a reason of weight to continue to focus on the subject, that your topics are widely read. So we generated a lot of news that the media is not following. So eldiario.es is very interested in continuing with the subject. (…) TTIP is a recurrent topic for left-wing readers, of the surroundings of Podemos, Izquierda Unida and PSOE. On the other hand, the supporters of the right-wing PP and Ciudadanos are not very interested. However, after the leaks5 this changes, and all the media outlets start publishing issues on TTIP. (Pablo García, Brussels’ correspondent of eldiario.es, interviewed in December 2016)

The exponential growth of articles on TTIP from the end of 2014 onwards can be connected to the way each article on TTIP resonated among the left-wing Spanish community. Such resonance is connected to the imagery embedded in the Spanish public sphere of TTIP as a dangerous ‘trojan horse’ that could have a detrimental effect on environmental, workers’ or consumer safety, at the expense of democracy and citizens at large, and for the narrow profit of multinational corporations. In this way, the corporations vs democracy frame serves as a master frame that narrates and emplots other frames and events under it. In this way, the framing of TTIP in eldiario.es situated Corporations vs democracy as an umbrella frame or master frame that includes several agonistic frames, such as challenge to standards, threat to public services or private tribunals. Additionally, the jobs and growth and the global leadership frames are almost absent in comparison with the leading agonistic frames, which contrasts with the wide range of agonistic frames, present all over the corpus during the second period. The progressive eldiario.es tells the story that TTIP is a threat to democracy led by big corporations and would have very harmful consequences in different domains: corporations could be allowed to meet lower regulatory standards, sue governments over actions that harm their profits, take advantage of liberalised public services, and all to the benefit of big multinationals rather than small and medium companies. That is, TTIP is a threat to democracy because of the empowerment of corporations, the villains of the story. This emphasis on big businesses’ power is

5 This refers to the Greenpeace leaks of May 2016, an episode that will be touched upon later on.

122

A. OLEART

less present in the mainstream EL PAÍS and the economic Expansión. This is also confirmed by the fact that the mass opposition frame dominates the debate in the process frames category, as it was widely present since the second semester of 2014. Just as in EL PAÍS, the increase in eldiario.es TTIP coverage is correlated with the mass opposition frame’s prominent presence (often through images of protest). Interestingly, the horse race is absent, which indicates that the site’s priority was not to inform about the negotiations’ state of play, but rather to give the protestors a voice about its content. Extensive TTIP coverage by the progressive eldiario.es from 2015 onwards is a sign that the agreement was becoming increasingly (un)popular in the Spanish public sphere, and particularly within the leftwing militant base. In fact, coinciding with the start of the Spanish TTIP debate’s second period in October 2014, Spanish Trade Union Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) announced its frontal opposition to TTIP and CETA, arguing that the agreements would give unprecedented power to multinational corporations. Frontal opposition to TTIP by a mainstream organisation such as CCOO, that traditionally channelled its EU involvement through the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), indicates the increasing unpopularity within the Spanish left-wing militant base vis-à-vis TTIP. Referring to the anti-TTIP campaign’s success in pulling certain institutionalised organisations such as CCOO in the Spanish ‘No al TTIP’ campaign (see also Bouza & Oleart, 2018), a member of Ecologistas en Acción (EeA), the leading organisation in the Spanish campaign, argued in an interview that ‘many trade union militants are close to ATTAC and EeA, and I think we did a very good job from the beginning as a campaign [“No al TTIP”], and this has had an impact in the trade unions. Sooner or later they wanted to join the campaign’ (Representative of EeA, interviewed in January 2016). Progressively, TTIP increased its coverage beyond the left-wing eldiario.es, and particularly in the mainstream EL PAÍS, a news outlet that has been shifting to the right during the last decade. Asked about the relationship between progressive and mainstream media, Ekaitz Cancela, a freelance journalist that published articles both at eldiario.es and EL PAÍS on TTIP, argued that ‘when EL PAÍS shifted to the right-wing of the ideological spectrum, it left an empty space for the media in the left. Eldiario.es covered that space, and has been providing the space where NGOs, social movements in Spain learn about each other, as it has been

4

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

123

the case with TTIP’ (Ekaitz Cancela, Spanish freelance journalist covering TTIP, interviewed in October 2016). During this second period, TTIP travelled across the political spectrum in the public sphere from the left, progressively reaching the mainstream EL PAÍS from October 2014 onwards. The corporations vs democracy frame’s rise is closely connected to the mass opposition frame, widely present given the images circulating of anti-TTIP demonstrations. There is a clear-cut causal chain, by which the mass mobilisations on TTIP in Spain and elsewhere (some protests in other EU countries were also reported in the Spanish media) increased the corporations vs democracy frame’s presence. The empirical analysis indicates that seeing TTIP as a controversial political subject was accompanied by the frame that large numbers of people massively contested TTIP. In fact, the protests’ connection to TTIP became so close that in November 2014, a news article in EL PAÍS connected TTIP with citizens’ marches against poverty and inequality. The fact that EL PAÍS refers to TTIP in a broader context, such as the marches against poverty, indicates its importance and connection to other issues (e.g. poverty and inequality). The growing (un)popularity of TTIP within the Spanish left-wing base was not matched with a strong negative positioning of the mainstream PSOE, partly due to the EU-level Socialist group’s active support for TTIP in the European Parliament. However, precisely because of the Spanish Socialist Party’s perceived rightward shift, a new left-wing political party, Podemos, emerged during the May 2014 EU elections, where Podemos already had in its electoral programme the frontal opposition to TTIP. Podemos grew very quickly after its inception in January 2014, becoming a serious contender to lead a government by the end of 2014, a moment that coincided with the start of the TTIP debate’s second period in Spain (October 2014). The emergence of a new force such as Podemos gave the Spanish left-wing a louder microphone to put issues on the agenda and shape discourse in the public sphere. While it has been empirically demonstrated that Podemos did not play a pivotal role organising the Spanish ‘No al TTIP’ campaign (Bouza & Oleart, 2018), the fact that a big Spanish political party took a strong position on TTIP gave the campaign visibility. In an interview, the leading Podemos MEP on TTIP, Lola Sánchez Caldentey, explained the difficulties in its own party to make TTIP a priority:

124

A. OLEART

When the 5 of us6 arrived here in Brussels (in July 2014, when the mandate started for the elected MEPs after the 2014 EU elections), I had the conviction that one of us had to be on the International Trade committee. I had the feeling that TTIP could become a big thing, and none of my colleagues wanted to take it. When they opened the reading room, I started to get informed and scared there. I was leaving the reading room scared and could not even sleep, because I could not even explain what I read. It has been a hard job to make TTIP a priority, even for Podemos. (…) We have a small internal disagreement, in the good sense, between the European delegation and the party. I have been pushing to make people in Madrid aware of the importance of TTIP. But I understand that there are other media dynamics. So it is a fight that I have been pushing for within Podemos, but it has been difficult. (Lola Sánchez Caldentey, MEP, interviewed in November 2016)

The work of Lola Sánchez Caldentey in Brussels and Spain, and the work of Podemos and its left-wing allies at the national and regional level was very influential for the TTIP debate, particularly within eldiario.es, because it vastly increased the negotiations’ visibility in the Spanish context. The progressive news outlet used every possible opportunity to put TTIP on the agenda, and in many cases this did so through reporting declarations against TTIP from Podemos and its allies, including symbolic declarations to make Barcelona a ‘TTIP free-zone’ with a vote in the local parliament. This made TTIP a matter of domestic politics: while the revitalised left (Podemos and its allies) opposed it, the right-wing (PP and Ciudadanos) supported it. Some parties were caught in the middle, such as the PSOE, and in fact TTIP also became intertwined with the Catalonian conflict. Within the Catalan pro-independence regional government formed in 2015, the coexistence of the right-wing Convergència i Unió (CiU) and left-wing Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) was troubled by divergences vis-à-vis TTIP: left-wing nationalists opposed it, whereas right-wing nationalists supported it. The peak moment of the TTIP’s coverage in Spain coincided with the Greenpeace leaks in May 2016. Greenpeace leaked undisclosed documents of the TTIP negotiations, which stated the American and European positions on a wide range of policy areas. Rather than revealing the documents on its website, Greenpeace gathered a few widely read news outlets from different countries in its Brussels office to exclusively provide 6 In the 2014 EU elections, 5 candidates from Podemos were elected.

4

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

125

them the leaked documents. Greenpeace chose EL PAÍS as its Spanish media contact, giving it an opportunity to provide a very different point of view. According to Claudi Perez, the paper’s Brussels-based leading correspondent, TTIP was not widely discussed in EL PAÍS because it was little politicised. This is seen with almost everything. Topics only enter when there is a certain political attraction. Otherwise it is much more difficult to write about those topics. TTIP was not interesting for my newspaper. Instead, when the topic started to become politicised, the newspaper started to get interested, and I could start writing more about it. (…) Against the editorial line we published a story explaining the lack of transparency and the traditional complaints of NGOs, which echoed traditional complaints from the left that I thought we had stolen from our readers. We did not hide it, but we did not emphasise it either. Partly because this was interesting only for the most left-wing reader. The newspaper is interested mainly when there is an interest across society. When it is more interesting across society transversally, it is easier that your stories enter. Through that story (the Greenpeace leaks), the newspaper has been interested in giving other points of view. So despite that in the editorials the newspaper is clearly in favour of this sort of trade agreements, the information has counter-balanced things quite a lot. (Claudi Pérez, EU correspondent of EL PAÍS, interviewed in November 2016)

The agonistic frame of corporations vs democracy appeared progressively in the mainstream EL PAÍS since October 2014, but it rose to its peak during the Greenpeace leaks in May 2016, more than three years after the negotiations’ start was announced. This indicates that left-wing political actors struggled to push it into the public sphere beyond traditional leftwing circles. Asked about the biggest difficulty in the campaign against TTIP, Lola Sánchez Caldentey stated that it was to get it out in the media. In this office we have spent long hours thinking how to explain it, and where to go and explain it. Now they call me to give speeches on TTIP everywhere, and I can’t cover all of them! But before it was me who was calling everyone, including local associations, to ask whether I could go and speak about TTIP. The response was often ‘TTIP, what is that?’ It has been very difficult. We tried to publish articles in many different media, have interviews with journalists, but the journalists themselves told us ‘I do not know what TTIP is, I will check what is it online and will let you know’. I have been in touch with all of them (news outlets such as El País or El Mundo). But the majority end up

126

A. OLEART

telling you that it is not a topic that is in the public debate and that it is not very interesting, or that it is very difficult to explain. ‘It is for economists’ they say. I say ‘no, I can explain it with easy words’. But the mainstream media does not want to talk about it. I have published articles in La Marea, Público, eldiario.es 7 … I have sent articles to El País and El Mundo 20 times, and they have rejected it, saying that the topic ‘is not mainstream’. I have the contacts of all of them, and so does our press officer. We send press releases… but nothing came out initially. (MEP Lola Sánchez Caldentey, MEP, interviewed in November 2016)

Coverage in the economic media Expansión resembles that of EL PAÍS to an extent. The jobs and growth frame is the most present, and the horse race is the most visible process frame, both of which are present in TTIP coverage from start to finish. Just as in EL PAÍS, in Expansión the mass opposition frame only rises from 2014 onwards and correlates with the appearance of agonistic frames, such as the challenge to standards, private tribunals or corporations vs democracy. Civil society actors’ progressive introduction of ideas into the public sphere (mainly through eldiario.es, but also through EL PAÍS) also reached the economic journal Expansión, although in a less resonant way. In fact, a big part of Expansión’s TTIP coverage of TTIP was based on articles written by agencies. However, Expansión’s EU correspondent at the time, Miquel Roig, argued that the coverage on TTIP has not been as national as many other EU topics. Many times, when the Commission says something, our first question is: ‘how does that affect Spain?’ So the coverage is more national. But I think on TTIP there has been a more European perspective. When you talk about TTIP you talk about Europe, and how it will affect Europe, while other topics we cover we focus quite a lot on the national angle. On TTIP there has been given a more European perspective. (Miquel Roig, Expansión’s Brussels’ correspondent, interviewed in October 2016)

In accordance with the change in how TTIP is framed during this second period, the public discourse circulating in the Spanish public sphere shifts dramatically. The greatest change in the discourse is connected to the rise of the private tribunals and corporations vs democracy frames. From 2015 onwards the coverage normalises the connection between TTIP and multinational corporations’ agency in pushing negotiators behind closed 7 These three news outlets are all left-leaning.

4

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

127

doors to lower regulatory standards against the interests of citizens and ‘democracy’ at large. Additionally, the increasingly negative perspective on TTIP during this second period is accompanied by the rise of references to CETA, the equivalent trade agreement with Canada. Whereas during the first period TTIP is referred to as ‘free-trade agreement between EU and US’ many times and is not often connected to other trade agreements, the second period saw a growing connection between the different agreements. This indicates the STOP TTIP campaign’s success, since it tried as much as possible to connect TTIP and CETA in the protests, making these terms massively known and unpopular. Overall, during this second period, in addition of a dramatic increase in the salience of articles published, the analysed news outlets mobilised a very different discourse in comparison with the first period. Rather than emphasising the agreement’s economic nature of TTIP, reproducing the jobs and growth frame, the mobilised discourse during this second period emphasised agonistic frames, and particularly terms connected to the private tribunals and corporations vs democracy frames. The second period’s contrast with the first (described in the prior subsection) is also illustrated by the images which accompany the articles. Unlike the TTIP debate’s first period in Spain, where images of executive actors dominated the visual imagery of TTIP, in the second period images of protests appeared all around the Spanish media, including the mainstream EL PAÍS and the economic Expansión. Visually, the Greenpeace leaks stand out as an opportunity for activists to be represented in the public sphere. For instance, Greenpeace set up the ‘Greenpeace reading room’ in Puerta del Sol, where citizens passing through Madrid’s centre could read the TTIP leaked documents, and also raised a huge banner with the message ‘No al TTIP’ over the Kyo towers. This action was consequently reported in EL PAÍS (Table 4). This second period’s framing analysis reveals the agonistic politicisation of TTIP that took place in the Spanish public sphere. The neoliberal frame prevalent during the first period progressively disappeared, and the corporations vs democracy frame contested TTIP to the capitalist system’s very root: big corporations’ power in society. The Greenpeace leaks epitomised Spain’s agonistic public sphere, since they were heavily picked up by the three newspapers, and particularly by the mainstream EL PAÍS, which revealed the leaks exclusively in Spain. The politicisation of TTIP in Spain took an agonistic form, since it challenged the neoliberal paradigm driving TTIP, but not the EU as a polity. The absence of antagonistic

128

A. OLEART

Table 4 Presence of images by visual category in the Spanish news outlets during the second period Images in the Spanish media Period 2 Mass opposition Non-executive MPs/MEPs-regions Trading goods Executive actors Food safety and environment Others

EL PAÍS (93)

eldiario.es (274)

Expansión (22)

Period 2 (389)

32 7

84 45

2 1

118 53

6 16 1

3 19 22

0 7 0

9 42 23

5

40

2

47

discourse confirms the politics in the Union that took place in the Spanish TTIP debate, since the ‘us’ and ‘them’ is corporations vs (European and particularly Spanish) citizens.

3

The Politicisation of TTIP in Spain: The EU Becomes a Political Arena for Civil Society and Political Actors

Considering Spain’s traditional lack of politicisation of EU affairs, the politicisation of TTIP is surprising. Previous research on the way that ‘Europe’ has been framed in Spain has shown that the European integration process has been seen as a path to modernisation (Díez Medrano, 2003). The EU has rarely been contentious in the Spanish public sphere and among Spanish civil society actors. Unlike in France, all of Spain’s mainstream political parties, civil society actors and trade unions supported the 2005 European Constitutional Treaty (ECT). In consequence, the small group of ‘radical’ actors that opposed the ECT were considered ‘Eurosceptic’. Spain’s 2011 Indignados movement had a strong European dimension. However, the Spanish TTIP debate took EU politicisation to another level and did so in an agonistic way. The case of TTIP broke the ‘permissive consensus’ vis-à-vis the EU in the Spanish public sphere, since criticising the negotiations became mainstream, and even actors such as Greenpeace or CCOO opposed it. In this way, challenging TTIP in the Spanish context was no longer perceived as

4

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

129

a form of Euroscepticism (Brack & Startin, 2015), but rather as a legitimate cause worth contesting at the national level following the domestic political logic. The politicisation of TTIP also coincides with the rise of Podemos as a political party in 2014, which illustrates the importance of rising political entrepreneurs (De Vries & Hobolt, 2020). The TTIP debate’s first period in Spain summarises the traditional ‘permissive consensus’ vis-à-vis the EU. In this first period, none of the three analysed news outlets paid much attention to TTIP, and we can only find a considerable presence of agonistic frames within the left-wing eldiario.es. Therefore, the Spanish ‘No al TTIP’ campaign did not find much resonance in the public sphere, and ‘permissive consensus’ was maintained. This changes radically during the second period, since the opposition to TTIP travelled to the mainstream by introducing its TTIP narration frames into the mainstream EL PAÍS and also the economic Expansión. The politicisation became overwhelmingly agonistic during the second period and essentially became a new issue of national politics. The involvement of national actors (such as trade unions and civil society actors) and political parties encouraged treating TTIP as a matter of domestic politics. In this way, the TTIP debate bridge EU and national politics, and promoted a left-right divide: the left opposed TTIP, and the right championed it. As Claudi Pérez, the Brussels-based correspondent for EL PAÍS, argued: The good thing about TTIP is that it is a transversal topic, a national and European issue at the same time. The problem is that we do not have more topics like this one. If we would have more topics like this one, we would have a truly European debate, which only exists in Germany (Claudi Pérez, EU correspondent of EL PAÍS, interviewed in November 2016)

The politicisation of TTIP in the Spanish context (Bouza & Oleart, 2018) is a surprising episode, given the traditional lack of politicisation of EU affairs. While it is only one episode, and we cannot assume that from now on all EU issues will be debated in the same way, it points in a certain direction. The Spanish public sphere’s agonistic politicisation of TTIP builds on earlier struggles, such as the 2011 Indignados movement, and over time contestation over the EU can become normalised in a country like Spain that traditionally saw the EU as a benevolent entity rather than a political playing field. In consequence, agonistic conflict can increasingly normalise the EU as a political arena in the Spanish public

130

A. OLEART

sphere. The transformation of the Spanish political arena is also illustrated by more recent developments, as in January 2020 Podemos entered a coalition government alongside the centre-left PSOE, conforming the first coalition government in the post-Francoist era, a government that adopted a more EU-critical stance. The perception of the EU as a political playing field was also revealed during the COVID-19 crisis in April 2020, in which the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, published a piece simultaneously in EL PAÍS, Le Monde, The Guardian and the German FAZ , in which he stated the following: The circumstances are exceptional and call for unwavering positions: either we rise to this challenge or we will fail as a union. We have reached a critical juncture at which even the most fervently pro-European countries and governments, as is Spain’s case, need real proof of commitment. We need unwavering solidarity. (Sánchez, 2020)

Similarly, Pablo Iglesias, leader of Podemos and Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister, in an interview with the FT in May 2020 argued that ‘the EU of cuts, of austerity plans, of a lack of solidarity of the north with respect to the south — that’s not going to survive (…) a certain [level of] debt mutualisation is a [necessary] condition of the [continued] existence of the EU’ (Dombey, 2020). In the context of the COVID-19 discussions at the European level, the Spanish left-wing coalition government has played an important role in the European Recovery Fund negotiations, pressuring other member states to increase the public spending in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. While not directly connected, the Spanish TTIP debate strengthened the anchoring of political conflict over EU affairs in the Spanish public sphere. The left-wing coalition government formed in January 2020 by Unidas Podemos and PSOE has mobilised a critical, yet pro-European, discourse on Europe when the COVID-19 crisis arrived during the first months of 2020. This is indicative that in the Spanish context there is a process of normalisation of (agonistic) conflict on the EU that increasingly bridges national and EU politics.

4

FRAMING TTIP IN SPAIN

131

Bibliography Bouza, L., & Oleart, A. (2018). From the 2005 constitution’s “permissive consensus” to TTIP’s “empowering dissensus”: The EU as a playing field for Spanish civil society. Journal of Contemporary European Research, 14(2), 87–104. Brack, N., & Startin, N. (2015). Introduction: Euroscepticism, from the margins to the mainstream. International Political Science Review, 36(3), 239–249. De Vries, C. E., & Hobolt, S. (2020). Political entrepreneurs: The rise of challenger parties in Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Díez Medrano, J. (2003). Framing Europe. Attitudes to European integration in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Dombey, D. (2020, May 8). Spain’s deputy PM calls for EU to step up or risk extinction. Financial Times. Available online: https://www.ft.com/content/ e37718a5-8e1c-4ef4-93c5-72801773ca39. Accessed 8 May 2020. Flesher Fominaya, C. (2015). Debunking spontaneity: Spain’s 15-M/Indignados as autonomous movement. Social Movement Studies, 14(2), 142–163. Lindberg, L. N., & Scheingold, S. A. (1970). Europe’s would-be polity: Patterns of change in the European community. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Ortega Dolz, P. (2011, June 19). El 19-J invade las calles de España. El País. Available Online: https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2011/06/19/ actualidad/1308483852_093532.html. Accessed 10 March 2018. Sánchez, P. (2020, April 5), Europe’s future is at stake in this war against coronavirus. The Guardian. Available online: https://www.theguardian. com/world/commentisfree/2020/apr/05/europes-future-is-at-stake-in-thiswar-against-coronavirus. Accessed 5 April 2020.

Interviews 1. Representative of EeA, January 2016. 2. Miquel Roig, former Expansión’s Brussels’ correspondent, interviewed in October 2016. 3. Ekaitz Cancela, Spanish freelance journalist covering TTIP, October 2016. 4. Lola Sánchez Caldentey, MEP GUE/NGL, November 2016. 5. Claudi Pérez, EU correspondent of EL PAÍS, November 2016. 6. Pablo García, Brussels’ correspondent of eldiario.es, December 2016.

CHAPTER 5

Framing TTIP in France

1 France and the EU: Agonistic Politicisation Focused on Social Issues France was arguably the most important country that led towards the founding of the European project after World War II. Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, two French statesmen that were at the centre of the 1950 Schuman declaration, are still today considered to be founding fathers of the EU, as France was one of the six founding members states of the European project, and remains today one of the most important countries when advancing European integration, alongside with Germany. However, since the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War, political actors on both the right and the left opposed a federal type of European integration. On the right, De Gaulle and its supporters accepted integration as long as it was based on purely intergovernmental cooperation. On the left, the French communist party (PCF) opposed European integration on the grounds that it was an American and anticommunist project. These two factions of French politics opposed each other on almost every social issue, but not on European integration. This further complicated the Gaullists and Communists’ relationship and cooperation with the Socialists, who traditionally supported European integration. The 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, which produced divisions on both sides of the ideological spectrum, reflected this historical division in France in regards to European integration. © The Author(s) 2021 A. Oleart, Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53637-4_5

133

134

A. OLEART

Socialist François Mitterrand’s arrival in the French presidential palace in 1981 made the country institutionally more supportive of European integration. Still, however, it did not even enjoy a full consensus within the Socialist Party, as the Treaty’s liberal aspect was questioned. In 1995 France saw a larger protest against the ‘Europe of Maastricht’ (Cotta, 1992), an EU that was seen as harming the French welfare state. Alain Cotta’s 1992 book summarised well the criticism of the Maastricht Treaty: ‘Pour l’Europe, contre Maastricht’. During the late 1990s, antiglobalisation protests in France criticising the neoliberal globalisation also criticised the EU, and ATTAC was created in 1998 (Ancelovici, 2002; Wintrebert, 2007), driven by a group of French activists. ATTAC was divided between those in favour of national sovereignty (and therefore favourable to intergovernmental cooperation) and the federalists, who chose to focus on social and economic issues to avoid putting themselves in this situation. From this perspective, some groups in France, mostly on the left but also on the right, position themselves as opposed to the EU, on the grounds that it is inherently neoliberal and undemocratic, a position that has been conceptualised as ‘Social-Nationalism’ (Reynié, 2005). In this way, the social criticism of the European project has been present in the French national public sphere from the very beginning, driven mainly by the left, but also instrumentally mobilised by the farright. The French Socialist Party (in French, Parti Socialiste, PS) ignored this criticism of the European project during the eras of François Mitterrand (President of France between 1981 and 1995) and Lionel Jospin (Prime Minister of France between 1997 and 2002), which might have led to Jospin’s unsuccessful bid for the French presidency in 2002. In fact, Jospin not only failed in his presidential bid, but in fact did not even reach the run-off, since the extreme right Front National candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, placed second in the first round and faced Jacques Chirac (who eventually won) in the 2002 French presidential elections. Jospin’s defeat opened a black box in the French left. In 2003 the French left started a process to restructure itself by paying particular attention to the European question, and members of different left-wing actors participated in this process, such as the Communist party, the Greens, the PS and trade unions. In this group, we find actors such as Jean-Luc Mélénchon, a former minister during the Mitterrand presidency and future presidential candidate, and no right-wing anti-EU actors such as the Front

5

FRAMING TTIP IN FRANCE

135

National. Neither was ATTAC there, although the alter-globalist organisation would join later and play a critical role in the 2005 European Constitutional Treaty (ECT) referendum, given its extensive number of local groups. The left-wing criticism of the EU in France drove the coalition against the Bolkestein Directive, where the ‘Social Europe’ was framed as opposed to the Directive, perceived as being driven by actors pushing for a ‘Neoliberal Europe’. Additionally, the French left used the politicisation of the Services Directive in France to oppose the ECT as well, illustrating the frames through which European issues entered the French national public sphere. France’s left unanimously opposed the Bolkestein Directive, but was divided regarding the European project and the ECT. Given the issue’s contention, the PS decided to avoid the Bolkestein Directive as much as possible (Crespy, 2012). In addition, to appease this criticism vis-à-vis the approaching 2005 ECT referendum, the PS consulted its members internally, which ended with 58% of the membership voting in favour of the ECT. However, this did not stop an important part of the PS from joining the ‘Non’ campaign against the ECT (Brouard, Grossmann, & Sauger, 2005). On the 29th of May 2005, the ‘Non’ campaign won the ECT referendum with almost 55% of the votes and a 69% turnout. In the 2009 EU elections, a new pro-European and left-wing ecologist political party, Europe Écologie (EE), emerged with over 16% of the votes in France. However, France’s complex relationship with the EU was confirmed by the 2014 French EU elections, which the Front National, led by Marine Le Pen, won with almost 25% of the votes1 (with a low turnout of 42%). This indicates France’s difficult and multidimensional relationship with the European project, which has been historically contested by a part of the radical left, currently led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Parti de Gauche (and later renamed as ‘La France Insoumise’), but lately also by the extreme right led by Marine Le Pen’s Front National (later renamed as ‘National Rally’). We could then conclude that in France the type of political conflict that has taken place has been traditionally agonistic, in that the EU has been historically criticised as too liberal from an economic perspective, but the European project as a whole was hardly questioned. Unlike in the UK, demands for more social protection from the market have historically driven the criticism, rather than 1 In 2009, the FN received only 6% of the votes. In 2019, the FN, by then renamed as Rassemblement National, won again the European elections with over 23%.

136

A. OLEART

the defence of national identity or sovereignty. However, during the last decade, national identity and sovereignty have emerged in the discourse in the French public sphere, both from the extreme right of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and the left-wing of Mélénchon’s La France Insoumise, which has led to an increasingly antagonistic conflict with the EU in the French context. As I will argue in the conclusion of this chapter focused on the French debate on TTIP, the election of the liberal pro-European Emmanuel Macron as French President in 2017 against farright Marine Le Pen can be interpreted as a process by which ‘Europe’ is increasingly part of the national political discourse.

2

The Evolution of the Agonistic TTIP Debate in the French Public Sphere 2.1

Overview of the TTIP Debate in France

The French sample of media articles is composed by 329 media articles where TTIP is referenced in the headlines or main image. The number of articles published by French media on TTIP reveals that, unlike in Spain, the main platform through which TTIP became present in the public sphere was the mainstream Le Monde. This is interesting insofar as Le Monde editorials have generally supported TTIP, which will be further explained later. A nuance is, however, required to explain the low number of articles published in the left-wing platform. Médiapart,2 a media that focuses on investigative journalism, is not the same type of news outlet as the Spanish eldiario.es or The Guardian. The considerable number of opinion articles, combined with the three Le Monde editorials, is indicative of the importance given to TTIP in the French context and how it became a matter of contestation (Table 1). The chronology of articles on TTIP in France reveals a similar pattern to that of Spain. While TTIP received almost no coverage during 2013, when the negotiations started, the 2014 EU elections provided an opportunity to put TTIP on the agenda. Le Monde drove this dramatic increase in articles, in particular ‘Les Décodeurs’, the newspaper’s fact-checking 2 In fact, most articles on TTIP published in Médiapart were in ‘Le Club’, the space where Médiapart ’s readers can have their own blog. These articles were not taken into account for the empirical analysis: the articles are written very differently from traditional opinion articles, and the content was hardly comparable to the articles sampled in the other news outlets.

5

FRAMING TTIP IN FRANCE

137

Table 1 Number of articles sampled by article type and news outlet from the French media News outlet

Information

Opinion

Interview

Editorial

Total number of articles selected

Les Échos Le Monde Médiapart Total

92 107 46 245

28 31 10 69

6 0 6 12

0 3 0 3

126 141 62 329

section. During the 2014 EU elections campaign, this section found in TTIP one of its main topics of analysis. Interestingly, one of the Parisbased journalists working in the section, Maxime Vaudano, went on to create a blog named initially3 ‘Le Monde Tafta’, dedicated exclusively to TTIP. Of particular relevance is that the blog used the name ‘Tafta’ instead of ‘TTIP’, given that ‘Tafta’ was the name activists used to define TTIP in France, because it calls to mind two other controversial trade agreements: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The publication of articles within ‘Les Décodeurs’ and the creation of ‘Le Monde Tafta’ made TTIP a more relevant issue in the French public sphere. Coverage in the economic news outlet Les Échos followed a similar pattern to that of Le Monde: the articles begin to appear during the first half of 2014, and the coverage progressively increases, peaking, during the first half of 2016. Finally, Médiapart publishes more articles on TTIP than any other French news outlet in 2013, but its coverage does not increase much over time, contrary to Le Monde and Les Échos . This perhaps indicates that Médiapart kickstarted the TTIP debate in France, but once TTIP reached the mainstream, it stopped being a priority for Médiapart , who already accomplished its mission of introducing the topic in the French public sphere (Fig. 1). Much like the Spanish media, the analysed French media sample was dominated by agonistic frames (corporations vs democracy, challenge to standards, private tribunals and lack of transparency), much more present than opportunity frames (jobs and growth, and global leadership), and that the marginal antagonistic frame (threat to sovereignty). The framing 3 The blog was later renamed ‘La bataille transatlantique’.

138

A. OLEART

Le Monde

Les Échos

Médiapart

40

30

20

10

0 13 01

13 02

14 01

14 02

15 01

15 02

16 01

16 02

Fig. 1 Chronological evolution by semester of the number of articles sampled in the three sampled French news outlets (In the horizontal axis, the numbers refer to the year and the semester: e.g. ‘13 01’ = first semester of 2013)

of TTIP in France had certain specificities vis-à-vis the Spanish media articles. In France the agonistic frames’ dominance came through the mainstream Le Monde, rather than from the progressive Médiapart . This indicates different dynamics from those of the Spanish context, since the mainstream Le Monde and economic Les Échos reproduced many agonistic frames, including the most contentious one, corporations vs democracy. The process frames (Jobs and Growth and Global Leadership) are widely present in France, more than in the Spanish media, with particular emphasis placed in all three French news outlets on the negotiations’ conflict-ridden character. The progressive Médiapart was the most critical space where TTIP was discussed, while Le Monde and Les Échos gave a considerable visibility to opportunity frames. In the French context, TTIP is often referred as ‘Tafta’, which can be considered a success of the efforts of left-wing activists to derail the negotiations. ‘Tafta’ is mostly present in Médiapart and Le Monde, whereas the economic Les Échos tends to use ‘TTIP’. This indicates that the most critical discourse on TTIP circulating in the public sphere was present in the mainstream and left-wing publications, rather than among business elites. Accordingly, the more outspoken pro-TTIP neoliberal perspective is found in Les Échos . This is reflected in Fig. 2, that illustrates the visibility of each of the seven content frames presented

5

Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Threat to Sovereignty

FRAMING TTIP IN FRANCE

Global leadership Private tribunals

139

Challenge to standards Lack of Transparency

Le Monde

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 2 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled French news outlets (The graphs include in the same category both the frames and their counter-frames [in case a frame has a counter-frame])

in Chapter 3.4 The bigger the coloured portion of the frame, the more present (in percentage terms and in relation to the other frames) it was in the sampled news outlets. As for the breakdown of the framing of TTIP over time, the French news outlets follow a similar pattern in comparison with the Spanish case. The framing analysis per semester indicates that the first spike of the corporations vs democracy takes place during the first semester of 2014. The agonistic master frame however only becomes widely dominant in the French public sphere as of the first semester of 2015, while the opportunity frames jobs and growth and global leadership remain visible but less present. Finally, the antagonistic frame threat to sovereignty is marginal across the duration of the negotiations (Fig. 3). The story told on TTIP in the French public sphere can be split into two periods, as in the Spanish case. The first period lasts until the 15th of April 2014: that day, Le Monde published a series of articles on TTIP during the 2014 EU elections campaign. This is the moment when TTIP is found to have entered the public sphere in a much more extensive way, largely due to the enterprise of a few journalists working for Le Monde’s space ‘Les Décodeurs’. Additionally, these articles were followed by greater coverage by Le Monde, and also by Les Échos . Despite some 4 There is one content frame missing, namely threat to public services, because it is broadly marginal in comparison with the rest of agonistic frames, and would complicate the visualisation of the figure.

140

A. OLEART Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy

Global leadership Threat to sovereignty

40

30

20

10

0 13 01 (10)

13 02 (5)

14 01 (51)

14 02 (34)

15 01 (51)

15 02 (42)

16 01 (76)

16 02 (60)

Fig. 3 Framing ratio (vertical axis) over time by semester of the leading opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic frames in the three French news outlets (the brackets in the horizontal axis indicate the number of articles in each semester)

chronological differences between the three news outlets, their TTIP coverage shares a common pattern (Fig. 4). As in the Spanish TTIP debate, the images accompanying the articles also represent well the radical change in the agreement’s media coverage. Whereas in the first period executive actors dominate the visual imagery of TTIP, this changes radically during the second period. Protest images started to circulate widely, as did images of MPs and MEPs, civil society actors or images related to the agreement’s impact on food safety measures or the environment (Table 2). Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Threat Sovereignty

Global leadership Private tribunals

Challenge to standards Lack of Transparency

Period 1 Period 2 0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 4 Framing ratio by period in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled French news outlets

5

Table 2 Presence of imagesa by visual category and by period in the French news outlets

Images in the French media Mass opposition MPs/MEPs Trading goods Executive actors Food safety and environment Others

FRAMING TTIP IN FRANCE

141

Period 1 (30)

Period 2 (299)

Total (329)

0 1 4 12 2

70 12 10 88 6

70 13 14 100 8

2

29

31

a The number of images coded in the table(s) differs from the total

number of articles, because not all the articles contained an image

2.2

February 2013 to Mid-April 2014: The Progressive Media Introduces TTIP in France, the Mainstream Takes It to the Next Level

Unlike in Spain, TTIP initially entered the French public sphere through the progressive news outlet Médiapart , and mainly thanks to the work of its Brussels-based correspondent, Ludovic Lamant. As early as the 20th of February 2013, Médiapart published the first article on TTIP in France, with the following headline ‘Le retour d’un zombie, l’accord de libreéchange transatlantique’ (‘The Return of a Zombie, the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement’). That first article already included references to the challenge to regulatory standards agonistic frame that would become mainstream in France over a year later. Asked about his role in introducing TTIP to the French public in an interview, Lamant argued that my job is to identify controversial subjects before others do it, such as TTIP. I was one of the first to ask questions on TTIP in 2013 to French representatives, while most other journalists did not pay any attention to it. (Ludovic Lamant, Brussels’ correspondent of Médiapart , interviewed in September 2017)

However, Médiapart did not play the same role as eldiario.es in Spain. As we have seen, eldiario.es overwhelmingly published more articles on TTIP than the other Spanish news outlets, contributing greatly to its arrival to the mainstream EL PAÍS. The role of eldiario.es was to politicise the agreement by introducing agonistic frames, most notably corporations vs democracy. Progressively, and particularly in 2016, the mainstream EL

142

A. OLEART

PAÍS and economic Expansión picked up some of those frames, providing a much more critical and expanded perspective on TTIP. In France, Médiapart introduced TTIP as soon as the agreement was announced in February 2013, but the mainstream Le Monde dedicated the most articles to it, despite its editorial position favouring the agreement. In this sense, Médiapart succeeded in its role as an investigative journalist media, situating TTIP on the French political arena. Overall, the framing of TTIP in the French public sphere was largely similar in the three news outlets, and agonistic frames dominated the debate, particularly in Le Monde and Médiapart , while antagonistic discourse was marginal. Interestingly, even though the salience of articles published on TTIP is very low during the first period, there is already a plurality of frames present in the public sphere. The most present frame across the three French news outlets is the agonistic frame challenge to standards, followed closely by the opportunity frame jobs and growth. This indicates an early plural and agonistic debate in terms of the content of the articles published early in the French public sphere, but a very low salience (Fig. 5). The presence of visual categories is coherent with the frames tracked in the written sample. While a certain plurality of frames is available from early on, TTIP stays inconspicuous and executive actors remain overwhelmingly dominant visually. Additionally, the economic Les Échos introduced several images related to trade, closely connected to a neoliberal understanding of TTIP. The predominance of images of executive actors and trading goods illustrates well the executive-led and rather depoliticised media coverage during the first period of the TTIP debate in France (Table 3). Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Sovereignty

Global leadership Private tribunals

Challenge to standards Lack of Transparency

Le Monde

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 5 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled French news outlets during the first period

5

FRAMING TTIP IN FRANCE

143

Table 3 Presence of images by visual category and by news outlet in the French media during the first period Images in the French media 1st period Mass opposition MPs/MEPs Trading goods Executive actors Food safety and environment Others

2.3

Les Échos (8)

Médiapart (13)

Le Monde (9)

Total (30)

0 0 3 1 0

0 1 0 7 0

0 0 1 4 2

0 1 4 12 2

0

1

1

2

The Agonistic Politicisation in France: TTIP Becomes Mainstream from the 2014 EU Elections Onwards

The second period begins during the 2014 EU elections campaign, when Le Monde publishes a series of six articles on TTIP the 15th of April 2014, five of them in the section ‘Les Décodeurs’. During this second period, starting from the 2014 EU elections campaign, several frames start to dominate the TTIP debate, including mass opposition, corporations vs democracy and challenge to regulatory standards. The TTIP debate’s second period in France stands out for the high salient TTIP in the three news outlets analysed, particularly the mainstream Le Monde and economic Les Échos . With this high salience relative to the debate’s first period came a much wider presence of agonistic frames, including corporations vs democracy, which dominated the discourse vis-à-vis opportunity and antagonistic frames, these are almost absent (see Fig. 6). Out of the three news outlets, the counter-hegemonic and agonistic corporations vs democracy frame is mostly present in the mainstream Le Monde. This is interesting, insofar that in the Spanish public sphere it was the progressive eldiario.es the news outlet that pushed that frame. The economic Les Échos also picked it up, much more than Spain’s economic Expansión, reproducing not only the corporations vs democracy frame but also challenge to regulatory standards and private tribunals. It can be concluded that French business and political elites paid TTIP more attention than did Spanish business and political elites, but less than British elites. The coverage of Les Échos was overall driven by the process frame horse race, which indicates the news outlet’s priority in covering TTIP was

144

A. OLEART Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Threat to Sovereignty

Global leadership Private tribunals

Challenge to standards Lack of Transparency

Le Monde

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 6 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled French news outlets during the second period

to provide up-to-date information about the negotiations’ state of play. However, Les Échos also widely reproduced agonistic frames, particularly private tribunals from the negotiations’ start, the idea of a private arbitrage system. This contrasts with Le Monde or the Spanish news outlets, where the challenge to regulatory standards frame is more present and there is a wider focus on the content of the negotiations than in the up-to-date information of the state of play. In terms of the process frames, over time Les Échos introduced the mass opposition frame, indicating that the growing anti-TTIP protests had important effects on its coverage. In fact, the mass opposition frame appeared more and more in the French economic news outlet, peaking during the second semester of 2016. As in Spain, the mass opposition frame’s rise opened a window for agonistic frames in every news outlet, a frame generally absent during the first period. Once images of protest start to circulate, agonistic frames overwhelmingly dominate vis-à-vis opportunity ones. As in the Spanish context, there is a shift in the way TTIP is framed in the French context. Whereas during the first period the horse race was the leading process frame, in the second period the story told in the French public sphere is about the protests against TTIP, which went along with a rise in the visibility of agonistic frames (Fig. 7). Le Monde was the news outlet that led the way to politicising TTIP. Le Monde’s role in politicising TTIP in France was to a great extent due to work by Maxime Vaudano, a journalist who authored five articles published on the 15th of April 2014 in ‘Les Décodeurs’. Vaudano became one of the main actors in introducing TTIP into the French

5

Horse race

FRAMING TTIP IN FRANCE

145

Mass opposition

Period 1

Period 2

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 7 Framing ratio over time by semester of the process frames in the sampled French news outlets

public sphere, and in fact went on to publish a book on it called ‘Docteur TTIP et Mister Tafta. Que nous réserve vraiment le traité transatlantique Europe/États-Unis’. Later on, in October 2014, Vaudano started a blog within Le Monde, initially called ‘Le Monde de Tafta’, dedicated exclusively to TTIP and CETA that later evolved into a blog on international trade at large. In an interview with Vaudano, he explained that during the 2014 EU elections, the Parti de Gauche and Europe-Écologie communicated extensively on TTIP, with affirmations related to chlorinated chicken, ISDS and other issues. So I entered the subject to explore whether these arguments were justified or not. The perspective was one of fact-checking. That is how I became interested in TTIP. I did a series of 5 or 6 articles during the 2014 EU elections campaign. On the basis of these articles, I was contacted by an editor to write a small book on TTIP. I worked for 4-5 months to finish the book and, given that I worked on the topic, I said to myself that I could continue to follow the topic. And it is at this point that I suggested to the direction of Le Monde to follow the topic on a blog. The idea is that, since we are several journalists that have a blog to follow particular subjects more closely, this would allow me to follow the subject on a regular basis. This was important, because every time I wrote an independent article on TTIP, I was obliged to give the background and explain the subject taking the perspective that many readers have never heard of TTIP. So I needed an independent space, ‘Le Monde de Tafta’, that started in October 2014. (Maxime Vaudano, journalist at Le Monde, interviewed in November 2016)

146

A. OLEART

The chronology points out how agonistic frames steadily increase over time, particularly that of corporations vs democracy, which grows in parallel with the mass opposition frame. The agonistic frames’ growing presence in Le Monde over time indicates the issue’s growing importance in France in general, and in Le Monde in particular. Figure 8 illustrates the evolution of the leading opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic frames in Le Monde. First, the antagonistic threat to sovereignty frame is marginal along the whole process. Second, the opportunity jobs and growth frame is initially dominating the debate during the first year and a half (from 2013 until mid-2014), but decreases its importance the more the negotiations advance. Third, the agonistic master frame corporations vs democracy is initially invisible, but over time becomes, to a large extent, the frame that gives meaning to TTIP in Le Monde. TTIP was not a foreign-affairs issue, but a national issue for France and Le Monde. Vaudano, Le Monde’s leading journalist on TTIP (and the moderator of the blog ‘Le Monde de Tafta’ later renamed ‘La Bataille Transatlantique’), confirmed this perspective, arguing the following: TTIP arrived through Paris. Brussels’ correspondents did not see it coming. For them, TTIP was an institutional subject, trade policy, they did not pay much attention. It is because it was a subject taken by civil society organisations within EU member states that it has become an issue. (Maxime Vaudano, journalist at Le Monde, interviewed in November 2016) Jobs and Growth Threat to national sovereignty

Corporations vs democracy

20 15 10 5 0 13 01 (4)

13 02 (2)

14 01 (22)

14 02 (8)

15 01 (22) 15 02 (16) 16 01 (35) 16 02 (32)

Fig. 8 Framing ratio over time by semester of the leading opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic frames in Le Monde

5

FRAMING TTIP IN FRANCE

147

As in Spain, the French media landscape’s attention to TTIP peaked during the first semester of 2016, particularly during the May 2016 Greenpeace leaks. Just as EL PAÍS received the leaked documents from Greenpeace, so did Le Monde, the platform that most emphasised TTIP during the leaks. Conflict, particularly from the left-right cleavage, was crucial for the visibility of TTIP in France. However, such conflict was not always visible. Vaudano argued the following: By July 2016 the axe left-right had become visible. In the beginning, until France asked for the negotiations to end, the government has always been favourable, the PS a bit divided but always rather for the agreement. We were in a ‘centrist’ logic, given that only the extremes and the ecologists were against. So that corresponded more with the traditional politicisation of EU issues, where the extremes are opposed to the EU. But now we have entered into a more left-right classical divide, where the PS says ‘no’ mainly for electoral reasons, because the presidential elections are coming, and the right is more supportive of TTIP. The right-wing was hesitating to support an agreement that the PS in government was supporting, but now it is more clear. So now we are in a rather classical polarisation of national political issues. Before we were in a more traditional logic of European issues. (Maxime Vaudano, journalist at Le Monde, interviewed in November 2016)

As Vaudano argues, TTIP became a matter of domestic politics, since François Hollande’s Socialist government started to question the agreement after the Greenpeace leaks. This encouraged a traditional left-right cleavage, with the left generally against TTIP and the right for it. Additionally, the government’s critical remarks rapidly made headlines, given that a single national government’s opposition to TTIP could block the whole agreement. During this second period, TTIP and CETA become more and more closely associated, particularly during the last semester, and references to the negotiations lack of transparency increase. The protests against were often associated with the alter-globalist coalition’s way of framing TTIP, representing it as a ‘trojan horse’ by which multinational corporations are trying to increase their profits through TTIP behind closed doors. The actors responsible for politicising TTIP in the French context are media players such as Médiapart , who played an important role because it is ideologically and socially close to alter-globalist circles, and was sensitive to the issue before any other French news outlet; and civil society

148

A. OLEART

organisations who opposed TTIP. This is not only because civil society actors had the capacity to mobilise thousands of people in the streets, but also because they had a level of expertise that helped journalists interpret the agreement, as Vaudano argued: The EC only communicated about TTIP with big declarations, without responding to concrete questions. The only persons that analysed precisely TTIP were civil society actors that rather opposed the agreement. Within my sources in France that helped me the most were the people from the anti-TAFTA coalition. There are some that are not very interesting to me, because they are very ideological and militant, they have a very generalist discourse. I am more in a logic of decoding TTIP than ideological. So within this movement there is a group of very competent people on TTIP, and they are almost the only ones capable of decrypting the texts that are leaked. So, on the one hand, the arguments of the EC are very general, very reassuring, but fragile because they are not concrete. On the other, there are arguments by civil society which are very concrete but sometimes a bit alarmist. (Maxime Vaudano, journalist at Le Monde, interviewed in November 2016)

Within civil society, the alter-globalisation network was very active in France, as was the case in Spain and, as we will later see, in the UK. However, the alter-globalisation (the ‘altermondialistes’) network has traditionally been considered ‘the left of the left’ (in French, ‘la gauche de la gauche’), which might explain the following argument made by Vaudano: the Alter-globalisation network was surprised that people like me and Le Monde were interested in TTIP. They criticised that we were not speaking about these things. But we did, more often than ever before, and the people interested are part of a circle much bigger than the Alter-globalisation network. TTIP is the example that people can become interested in EU issues. If we were to put the same energy to other European issues, we could also interest the readers in a similar way. (Maxime Vaudano, journalist at Le Monde, interviewed in November 2016)

The images accompanying the articles in the French public sphere during this second period are also representative of the radical change in TTIP coverage. The change is most striking in the case of Le Monde: in the first period it published few articles on TTIP, and articles overwhelmingly reproduced executive actors’ views and symbolic authority. This changed

5

149

FRAMING TTIP IN FRANCE

dramatically during the second period, when images of protest became overwhelmingly dominant, and when executive actors’ images became a minority. While reproducing many agonistic frames, Les Échos visually does not place much emphasis on protestors in comparison with images of executive actors (Table 4). Finally, Médiapart ’s TTIP coverage is quite different compared to Le Monde and Les Échos . Médiapart ’s most common frame overall is the horse race, indicating that the outlet’s priority was to cover the negotiations’ development, an emphasis slightly different from the other two progressive news outlets from Spain and the UK. However, while one of Médiapart ’s priorities is to follow the negotiations’ state of play, the progressive French news outlet widely reproduced agonistic frames, putting particular emphasis on private tribunals, challenge to regulatory standards and corporations vs democracy. The opportunity frames are generally absent: not a single Médiapart article has an opportunity frame in its headlines or image. The relatively low salience of TTIP in Médiapart is explained by its smaller size compared to the other news outlets analysed, and existence of a separate space on their website where members widely discussed TTIP. This separate members’ space (‘Le Club’), however, has not been considered because the nature of its discourse differs widely from the publication’s other content, and it is written by readers, rather than by Médiapart staff. Additionally, as explained earlier, Médiapart ’s objective is to focus on investigative journalism, and it can therefore be seen as a success that they were the Table 4 Presence of images by visual category and by news outlet in the French news outlets during the second period Images in the French media 2nd period

Les Échos (118)

Médiapart (49)

Le Monde (132) Total (299)

Mass opposition MPs/MEPs Trading goods/Economics Executive actors Food safety and environment Others

12 1 8

1 4 0

57 7 2

70 12 10

24 2

17 0

37 4

88 6

14

5

10

29

150

A. OLEART

first platform to publish an article on TTIP, and that other platforms progressively picked up the issue. Médiapart played its watchdog role by providing quality content, including a streamed audiovisual debate on the 17th of October 2016 between Édouard Bourcieu, a European Commission official, and one of the French anti-TTIP and anti-CETA campaign’s leading organisers, Amélie Cannonne. The French public sphere discussed TTIP widely, and the debate, much like that in Spain, can be considered agonistic. The agonistic corporations vs democracy frame circulated in the three news outlets analysed. In addition to the discursive agonistic battle of ideas, a contraposition was also present between the first period dominated visually by executive actors, and the second period where protestors and regular citizens in protests became much more present. Antagonistic conflict is notably absent, which indicates that, while the French TTIP debate shifted away from the first period’s ‘permissive consensus’ stage, its second period was characterised by an inclusive and agonistic debate of politics in the Union, rather than politics of the Union.

3

The Politicisation of TTIP in France: Building on the Bolkestein Directive

France has been one of the countries where EU affairs have historically been most politicised. France’s ‘non’ on the 2005 European Constitutional Treaty (ECT) referendum is the most obvious episode, but not the only one. The French public sphere witnessed the Bolkestein Directive’s politicisation, which confronted those defending a ‘social Europe’ from those pushing for a ‘Neoliberal Europe’ (Crespy, 2012). In consequence, the TTIP negotiations’ agonistic politicisation in France is not as surprising as that in Spain, which was rather unprecedented. The French TTIP debate’s first period illustrates the ‘permissive consensus’, where executive actors remained in control of the debate and TTIP did not become truly contentious. During this initial period, the three French news outlets largely ignored TTIP, only publishing a few articles on it. This lasted until the 2014 EU elections campaign, when TTIP entered the public sphere through the mainstream platform Le Monde. The contestation of TTIP in France began from the ‘left of the left’ (‘la gauche de la gauche’), with actors such as ATTAC and

5

FRAMING TTIP IN FRANCE

151

AITEC5 leading the ‘Stop Tafta’ campaign. Progressively, however, the politicisation of TTIP was accompanied by a much wider set of actors putting forward their grievances vis-à-vis the negotiations, such as the leftwing presidential candidate Mélénchon. As has been empirically shown, agonistic frames overwhelmingly dominated the framing of TTIP during this second period. The TTIP debate’s agonistic character in France is not unprecedented, given that the Bolkestein Directive was debated in a similar way. However, the EU has been increasingly politicised in a rather antagonistic way in the French public sphere since 2014, given Front National’s rise after its victory in the French 2014 EU elections. During the 2017 Presidential elections, the confrontation in the run-off between Emmanuel Macron, the liberal pro-European candidate, and Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate opposing further European integration, illustrated the increasing antagonistic politicisation of the EU in France, which continued during the French 2019 EU elections. It is for this reason that the absence of the antagonistic frame is relevant in the French TTIP debate. While the French TTIP debate was politicised agonistically, it could be argued that the 2017 French presidential election was politicised antagonistically, situating the EU in opposition to France. In this situation, Macron portrayed the defence of ‘Europe’ against nationalism, while Le Pen illustrated the defence of ‘France’ against ‘globalism’. Considering the recent antagonistic politicisation, it is plausible to argue that EU politicisation in the French public sphere is here to stay, but the different types of politicisation indicate a current struggle in France to define which type of politicisation will become normalised, depending on the future episodes of EU politicisation. The politicisation of the EU in France in the context of TTIP, but also illustrated by the 2017 Presidential election run-off between Macron and Le Pen, signals how ‘Europe’ is increasingly part of the national political discourse, thus contributing to further intertwine European and national politics.

Bibliography Ancelovici, M. (2002). Organising against globalisation: The case of ATTAC in France. Politics and Society, 30(3), 427–463.

5 AITEC refers to Association Internationale de Techniciens, Experts et Chercheurs.

152

A. OLEART

Brouard, S., Grossmann, E., & Sauger, N. (2005). Les Français contre l’Europe. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Cotta, A. (1992). Pour l’Europe, contre Maastricht. Paris: Fayard. Reynié, D. (2005). Le vertige social-nationaliste: la gauche du non. Paris: La table ronde. Wintrebert, R. (2007). Attac: la politique autrement? Enquête sur l’histoire et la crise d’une organisation militante. Paris: La Découverte.

Interviews 1. Maxime Vaudano, journalist at Le Monde, November 2016. 2. Ludovic Lamant, Brussels’ correspondent of Médiapart, September 2017.

CHAPTER 6

Framing TTIP in the UK

1

Framing Europe in the UK: Antagonistic Politicisation Based on the Defence of National Identity and Sovereignty

The relationship between the UK and the European integration process (see Baker & Seawright, 1998) is complex and much less consensual than in the case of Spain or France. Unlike Spain and France, at the end of World War II, the UK was still leading the British Commonwealth of Nations, which evolved into the Commonwealth of Nations after the 1949 London Declaration, in addition to its ‘special relationship’ with the United States (Gowland, Turner, & Wright, 2009). In consequence, unlike other European nation-states, the UK had other options and priorities for trading and cooperating than many of its European neighbours. Additionally, the British empire had consequences in terms of identity and culture, because it gave the UK a status of world power that no other European country had after World War II, and it stressed the British singularity. Identities entail a dynamic of both inclusion and exclusion, defining a ‘we’ and ‘them’ that are related to in- and out-groups. From this perspective, the UK has differed from other EU member states in that the British identity has been partially based on being somewhat ‘different’ from other European cultures. The UK, however, attempted to enter the European Economic Community (EEC) during the early 1960s, but Charles De Gaulle’s © The Author(s) 2021 A. Oleart, Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53637-4_6

153

154

A. OLEART

French government vetoed two UK attempts to join the EEC in 1963 and 1967. The explanation for these vetoes is connected to the UK’s historical relationship with the US, as The Economist itself argued (quoted in Díez Medrano, 2003, p. 133): ‘Doubtless some people in Paris, and some elsewhere on the Continent, at present see Britain as an American Trojan horse. In a sense it is, and quite rightly…’ (‘Europe or Atlantis’, The Economist, July 14, 1962). Resistance to European integration in the British media (for an overview of the historical relationship between the British press and European integration, see Wilkes & Wring, 1998) and political parties was questioned not only from the right, but also from the left. In the 1960s the Labour Party argued that the EEC was the European Employers’ Federation, only representing the interests of big businesses. This shows that anti-EU rhetoric, which in the UK has lately been associated with the anti-immigration extreme right (led mainly by Nigel Farage), however, was historically present on the left as well. However, when the UK finally joined the EEC in 1973, both the right and left came to accept the UK’s membership, which is reflected in the positions taken by the left-wing The New Statesman (TNS) and rightwing The Economist (see Díez Medrano, 2003). TNS saw in the EEC an opportunity to build alliances with other workers’ parties in Europe, and by doing so it even criticised the isolationist vision of some Labour Party members. The Economist saw an economic opportunity that would boost UK exports, justifying it ‘by referring to the growing internationalisation of capitalism and the need for larger markets’ (Díez Medrano, 2003, p. 135). In 1973, the UK entered the EEC. And, in the country’s 1975 referendum to continue its membership in the European Communities, editors of the TNS announced its positive position, while, however, opening a debate with views for and against. While those against membership argued that the route to socialism was only possible outside of the EEC, those in favour of staying in the EEC emphasised the possibility of building alliances with other left-wing forces in other European countries. Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election as the UK’s Prime Minister prompted a more pro-European approach from the left, given Thatcher’s staunch national sovereignty defence and confrontational rhetoric vis-à-vis the European project. While The Economist was more in line with Thatcher’s sovereign position, TNS argued for further European political integration, since nation-states were becoming too small to retain influence in a globalising world. European integration became the project of the Labour

6

FRAMING TTIP IN THE UK

155

Party, a project that was meant to create a new space beyond the polarisation between the Soviet Union and the US, particularly with Tony Blair’s arrival to Downing Street in 1997. Understanding the European project as enlarging a market, rather than enlarging a political community, made it possible for those who supported a ‘free-trade’ area to support European integration without giving up their defence of an exclusive national identity and sovereignty. The European integration support from the Labour Party and the (reluctant) acceptance of the Conservative Party did not stop the (mainly conservative) media to reproduce myths about the EU that generally situated the ‘British people’ against the ‘Brussels elite’. The degree of antagonistic politicisation in the UK was partially fuelled by ‘Euromyths’, the name of a blog created by the European Commission representation to the UK to debunk lies spread by the British media about the EU. Some of the debunked Euromyths by the European Commission include articles such as the ‘Brussels sprouts the curve-free cucumber’ (published by the Daily Mail on 7 May 1993) or a story published by the Daily Star on 28 October 1994 about the EU-level standardisation of condoms in terms of size (which was later cited by Boris Johnson during the 2016 referendum campaign).1 This type of stories contributed to the creation of a narrative that situated ‘the witty Briton’ as standing up to the ‘European bully’ (Henkel, 2019). This was particularly the case in a context where the two mainstream parties seemed to converge towards the centre, which opened a window of opportunity for the populist radical right, which often mobilised a sort of post-imperial populism against the EU (Gifford, 2006). This reinforced ‘Britishness’ and the national identity (Morra, 2013) as distinctively different from other European countries. In addition to the position of the two quality newspapers and the Euromyths mentioned above, Díez Medrano (2003) found an important degree of scepticism in British society vis-à-vis the European integration process. In interviews with ordinary citizens, he found that they often mentioned a fear of losing the nation’s identity, culture and way of life, along with the transfer of sovereignty. Such views paved the way for understanding the EU and ‘Brussels’ as a bureaucracy that ‘dictates’ the policies applied in the UK, since the EU is seen as something coming 1 The Guardian made a list of the ‘10 best Euromyths’: https://www.theguardian.com/ politics/2016/jun/23/10-best-euro-myths-from-custard-creams-to-condoms (accessed 15 June 2019).

156

A. OLEART

from the outside, where the UK plays little role. Additionally, comments were connected to the view that the British culture is ‘different’ from other EU countries, and often taps into an anti-immigration discourse. In the UK, the Eurosceptic discourse is connected to anti-immigration claims, often with comments against immigration from Eastern European countries, such as Romanians (Fox, Moro¸sanu, & Szilassy, 2012). The perception that the UK has almost no voice in ‘Brussels’ led to viewing European integration as a threat to British culture, national identity and national sovereignty. Accordingly, when differentiating between ‘supporters’ and ‘non-supporters’ of European integration, the latter highlighted the defence of national sovereignty and national identity more often than the former. Sovereignty is therefore a relevant factor when discussing European integration in the UK, to a lesser degree in France and not a relevant factor in Spain. It therefore took three decades after World War II for the Labour Party and the Conservative Party to accept and support the British membership of the EU, and British citizens were exposed to anti-integration discourse even after the UK joined the European project from the mainstream parties and media. Since Thatcher’s rise to power in 1979, the pro-European position has generally been closer to the Labour Party, rather than the Conservatives. As The New Statesman argued in an article called ‘Now is the Hour’ (January 26, 1990), a ‘Europe of nationstates is bound to be dominated by Germany (…) In a federal Europe, on the other hand, no nation-state would predominate, because there would be no nation-states’ (quoted in Díez Medrano, 2003, p. 141). While European integration was broadly accepted on the Labour Party, the European question remained unanswered within the Conservative Party. Latent concerns over the consequences of European integration for the British national identity and sovereignty led to the emergence of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) (Usherwood, 2007). This anti-immigration populist right-wing political party emerged from 17% of votes in the 2009 EU elections to its victory in the 2014 EU elections with 27% of the votes. The success of UKIP in the 2014 EU elections was matched by a strong negative bias towards the EU as a polity in the media (Galpin & Trenz, 2018). Pressure from the anti-EU right led David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister at the time, to promise a referendum on whether to continue the UK’s membership in the EU in the 2015 British general election. Subsequently, the ‘Leave’ campaign won the June 2016 referendum on UK’s

6

FRAMING TTIP IN THE UK

157

membership in the EU, and its core slogan was to ‘take back control’, highlighting the opposition between the EU and British national identity and sovereignty, with a strong emphasis on immigration (see Evans & Menon, 2017). This type of politicisation is antagonistic, constructing a discursive opposition between ‘Europe’ and ‘Britain’, and is generally led by rightwing politicians such as Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage, who led the pro-Brexit campaign in 2016. After the victory of the ‘Leave’ camp in the 2016 referendum, the internal battle within the Conservative Party was won by the Eurosceptic camp, who ultimately managed to replace Prime Minister Theresa May with Boris Johnson. Under his leadership, the Conservatives won a majority in the 2019 general elections under the slogan of ‘Getting Brexit done’. Additionally, the 2019 European elections in the UK were won by the Brexit party, in many ways the successor of UKIP and also led by Nigel Farage, and ultimately the UK government led by Boris Johnson withdrew from the EU on 31 January 2020. The victory of ‘Brexit’ in 2016, followed by the Brexit party victory in the 2019 EU elections, and the majority won by Boris Johnson in December 2019 is the continuation of the antagonistic type of politicisation that has historically taken place in the UK, where the threat to national identity and sovereignty have been the central concerns regarding European integration in the British public sphere.

2

The Evolution of the Agonistic TTIP Debate in the British Public Sphere 2.1

Overview of the TTIP Debate in the UK

The British sample is made of 280 media articles that refer to TTIP in the headlines or the main image, and all of them date from February 2013 to November 2016. The number of articles that British news outlets published on it reveals that, unlike in Spain and France, the main outlet pushing TTIP into the public sphere was the Financial Times (FT), the leading British economic news outlet. However, as becomes clear in the chronological graph (see Fig. 1), it is Britain’s progressive The Guardian that drives the TTIP debate to a great extent from the second half of 2014 until the negotiations’ freezing in November 2016. The TTIP debate partially intersects with the Brexit debate, which indicates the extent to which TTIP entered the national political dynamics. In terms of the type

158

A. OLEART

BBC

FT

The Guardian

30

23

15

8

0 13 01

13 02

14 01

14 02

15 01

15 02

16 01

16 02

Fig. 1 Chronological evolution by semester of the number of articles sampled in the three British news outlets (In the horizontal axis, the numbers refer to the year and the semester: e.g. ‘13 01’ = first semester of 2013)

of articles published, the FT and The Guardian stand out for considerable TTIP coverage through opinion articles, rather than only news articles. In addition to a number of opinion articles and letters, the FT published six editorials on the issue. Similarly, The Guardian covered TTIP extensively, dedicating an editorial and, perhaps most interestingly, a Live Coverage2 when the negotiations were discussed in the House of Commons. This indicates that TTIP became an important issue at the national level in the UK. Lastly, the BBC covered TTIP in a more neutral way, giving almost no room to opinion articles. However, this is influenced by its broadcasting nature: the BBC is mainly a broadcasting platform, and therefore, it is understandable that it published few written online articles and, second, that they are more informative than opinionated (Table 1).

2 The Live Coverage type of content is an article produced on the basis of minute-byminute updates on a particular topic. The Guardian narrated a British House of Commons debate on TTIP on a minute-by-minute basis, indicating the importance it assigned to the agreement.

6

FRAMING TTIP IN THE UK

159

Table 1 Number of articles sampled by article type and news outlet from the British media News outlet

FT BBC The Guardian Total

Information

Opinion

Letters

Editorial

Live Coverage

Total number of articles selected

67 53 52

17 2 39

29 0 13

6 0 1

0 0 1

119 55 106

172

58

42

7

1

280

In regards to the chronology of articles published in the British media, the FT followed TTIP since the negotiations were announced in February 2013, and followed them regularly, with coverage peaking in February 2014 and September 2016. This coverage contrasts with that of The Guardian, where TTIP coverage started later than at the FT . The Guardian’s increasing coverage since mid-2014 peaked in May 2016, when The Guardian had the British exclusive on the Greenpeace leak of the official TTIP documents. The British media coverage of TTIP was less prominent than in Spain and France in terms of number of articles, but agonistic frames (corporations vs democracy, challenge to standards, private tribunals, threat to public services and lack of transparency) dominated the British debate on TTIP in comparison with opportunity frames (jobs and growth and global leadership) and the marginal antagonistic frame (threat to sovereignty). The progressive The Guardian is the most critical of TTIP, even though the FT is the outlet that initially opened its doors to counter-hegemonic ideas. Overall, three agonistic frames overwhelmingly dominate the British debate, challenge to standards, private tribunals and corporations vs democracy. Additionally, the threat to public services frame is generally absent from the Spanish and French public spheres, but widely present in the UK. The prominence of the National Health Service (NHS), which is part of the threat to public services frame, is particular to the British context, as is examined later in this chapter. And much like the progressive eldiario.es in the Spanish context and Médiapart in the French context, The Guardian plays the role of the British public sphere’s most critical space where counter-hegemonic ideas were put forward. Interestingly,

160

A. OLEART

the antagonistic frame threat to sovereignty is almost entirely absent, even when TTIP intersects with the Brexit debate. The British media coverage on TTIP begins much like in the French and Spanish media, by devoting little attention to TTIP and using the process frame horse race. The global leadership frame is widely present in the early months of the TTIP negotiations within the FT , emphasising the agreement’s geopolitical importance. The jobs and growth frame is also present in the negotiations’ first stage. However, the two opportunity frames progressively diminish in weight from 2014 onwards. Instead, the mass opposition frame becomes dominant since the second semester of 2014, accompanied by a number of agonistic frames, a dynamic that has already been witnessed in the Spanish and French TTIP debates. Media reporting on the mass opposition that the TTIP negotiations face seems to have opened a window for agonistic frames to become not only present, but also dominant. In the British context, more than in the other countries analysed, the threat to public services dominates, within which the NHS stands out repeatedly as a potential victim of TTIP. The corporations vs democracy frame first appears in the first semester of 2014, then grows progressively, along a trajectory similar to other agonistic frames, such as private tribunals or challenge to standards. This is reflected in the Fig. 2, that illustrates the visibility of each of the seven content frames presented in Chapter 3. The bigger the coloured portion of the frame, the more present (in percentage terms and in relation to the other frames) it was in the sampled news outlets. Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Lack of Transparency

Global leadership Threat to public services Threat to Sovereignty

Challenge to standards Private tribunals

BBC

FT

Guardian 0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 2 Framing ratio by news outlet in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled British media (The graphs include in the same category both the frames and their counter-frames [in case a frame has a counter-frame])

6

FRAMING TTIP IN THE UK

161

The overall framing of TTIP becomes more nuanced taking a temporal perspective. As in the case of Spain and France, opportunity frames were initially ahead of agonistic ones. Particularly salient in the British public sphere was the global leadership frame, which indicates the geopolitical perspective British commentators were taking on the agreement, particularly within the FT . However, as of the second semester of 2014 (starting in July 2014), the framing of TTIP changes, and the corporations vs democracy master frame becomes dominant in the conversation, closely followed by the opportunity frame jobs and growth. The particularity of the British context is the rise of the threat to public services frame, which coincides with the rise of the corporations vs democracy master frame. The antagonistic frame threat to sovereignty remains marginal all along the TTIP debate. The rise of the agonistic master frame, alongside the threat to public services, coincides with a change in the process frames. Initially, the horse race is the frame that dominates the debate in terms of the process of the negotiations, but as of the second semester of 2014 the discussion is mostly dominated by the wide opposition the agreements is facing (Fig. 3). Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Threat to public services

Global leadership Threat to sovereignty

60

45

30

15

0 13 01 (8)

13 02 (11)

14 01 (34)

14 02 (55)

15 01 (59)

15 02 (26)

16 01 (47)

16 02 (40)

Fig. 3 Framing ratio (vertical axis) over time by semester of the leading opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic frames in the sampled British news outlets (the brackets in the horizontal axis indicate the number of articles in each semester)

162

A. OLEART

The debate surrounding the TTIP negotiations can be divided in two distinguishable time periods. The first period lasts from February 2013 until the end of June 2014, a period that has similar characteristics to the ones displayed in Spain and France, with the key difference that the economic FT started the TTIP debate much earlier than any other news outlet in the three countries. The second period in the British TTIP debate starts in July 2014, the moment when both The Guardian and the FT start to touch upon the danger that TTIP poses to the National Health Service (NHS), and the BBC published its first article accompanied by an image of protests against TTIP. This is a turning point. As we will see, it is the connection between the British campaign to protect the NHS and the campaign against TTIP that leads the way for the agreement to become increasingly (un)popular in the British public sphere. As the figure 4 indicates, the weight of opportunity frames is reduced in relation to the agonistic ones, including the agonistic master frame, corporations vs democracy. Arguably, in both periods we can see an agonistic debate, given the wide presence of agonistic frames and the marginality of the antagonistic frame threat to sovereignty. However, the agonistic character of the debate is more evident in the second one, in addition of having much more salience, given that the number of articles published during the first period (53) is much lower than during the second one (227). The second period also breaks with the first from a visual perspective, introducing a wide range of actors through images as well. For instance, nurses (representing the threat TTIP poses to the NHS) start to appear Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Lack of Transparency

Global leadership Threat public services Threat to Sovereignty

Challenge to standards Private tribunals

Period 1

Period 2

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 4 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the process frames by period in the British news outlets

6

Table 2 Presence of images by visual category of the TTIP debate in the British news outlets during the two periods

Images in the British media Mass opposition MPs/MEPs Trading goods Executive actors Public services (NHS) Food safety and environment Others

163

FRAMING TTIP IN THE UK

Period 1 (53)

Period 2 (227)

Total (280)

1 1 5 11 0

77 15 6 53 6

78 16 11 64 6

2

10

12

11

23

34

often, further linking the NHS with TTIP, as well as images of protests against TTIP, signalling the increasing opposition of the British public (Table 2). 2.2

February 2013 to June 2014: British Elites Debate TTIP

Unlike in Spain and France, TTIP entered the British public sphere through the economic Financial Times (FT ). The FT followed the announcement and the start of the negotiations closely, which explains its focus on the horse race frame during the debate’s first period. The initial articles in the FT were initially very supportive of TTIP and particularly gave it a geopolitical perspective by reproducing the global leadership frame. However, from the start of the negotiations the FT also provided alternative frames, including the most radical frame corporations vs democracy. Progressively, the FT emphasised agonistic frames more and more, and particularly private tribunals, the most present agonistic frame in the FT corpus overall. Interestingly, agonistic frames appear initially in the FT , rather than in the BBC or The Guardian. In fact, both The Guardian and the BBC ignored TTIP initially, given that the former published its first piece on TTIP in late May 2013, and the latter in November 2013 (Fig. 5). The FT is the space where agonistic frames started to appear in the British context. From early on, a wide range of agonistic frames are present. In fact, shortly after the TTIP negotiations were announced,

164

A. OLEART Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Lack of Transparency

Global leadership Threat to public services Threat to Sovereignty

Challenge to standards Private tribunals

BBC

FT

The Guardian

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 5 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled British news outlets during the first period

the 18th of February 2013, Timothy E. Josling, a Stanford university professor, published an article titled ‘Keep politics out of transatlantic food safety talks’ (Josling, 2013, February 18). Similarly, in February 2014, another professor, Philip G. Cerny, published an article titled ‘Trade pacts should not expand private power’ (Cerny, 2014, February 13). This illustrates well how TTIP became an object of debate among British elites from the very beginning. The intense debate to which TTIP was subjected in the FT contrasts with the lack of debate in the BBC and The Guardian during the first period. The initial BBC coverage of TTIP is limited and generally supportive of the agreement, reproducing both the jobs and growth and global leadership frames. Over time, however, this radically changes, as the next section describes, given the growing number of articles published and the wide reproduction of agonistic frames that came with it. In fact, the BBC ’s considerable increase of media articles is driven by the mass opposition frame, which stands out from the rest from the second semester of 2014 onwards. This indicates how the BBC gave TTIP critics and protestors a voice, and that agonistic frames clearly outweigh the opportunity frames. However, this only happened during the second period.

6

FRAMING TTIP IN THE UK

165

While The Guardian did not pay TTIP much attention in the first period, the few articles published already included several agonistic frames, including corporations vs democracy. The article that best illustrates this is a column by George Monbiot on the 10th of March 2014, titled ‘Give and take in the EU-US trade deal? Sure. We give, the corporations take’ (Monbiot, 2014, March 10). This important article introduced TTIP to the British activist and left-wing community, although this type of framing would only expand its reach from July 2014 onwards. The British media’s weak contestation of TTIP during the first period is reflected in the emphasis on the horse race process frame, focusing on how particular events can influence the TTIP negotiations (such as the Snowden scandal), rather than on their content and appropriateness. During this period, there was also a strong neoliberal point of view, making TTIP often a matter of economic output. In terms of visual categories, the images present in the three British news outlets during this first period are largely coherent with the framing described above. Out of all the images present during the first period, the executive actors visually dominate TTIP imagery (Table 3). The discourse during the TTIP debate’s first period (February 2013– June 2014) in the British public sphere could be understood as a ‘permissive consensus’ stage, characterised by its focus on the tactics of the negotiations rather than on its content. And, when dealing with the framing of the content of TTIP, while agonistic frames were already present, their salience was limited, as was the overall number of articles published. In consequence, we can hardly speak of a vibrant and agonistic TTIP politicisation in the British public sphere during this first period. Table 3 Presence of images by visual category and by news outlet in the British news outlets during the first period Images in the British media 1st period Mass opposition MPs/MEPs Trading goods Executive actors Food safety and environment Others

BBC (7)

FT (36)

The Guardian (10)

Total (53)

0 0 2 2 0

1 1 2 5 1

0 0 1 4 1

1 1 5 11 2

2

6

3

11

166

A. OLEART

2.3

July 2014 to November 2016: TTIP Becomes a Matter of National UK Politics

The TTIP debate radically changes from the second semester of 2014 onwards (from July 2014 onwards), when the second period of the British TTIP debate starts. From that moment onwards there is a turning point in the introduction of agonistic frames in the public sphere, including both corporations vs democracy and threat to public services. These two frames’ appearance, as well as the private tribunals, is to a great extent connected to the NHS, which is seen as under threat from foreign corporations, some of which can use the ISDS mechanism to prevent reversing a potential privatisation of the NHS. The connection between the NHS and the opposition to TTIP is not casual, and it demonstrates that the anti-TTIP campaign did not appear in a vacuum. The fact that the British TTIP debate emphasised much more the threat that the agreement posed to public services than in the Spanish and French public spheres, and particularly to the NHS, is due in part to the pre-existing campaign ‘Save the NHS’. Prior to the anti-TTIP campaign, the public services union UNISON led the ‘Save the NHS’ campaign, whose original aim was to prevent the conservative British government installed in 2010 from privatising the NHS. This is an example of skilful social actors aligning and converging the national mobilisation with an EU-wide campaign. A Labour Party MEP, Jude Kirton Darling, involved in both campaigns, ‘Save the NHS’ and Stop TTIP, argued the following: It is very rare in the UK for trade policy to get into the public debate. The way in which TTIP entered the public debate was around the NHS. There was an NHS campaign, ‘SAVE OUR NHS’, that was concerned that the NHS3 was being prepared for privatisation. You had the perfect storm of NHS being prepared for privatisation 2012–13 by a new Tory government, and then the ‘who are the evil capitalists? The Americans, it is the prize of American companies’. (MEP Jude Kirton Darling, interviewed in January 2018)

3 It is worth pointing out that the NHS plays the role of a sacred cow in the UK: even the ‘Leave’ campaign in the British 2016 EU referendum used it, arguing that exit from the EU would lead to an additional 350 million pounds investment in the NHS. This argument was most notably present in buses that circulated around the UK.

6

FRAMING TTIP IN THE UK

167

The connection to the NHS expanded the salience of TTIP in the UK and did so from a critical perspective. It is particularly striking that, while the FT is an economic news outlet generally more favourable to economic elites, agonistic frames overwhelmingly dominated its TTIP coverage during this second period, particularly challenge to standards, threat to public services and private tribunals. Agonistic frames’ dominance vis-àvis opportunity frames is an initial finding in the way that the FT covered TTIP, particularly regarding the most radical frame, corporations vs democracy. And, while not emphasising the opportunity frames much, and this is an interesting finding in itself given the outlet’s economic nature, the FT was particularly keen on using the global leadership frame, generally absent in The Guardian and the BBC , as well as in the Spanish and French news outlets. Such emphasis is found essentially during the first three semesters, until the first semester of 2014, when the second period of the British TTIP debate starts. From the second semester of 2014 onwards, however, the opportunity frames progressively disappear and agonistic frames grow much more prominently. The rise of agonistic frames is correlated with that of the mass opposition frame, which indicates a direct link between reports on anti-TTIP protests and agonistic frames. The rise of agonistic frames is also visible through the reproduction of agonistic counter-frames (such as not lowering standards or no threat to public services ) that want to deny that TTIP is a threat, while at the same time extending and reproducing the reach of agonistic frames (Lakoff, 2014) (Fig. 6). Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Lack of Transparency

Global leadership Threat public services Threat to Sovereignty

Challenge to standards Private tribunals

BBC

FT

The Guardian 0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 6 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled British news outlets during the second period

168

A. OLEART

While the FT is an important voice in situating TTIP in the British public sphere, particularly among elites, the progressive The Guardian was the leading force during the debate’s second period. Chronologically, The Guardian’s limited initial TTIP coverage was led by the horse race frame, covering the agreement as a traditional EU affair or foreign policy following the negotiations’ state of play. However, from the second semester of 2014 onwards (when the debate’s second period starts) the coverage grows and the horse race frame almost disappears in relative terms when compared to the initial coverage. Instead, the dramatic increase in the quantity of articles on TTIP represents a turning point in terms of the way in which the agreement was framed. Agonistic frames travelled to the mainstream from the second semester of 2014 until the negotiations’ end. The Guardian was the most critical British media on TTIP, and its structure of framing TTIP resembles the Spanish progressive news outlet eldiario.es 4 to a great extent. Rather than following the negotiations’ state of play, The Guardian focused mainly on the agreement’s content, particularly through the corporations vs democracy frame. We can see a number of agonistic frames narrated under the master frame of corporations vs democracy, including challenge to standards and threat to public services (particularly touching upon the NHS). The opportunity frames jobs and growth and global leadership are interestingly absent from The Guardian. Particularly remarkable is the threat to public services frame’s wide presence, which most often refers to the possibility of privatising the NHS through TTIP. Interestingly, The Guardian is the only news outlet where the antagonistic threat to sovereignty is present at all, although it remains largely irrelevant, as in the case of eldiario.es. The traditional antagonistic opposition between ‘Britishness’ and ‘Brussels’ is not dominating the TTIP debate in the UK. In addition to the NHS, another national specificity increased the criticism of TTIP in the UK: Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour Party leader in September 2015. TTIP was not a prominent issue during the 2015 British general election, mainly because the Labour Party positioned itself as broadly supportive of it, as did the Conservative government led by David Cameron. This meant that the contestation of TTIP was situated 4 The Guardian’s resemblance to eldiario.es is not coincidental, given that the Spanish platform does not have its own international section. Instead, eldiario.es has an agreement to translate and republish a certain number of articles per week published initially in The Guardian.

6

FRAMING TTIP IN THE UK

169

essentially outside the British House of Commons with few parliamentary allies. The Labour Party’s defeat in the 2015 British general elections and the majority achieved by the Conservative Party prompted Ed Miliband, Labour Party leader at the time, to resign. The 2015 Labour Party leadership campaign was dominated by the left-wing base, making Jeremy Corbyn the party leader, and therefore also leader of the parliamentary opposition to the Conservative government. The Labour Party’s leadership change increased criticism of TTIP, as well as its visibility. Labour Party MEP Jude Kirton Darling acknowledged the importance of the debate taking place within her party: There was that debate in the Labour party. The manifesto of 2015 was carefully crafted. The Labour manifesto made it clear that we were against the inclusion of the NHS and public services, that we were also against private arbitration courts for multinationals, but that we were in favour of TTIP. That was because you have that tension inside the Labour party. We still have that tension. But then, with the election of Corbyn and the shift to the left of the party, the positions became far stronger, it became closer to an anti-TTIP position. This is clear, in that the front bench of Labour is anti-TTIP and CETA. (…) Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected, we had a period of real stability. Before Corbyn, every 9 months there was a new person (in charge of trade). We really made the effort to coordinate with the person that was in that position at the national level. The problem was that the front bench at the time did not want to talk about it. They did not want to talk about a lot of things, and they did not want to talk about TTIP. (MEP Jude Kirton Darling, interviewed in January 2018)

The Labour Party’s official opposition under Jeremy Corbyn made TTIP a matter of domestic politics: the right-wing Conservative Party in government supported TTIP, and a more clearly left-wing Labour Party opposed it. This process was not easy for the Labour Party, since the former EU Trade Commissioner (and Labour Party member) Peter Mandelson (2004–2008) launched the ‘Global Europe’ trade agenda, the ideological umbrella under which both CETA and TTIP were started in the first place. Instead, the Labour Party’s new left-wing leadership provided a different vision on trade policy and the EU as a whole, which also explains the enhanced criticism of TTIP and in particular references to the ‘private tribunals’ frame. Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party increased the opposition to TTIP and ISDS in the British context, given that anti-TTIP campaigners argued that a Labour government would

170

A. OLEART

not be able to reverse the potential privatisation of the NHS because of ISDS. This framing of TTIP is also reflected by the images accompanying the articles on TTIP in the news outlets analysed, where we find nurses protesting against TTIP, mainly because of its potential impact in the privatisation of the NHS and public services in general. A third (and final) national element that influenced the British media coverage of TTIP was the British June 2016 EU referendum, which resulted in a victory for Brexit. While the official Brexit campaign laid ideologically on the spectrum’s right side, led by politicians such as Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, there was also a left-wing campaign for Brexit, a so-called Lexit campaign. This left-wing campaign used TTIP as an example of how the EU is imposing its neoliberal ideology on the member states and cannot be reformed. In consequence, from this perspective, Brexit would open up an opportunity for the British left to break with neoliberal policies, which could have led to an antagonistic politicisation of TTIP. The Lexit campaign influenced the anti-TTIP campaign, because it split the British anti-TTIP campaign’s leading organisations. John Hillary, the executive director of War on Want, one of the coordinators of the self-organised European Citizens’ Initiative STOP TTIP, published an article on War on Want’s website stating the following: While it is appealing to call for reform from within, experience shows that there is no realistic chance of diverting the EU institutions away from the principles of capitalist rule that lie at the heart of the European project. Those of us who have fought for years against EU policies on trade and other issues have regularly pointed out that, for all our victories, we are never able to alter the basic ideology that drives forward the neoliberal programme. Like it or not, a vote to stay in the EU means a continuation of the status quo. (Hillary, 2016)

Instead, Nick Dearden, the director of Global Justice Now and cocoordinator along with John Hillary of the British STOP TTIP selforganised European Citizens’ Initiative campaign, not only supported the ‘remain’ campaign but in fact actively campaigned and participated in the organisation of the left-wing ‘remain’ campaign, called ‘Another Europe is Possible’. The campaign’s founding statement argued the following: While, at the very least, the EU is in desperate need of a democratic overhaul, an exit at the current time would boost rightwing movements and parties and hurt ordinary people in the UK. European politics has

6

FRAMING TTIP IN THE UK

171

been dominated by neoliberal thinking for far too long – as recent events in Greece brutally demonstrate. But changing this means working to strengthen anti-austerity movements across all of Europe – not walking away. (The Guardian, 2016)

In consequence, some organisations worked together against TTIP in 2015, and then campaigned on opposite sides in 2016, as was the case of Friends of the Earth UK and War on Want. For instance, activists of Global Justice Now and Friends of the Earth UK spent much of 2015 campaigning against TTIP and much of 2016 campaigning for remaining in the EU. The division that the EU referendum caused the anti-TTIP campaign created a challenge for those who opposed TTIP and supported the European project. Jude Kirton Darling MEP said in that regard that it was really difficult. A lot of the anti-European left used TTIP as an example of why we should leave the EU, despite the very clear argument that a vote to leave the EU is effectively giving power to the extreme right of the Tory party whose idea of trade is essentially TTIP on steroids. TTIP definitely played for a small but significant number of voters on the left. (…) There has to be a distinction though. There were definitely people that were anti-TTIP and anti-EU. They saw TTIP as a way of attacking the EU, like UKIP. They are 100% free-trade, they are libertarian, but they were opportunistically anti-TTIP because it was a way to attack the EU. (MEP Jude Kirton Darling, interviewed in January 2018)

Brexit’s left-wing division on the TTIP debate was not found in the corpus analysed, which generally lacked references to the threat to sovereignty antagonistic frame, including in the progressive The Guardian. The choice of The Guardian as the progressive news outlet may explain this to an extent, given its openly pro-Remain position. Few articles were identified linking Brexit and TTIP, and in fact those that tackle the subject do so from a pro-EU perspective. For instance, Nick Dearden published an article in The Guardian entitled ‘TTIP is a very bad excuse to vote for Brexit’ (The Guardian, 2016, April 25), which summarises well the pro-EU and anti-TTIP actors’ stance. This is one of the central findings from the media framing analysis of the British media TTIP coverage: there is no antagonistic conflict in TTIP coverage, even when discourse is most critical of the agreement. Left-wing Brexiteers’ (or ‘lexiteers’)

172

A. OLEART

use of TTIP could have been found in other news outlets.5 However, these progressive news outlets are marginal in terms of readership when compared to The Guardian. Therefore, while Brexit offered an opportunity for antagonistic conflict on TTIP, it broadly did not change the discourse on TTIP.6 The overall discourse circulating during the TTIP debate’s second period (July 2014–November 2016) in the British public sphere indicates its agonistic character, rather than antagonistic. Perhaps the Greenpeace leaks of May 2016 epitomises the agonistic debate, as they did in Spain and France. Like EL PAÍS in Spain and Le Monde in France, The Guardian had exclusive access to the leaks, which encouraged the progressive news outlet to pay TTIP even more attention. The BBC followed the Greenpeace leaks and, although the FT did not pick them up or report on them at all, the economic newspaper’s only article published in the selected time frame is a public letter by Nick Dearden, the coordinator of Global Justice Now, and one of the coordinators of the European Stop TTIP campaign in the UK. His FT article in fact went beyond TTIP, trying to connect it with its ‘sister’ trade deal, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), negotiated between the EU and Canada, arguing that TTIP and CETA are ‘ideologically driven projects that have no hope of redressing the really big problems our societies face: climate change, soaring inequality, the erosion of democracy’ (FT, 3 May 2016). The discourse surrounding the Greenpeace leaks of May 2016 illustrates the high degree of agonistic politicisation. The most radical agonistic frame, corporations vs democracy, circulated in the three news outlets, alongside with a number of related agonistic frames, such as lack of transparency or challenge to standards. Even the BBC , the news outlet that published the least number of articles in the British context, politicised TTIP, such as in the following phrase in the context of the Greenpeace leaks, where in fact three different agonistic frames are combined—lack of transparency, challenge to standards and corporations vs democracy: ‘secrecy surrounding the talks has fuelled fears that 5 Antagonistic discourse on TTIP vis-à-vis the EU could also have been found in rightwing tabloids such as the Daily Mail or The Sun, but these have not been empirically analysed. 6 This indicates that the antagonistic discourse circulating in the British public sphere during the Brexit referendum can coexist with agonistic conflict on other issues, such as TTIP.

6

FRAMING TTIP IN THE UK

173

US corporations may erode Europe’s consumer protections’ (BBC, 2016, May 3). While largely coherent with the discourse circulating in the Spanish and French public spheres, the British context’s greatest specificity vis-à-vis the Spanish and French public spheres is the reference to the NHS, connected on many occasions to ‘ISDS’ and the private tribunals frame more broadly. During this debate’s second period, TTIP is closely connected to CETA and to the growing protests taking place all around Europe against the agreement. This is also reflected in the dominance of the mass opposition frame within the process frames during the second period of the debate, contrary to the dominance of the horse race during the first period. As in the Spanish and French public spheres, the story told about TTIP in the second period is less about the updates about the state of play of the negotiations (the horse race frame) than about the increasing protests and demonstrations against TTIP (Fig. 7). The radical change in the discourse that circulated in the public sphere during the British TTIP debate’s second period is also exemplified by the images that accompany the articles analysed. Interestingly, in this second period representing executive actors became subordinated to representing protests. Additionally, a series of images of MPs/MEPs, civil society actors, references to the NHS and food safety also appeared to a considerable extent (Table 4). The vibrant politicisation on TTIP that took place during this second period indicates the debate’s agonistic character. Unlike in the debate’s first period, where only elites discussed TTIP through the FT , in the second period TTIP travelled to both The Guardian and the BBC as a controversial topic that was increasingly connected to domestic political Horse race

Mass opposition

Period 1

Period 2 0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 7 Framing ratio over time by period of the process frames in the sampled British news outlets

174

A. OLEART

Table 4 Presence of images by visual category in the British news outlets during the second period Images in the British media 2nd period Mass opposition MPs/MEPs Trading goods Executive actors Public services (NHS) Food safety and environment Others

BBC (48)

FT (83)

The Guardian (96)

Total (227)

17 5 2 15 1 1

14 1 3 19 1 3

46 9 1 19 4 6

77 15 6 53 6 10

4

11

8

23

issues. The fact that the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership took a much stronger position vis-à-vis TTIP also made it a British national political issue, pitting the Conservative government against the leader of the opposition. This encouraged traditional left-right dynamics at the national level, where the Labour Party opposed TTIP while the Conservatives championed it, and the connection between TTIP and the NHS facilitated this. In consequence, the British public sphere’s second period of debate could be seen as an episode of politics of TTIP in the Union.

3

The Politicisation of TTIP in the UK: Nationalising the Agonistic TTIP Debate in the Context of Brexit

The UK has been one of the countries where EU affairs have been most politicised historically. However, unlike in the French context, politicisation in the British context has largely taken an antagonistic form and has come from both the right and the left, but recently it has been sponsored overwhelmingly from the right. The 2016 Brexit referendum served as a representative example of antagonistic politicisation in the UK. The referendum asked the following question: ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’ The Leave campaign’s central idea was that exiting the EU was a way to ‘take back control’, situating the EU in opposition to the British nation, and arguably immigration was the central topic of the campaign.

6

FRAMING TTIP IN THE UK

175

The recent antagonistic politicisation of EU affairs in the British context makes the agonistic politicisation of TTIP in the British public sphere interesting, mainly because it did not reproduce at all the narrative that opposed the UK to the EU or to other member states. During the TTIP debate’s first period, the debate was largely depoliticised in the UK, and its low salience in the public sphere was accompanied by the dominance of opportunity frames. Outspoken support from David Cameron’s British Conservative government initially managed to frame the TTIP debate in the British context, even though there were several agonistic frames circulating from early on. The debate’s second period broke with the first stage’s ‘permissive consensus’, and did so mainly by connecting TTIP to domestic political struggles, such as defending the NHS. For this reason, the agonistic frame threat to public services is much more common in the British context than in the Spanish or French public spheres. The debate’s second period is interesting because antagonistic discourse is almost entirely absent. This is particularly surprising considering that the TTIP debate coincides with the June 2016 Brexit referendum, which took an antagonistic form to a great extent. The politicisation of the EU seems to be here to stay in the UK, and there seems to be a struggle to define the type of politicisation that will become normalised. Since the 2016 referendum Brexit has become the central political issue in the UK, and it is unlikely to go away anytime soon, especially taking into account the official departure of the UK from the EU on January 2020. However, this does not necessarily mean that the politicisation will inevitably be antagonistic in the future. In fact, as the 2019 set of elections in the UK, where the Brexit party won the European elections and Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won a majority in the general elections, seem to indicate that antagonistic politicisation vis-à-vis the EU remains hegemonic in the UK. Episodes such as the TTIP debate might reverse the antagonistic politicisation that has been historically hegemonic in the British context. While it is true that some ‘Lexiteers’ used TTIP as ‘proof’ of the EU’s inherently neoliberal nature, it is also true that an important part of the British Stop TTIP campaign coordinated the left-wing Remain campaign, ‘Another Europe is Possible’. The campaign has now become an established organisation that continues to work in line with the alter-globalisation movement. As its very name indicates, the idea that ‘Another Europe is Possible’ still has allies in the UK context. Therefore, the TTIP episode encouraged an agonistic discourse vis-à-vis the EU that could be built upon in the

176

A. OLEART

future. Interestingly, the British TTIP debate marginalised the populist radical right party UKIP, unable to introduce Euromyths or an anti-EU rhetoric in the public sphere. The British TTIP debate also highlighted the division within civil society actors working on EU issues both at the national and EU level. On the one hand, we find traditional Brussels-based professionalised NGOs, with a high level of expertise in the institutional EU policy-making, but no expertise in mobilising the grassroots. On the other, we find grassroots organisations usually based at the national level, in this case in the UK, with less expertise in the functioning of the institutionalised EU policymaking, but a lot of expertise in grassroots mobilisation. The TTIP debate favoured the latter group and exposed the competitive dynamics between these two groups of civil society actors. Given the importance of the actors’ entrepreneurship for circulating agonistic frames in each national public sphere, actors adapted their discourse to the national context, in order to find more resonance in the national public spheres. The best example of nationalising the TTIP debate is the introduction of the threat to public services frame in the British context, referring more precisely to the threat that TTIP poses to the NHS. Interviews with activists and elected representatives confirmed that activists’ emphasis on this frame was a planned strategy, connecting the ‘Save the NHS’ campaign to STOP TTIP. Generally, adapting the TTIP debate to the three national public spheres entailed dividing actors along a left-right cleavage, with the left opposing the negotiations and the right supporting them. This logic reproduced also a government-opposition dynamic, whereby the right-wing Conservative Party championed the agreement, while the Labour Party, particularly under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, opposed it. So in the TTIP debate we see not only the Europeanisation of public spheres, but also its nationalisation or adaptation to the national dynamics. While the type of politicisation that takes place in the public sphere can change over time, the public spheres’ structural dynamics are unlikely to change in the short term. EU politics are filtered through national cultures and political dynamics. The Europeanisation of the national public spheres is mediated by national actors, and the normalisation of EU affairs at the national level implies precisely the reproduction of national political dynamics on EU issues. TTIP was adapted to the internal dynamics of the British public sphere, a process that took place in parallel with the Agonistic Europeanisation of the national public spheres.

6

FRAMING TTIP IN THE UK

177

Bibliography Baker, D., & Seawright, D. (Eds.) (1998). Britain for and against Europe: British politics and the question of European integration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. BBC. (2016, May 3). TTIP trade talks ‘likely to stop’, warns French minister. BBC. Available Online: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe36191577. Accessed 6 July 2020. Cerny, P. G. (2014, February 13). Trade pacts should not expand private power. Financial Times. Available Online: https://www.ft.com/content/479a3aca9350-11e3-8ea7-00144feab7de. Accessed 6 July 2020. Dearden, N. (2016, April 25). Nick Dearden, TTIP is a very bad excuse to vote for Brexit. The Guardian. Available Online: https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2016/apr/25/ttip-vote-brexit-barack-obama-leave-eu-tradedeal. Accessed 6 July 2020. Díez Medrano, J. (2003). Framing Europe: Attitudes to European integration in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press. Evans, G., & Menon, A. (2017). Brexit and British politics. Cambridge: Wiley. Fox, J. E., Moro¸sanu, L., & Szilassy, E. (2012). The racialization of the new European migration to the UK. Sociology, 46(4), 680–695. Galpin, C., & Trenz, H. J. (2018). Converging towards Euroscepticism? Negativity in news coverage during the 2014 European Parliament elections in Germany and the UK. European Politics and Society, 20, 1–17. Gifford, C. (2006). The rise of post-imperial populism: The case of right-wing Euroscepticism in Britain. European Journal of Political Research, 45(5), 851– 869. Gowland, D., Turner, A., & Wright, A. (2009). Britain and European integration since 1945: On the sidelines. London: Routledge. Henkel, I. (2019). The witty Briton stands up to the European bully. How a populist myth helped the British Eurosceptics to win the 2016 EU referendum. Politique européenne, 66(4), 72–94. Hillary, J. (2016). EU Referendum: How should the left vote?. War on Want, 1 January 2016. Available online: https://waronwant.org/media/eu-refere ndum-how-should-left-vote. Accessed 20 August 2018. Josling, T. (2013, February 18) Keep politics out of transatlantic food safety talks. Financial Times. Available Online: https://www.ft.com/content/a59 ae7d2-7524-11e2-a9f3-00144feabdc0. Accessed 6 July 2020. Lakoff, G. (2014). Don’t think of an elephant! Know your values and frame the debate. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing. Morra, I. (2013). Britishness, popular music, and national identity: The making of modern Britain. London: Routledge.

178

A. OLEART

Monbiot, G. (2014, March 10). Give and take in the EU-US trade deal? Sure. We give, the corporations take. The Guardian. Available Online: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/10/ eu-us-trade-deal-give-corporations-take. Accessed 6 July 2020. The Guardian. (2016, February 18). Divisions on the left over the benefits of staying in the EU. The Guardian. Available online https://www.thegua rdian.com/politics/2016/feb/18/divisions-on-the-left-over-the-benefits-ofstaying-in-the-eu (accessed 20 August 2018). Usherwood, S. (2007). Proximate factors in the mobilization of anti-EU groups in France and the UK: The European Union as first-order politics. Journal of European Integration, 29(1), 3–21. Wilkes, G., & Wring, D. (1998). The British press and Euro-pean integration. In D. Baker & D. Seawright (Eds.), Britain for and against Europe: British Politics and the question of European integration (pp. 185–205). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Interview 1. Jude Kirton Darling, MEP, S&D, January 2018.

CHAPTER 7

Framing TTIP Across the Spanish, French and British Public Spheres: The Bursting of the Brussels Bubble

1 Overview of the TTIP Debate Across the Spanish, French and British Public Spheres The empirical analysis has been based on a sample of 1049 media articles from nine different news outlets (three per country, Spain, France and the UK), which refer to TTIP in the headlines or main image. Spain is the country with the most articles published on TTIP. Most of them were published in the progressive eldiario.es, while the figures are more moderate at the mainstream EL PAÍS and even lower at the economic Expansión. However, the wide mobilisation of eldiario.es exemplifies Spanish civil society actors and activists’ strong involvement in pushing TTIP into the Spanish public sphere and how TTIP resonated within Spanish left-wing audiences (Table 1). In terms of article type, the ratio of information to opinion articles is similar across the three countries. The largest difference is the considerable number of letters published in the British media, a format particularly salient in the British news outlets. On the other hand, the Spanish and French media published a high number of interviews, while the British media did not (Table 2). The articles’ chronology reveals a similar evolution over time. While TTIP receives little attention during its early phase in 2013, it increases progressively over time. Its salience peaks during the first semester of 2016 in Spain and France, coinciding with the Greenpeace leaks. The © The Author(s) 2021 A. Oleart, Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53637-4_7

179

180

A. OLEART

Table 1 Number of articles sampled by country and type of news outlet

Table 2 Country

Spain France UK Total

By country

Total number of articles selected

Spain France UK Total By type of news outlet across the three countries Mainstream Economic Progressive Total

440 329 280 1049

319 271 459 1049

Number of articles sampled by type of article and country Information

Opinion

Letters

271 245 172 688

140 69 58 270

3 0 42 42

Interview Editorial

22 12 0 34

4 3 7 14

Live Coverage

Total number of articles

0 0 1 1

440 329 280 1049

number of articles published also decreased in all three countries during the second semester of 2016, when TTIP is effectively put in the freezer. This highlights the unequal levels of Europeanisation throughout the negotiations. While the pattern of articles published over time is similar, the degree of Europeanisation is higher in 2015 and 2016, since many more articles were published at the same time, particularly during the first semester of 2016 (Fig. 1). The picture is quite similar if, instead of grouping the articles per country, we group them by the news outlets’ ideological tendency. However, certain nuances help us understand the overall salience of TTIP in several national public spheres at the same time. The TTIP coverage does not differ much initially: until the second half of 2014, the progressive news outlets covered TTIP less than the economic and mainstream media. This radically changes during the first semester of 2015. In the last two years of the debate (2015 and 2016), the progressive news

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

Spain

France

181

UK

120

90

60

30

0 13 01

13 02

14 01

14 02

15 01

15 02

16 01

16 02

Fig. 1 Number of articles sampled by country and by semester (In the horizontal axis, the numbers refer to the year and the semester: e.g. ‘13 01’ = first semester of 2013)

outlets publish the most articles on TTIP. The mainstream media follows, indicating that generally TTIP became a salient issue from the left, and was then picked up by the mainstream and the economic media. Figure 2 makes clear the explosion of articles in the progressive media analysed from 2015 onwards, peaking during the first semester of 2016. The crucial moment of convergence is therefore the first semester of 2016, the moment when the three types of news outlets converge in paying attention to TTIP, mainly due to the Greenpeace leaks unveiled in May 2016, in a media operation involving news outlets from the three public spheres. Greenpeace provided exclusive access to the leaked TTIP documents to several leading national news outlets (one by country), including the Spanish and French mainstream EL PAÍS and Le Monde, and the progressive British The Guardian. 1.1

The Transnational Framing of TTIP Across Spain, France and the UK

The framing analysis has revealed a common pattern in the way in which TTIP was discussed in the Spanish, French and British public spheres. This section will bring the different elements together and build a common transnational story across the three countries analysed, observing the same two periods identified in the previous chapters in each of the countries analysed.

182

A. OLEART

Mainstream

Economic

Progressive

120

90

60

30

0 13 01

13 02

14 01

14 02

15 01

15 02

16 01

16 02

Fig. 2 Number of articles by semester and by ideological orientation of the news outlets

In general terms, the presented frames are broadly similar in the three countries. Challenge to standards is the most common frame in the Spanish, French and British public spheres, indicating that the debate’s playing field has been mostly whether TTIP question certain regulatory standards in different fields, including food safety or the environment. The wide presence of the not lowering standards counter-frame, which is more present than any other counter-frame, confirms this observation. The challenge that TTIP poses to EU-wide regulatory standards is not however a neutral or abstract process, since there is an agency: big corporations. Corporations’ agency in drafting TTIP is widely present, represented by the corporations vs democracy frame, and it serves as a master frame or narrative, under which other agonistic frames are emplotted. This indicates the rather agonistic conflict on TTIP, which is combined with the absence of the threat to sovereignty frame, in which not only the agreement’s content is at stake, but also the EU as a polity. In consequence, there is no relevant antagonistic discourse circulating in the media on TTIP. The TTIP debate’s evolution over time is coherent across the three countries, and tells a common story. Initially, TTIP is not salient and,

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

183

while several agonistic frames are already present, it is partially framed through the opportunity frame jobs and growth. Over time, however, this changes radically, particularly from mid-2014 onwards. The dramatic increase of media articles from 2014 onwards is accompanied by a radical change in how TTIP is framed in the three public spheres. Instead of reproducing the executive actors’ frames, TTIP is framed during the second period in an increasingly agonistic way, which describes not only its threatening content, but also the growing mass opposition to it. This is visible through the chart below, in which the opportunity frame jobs and growth (and partially the global leadership frame) initially dominates the debate in overall terms, but as of the second semester of 2014 the corporations vs democracy master frame dominates the TTIP debate. This is coherent with the agonistic politicisation of TTIP, and this is also highlighted by the marginality of the threat to sovereignty frame, which remains coherently weak across the negotiations (Fig. 3). The process of politicisation of the content frames is matched when comparing the process frames. Whereas initially the horse race frame initially dominates the framing of TTIP across the three public spheres, as of the second semester of 2014 the mass opposition frame emerges as Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy

Global leadership Threat to sovereignty

200

150

100

50

0 13 01 (21)

13 02 (29) 14 01 (113) 14 02 (114) 15 01 (198) 15 02 (165) 16 01 (236) 16 02 (173)

Fig. 3 Framing ratio (vertical axis) over time by semester of the leading opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic frames in the nine sampled news outlets (the brackets in the horizontal axis indicate the number of articles in each semester)

184

A. OLEART

the main storyline of the negotiations. This pattern indicates that the increasing protests against TTIP across Europe were central to the attention given to the negotiations by the Spanish, French and British media (Fig. 4). The TTIP debate has been fairly similar in the Spanish, French and British public spheres, according to their chronological structures. The chronology of TTIP signalled two distinguishable periods. The two periods’ precise length is different for the three countries. The first period of TTIP framing corresponds broadly to the three initial semesters, ending in Spain in September 2014, in France during mid-April 2014 and in the UK in July 2014. The first period can be broadly understood as a ‘permissive consensus’ stage of the debate. It is characterised by low salience (compared to its later coverage) and, while agonistic frames are already present, the salience of TTIP is low. The chronological distinction between periods is not homogenous in the three countries, since in some countries the TTIP debate was politicised earlier than in others. In France, it started to become mainstream during the first semester of 2014, particularly during the 2014 EU elections campaign. In the UK, the politicisation of TTIP kicked off during the second semester of 2014, and in Spain it was not until the final months of 2014 that TTIP became salient and agonistic frames started to dominate the debate. Horse Race

Mass opposition to TTIP

300

225

150

75

0 13 01 (21)

13 02 (29) 14 01 (113) 14 02 (114) 15 01 (198) 15 02 (165) 16 01 (236) 16 02 (173)

Fig. 4 Framing ratio over time by semester of the process frames in the nine sampled news outlets

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

185

While the TTIP debate’s first period had similar frames of reference, the TTIP negotiations’ had a low salience in the news outlets analysed. This period is Europeanised in terms of its frames of reference across the three countries, but it is not entirely agonistic, since there is no politicisation. The graph below illustrates the difference in terms of the framing of TTIP between periods. During the first period, agonistic frames were already present and influential, and the agonistic challenge to standards frame was the most present. However, the agonistic master frame corporations vs democracy was not as present as in the second period, in which all agonistic frames gain weight vis-à-vis opportunity frames, while the antagonistic threat to sovereignty remains marginal in both periods (Fig. 5). The second period, which begins at different moments in each of the three countries, starts broadly around the second semester of 2014. In some countries, such as France, it started a bit earlier due to the 2014 EU elections, mainly through Le Monde. In the UK, the connection between TTIP and the NHS started to spark interest in the British public sphere in July 2014, which is reflected in the three news outlets. Finally, in Spain it took a bit longer, and came partly as a reaction to the growing politicisation of TTIP in other countries. The first mass protest image reported Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Lack of Transparency

Global leadership Private tribunals Sovereignty

Challenge to standards Threat to public services

Period 1

Period 2

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 5 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the nine sampled news outlets (The graphs include in the same category both the frames and their counter-frames [in case a frame has a counter-frame])

186

A. OLEART

in Spain was a protest in October 2014 in Germany, which illustrates the shift in the framing of TTIP, and in the articles’ accompanying images, mainly through the combination of the mass opposition and the corporations vs democracy frames, as well as the wide circulation of protest coverage in the three countries. While each country has specificities, there is a certain coherence overall. Progressively, from the start of the second period onwards, the coverage grows in a much more plural and conflictual way vis-à-vis the European Commission’s depoliticised framing of TTIP, focused on the opportunity frames. And it is often in progressive media spaces that agonistic frames tend to appear first, and then increasingly enter the mainstream and economic media. As the sections below will illustrate, there is a strong Europeanisation of public spheres, given the strong resemblance of the overall weight of frames in the three countries analysed. Combined with the high salience of TTIP as a topic during the second period in terms of the number of articles published, this indicates an agonistic Europeanisation of public spheres of the transnational TTIP debate. The images present in the three countries’ news outlets are coherent with framing of TTIP in absolute terms by country, as well as by periods. The Spanish news outlets published more images of protests, MP/MEPs and NGO representatives than the French and British public spheres, but this is partly explained by the fact that the Spanish media published many more articles. Broadly, images of protest and executive actors had similar proportional weight, indicating that executive actors did not visually dominate the overall TTIP debate, and instead the opposition of TTIP became widely visible (Table 3). Interestingly, the images’ overall weight analysed chronologically is very similar to the framing of TTIP, dividing the whole of the TTIP negotiations into periods. The images accompanying the written content also serve to illustrate the second period’s radical change in the framing of TTIP. This visual way of representing TTIP in the two periods summarises the politicisation process. The TTIP debate’s first period could initially be conceptualised as a ‘permissive consensus’ stage, considering the topic’s general lack of salience, even if there was a considerable weight of agonistic frames. Instead, its agonistic politicisation during the second period introduces a series of other actors critical of the agreement, often through images of mass protests. The logic of depoliticisation is to present political choices as purely technical or administrative, as if there is no other viable policy options. The dominance of images of governmental figures

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

187

Table 3 Presence of images by visual category and by country in all the news outlets sampled Images in the media by country

UK (280)

France (329)

Spain (440)

Total (1049)

Mass opposition MPs/MEPs Trading goods Executive actors Public services (NHS) Food safety and environment Others

78 16 11 64 6 12

70 13 14 100 0 8

118 54 12 71 0 22

266 83 37 235 6 42

34

31

54

119

during the first period represents precisely a rather depoliticised debate that excludes alternative ideas on TTIP. This relatively depoliticised logic contrasts with the second period, where a much more politicised logic emerges, in which actors actively contest the official narrative that frames TTIP as a matter of jobs and growth, and manage to make it a matter of ‘democracy’ and ‘corporations’ power in society, partially through the coverage of mass protests across Europe (Table 4). The TTIP debate’s two periods reflect well two different types of Europeanisation of public spheres. The first period reflects a Europeanisation of public spheres, but lacks politicisation given the low salience given to it in the news outlets. Instead, the TTIP debate’s second period reflects a similar way of framing TTIP in the three countries, but in a much more Table 4 Presence of images by visual category and by period including all the articles from the nine news outlets sampled Images in the media by country Mass opposition MPs/MEPs Trading goods Executive actors Public services (NHS) Food safety and environment Others

Period 1 (134)

Period 2 (915)

Total (1049)

1 3 12 52 0 4 20

265 80 25 183 6 38 99

266 83 37 235 6 42 119

188

A. OLEART

salient and politicised way, in what could be conceptualised as agonistic Europeanisation. 1.2

February 2013 to Mid-2014: The Europeanisation of Public Spheres on TTIP Without Politicisation

The first period resembles the traditional treatment of EU issues at the national level. This type of Europeanisation is characterised by similar interpretive frameworks in different national public spheres, but a relatively low salience and the absence of politicisation. As the Fig. 6 indicates, there is a plural debate in which agonistic frames are already present, and the agonistic challenge to standards frame is the most present, but the salience of the debate is low. During the first period, the three public spheres analysed, however, differ in terms of how their agonistic frames originated. In each national context, a different type of news outlet publishes the first articles on TTIP and introduces agonistic frames into the public sphere. In Spain, the mainstream EL PAÍS covers TTIP the most from the beginning and introduces the first agonistic frames. In France, although the mainstream Le Monde mainly pushed the agonistic frames during the second period, it was the left-wing Médiapart which put TTIP on the French public sphere’s agenda during this first period, already from a critical perspective. In the UK, the debate begins earlier than in Spain and France and with more intensity, mainly due to the FT ’s interest in the negotiations. The FT already included several agonistic frames, highlighting the British Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Lack of Transparency

Global leadership Private tribunals Sovereignty

Challenge to standards Threat to public services

UK Spain France 0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 6 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled articles during the first period

7

189

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

elites’ early interest in TTIP. The British elites’ early interest in TTIP can be explained partly on the basis that it provided a geopolitical perspective on the agreement by reproducing the global leadership frame. During the first period the visual categories follow a pattern similar to that of the framing of TTIP across the three national public spheres analysed. Executive actors are systemically overrepresented vis-à-vis the other visual categories, and the second most common visual category is ‘trading goods’, a category connected to the opportunity frame jobs and growth. There are no images of protests, and very few of MPs, MEPs or other non-executive actors. In fact, business representatives are the third most common visual category, after images of executive actors and trading goods (Table 5). The dominance of executive actors, and EU trade negotiators, reinforces the visual imagery of the EU as a post-political space. Representing the ‘EU’ with politicians (and, mostly men) in suits in institutional settings can give the impression that the EU is ruled and dominated by ‘unelected bureaucrats’ where non-executive actors have no place. The visual representation of ‘Eurocrats’ in images accompanying the articles published during the first period makes invisible a wide range of nonexecutive actors that participate in the EU policy-making, such as civil society actors, trade unions or MEPs. Accordingly, the low salience of TTIP indicates a low degree of politicisation. The framing analysis of the Spanish, French and British public spheres during the TTIP debate’s first period has shown a general coherence across national boundaries in the issue’s framing and public discourse. Table 5 period

Presence of images by visual category and by country during the first

Images in the media by first period Mass opposition MPs/MEPs Trading goods Executive actors Public services (NHS) Food safety and environment Others

UK (53)

France (30)

Spain (51)

Total (134)

1 1 5 11 0 2 11

0 1 4 12 0 2 2

0 1 3 29 0 0 7

1 3 12 52 0 4 20

190

A. OLEART

We could then conclude that the public spheres have been highly Europeanised in terms of frames of reference and visual imagery. However, the dominance of the images of executive actors, combined with the low salience of TTIP as a topic, leads to consider this first period as depoliticised Europeanisation, where executive actors tend to dominate the debate’s framing and avoid the politicisation of the issue. This relative lack of contestation is consistent with the idea of ‘permissive consensus’, where citizens do not contest the EU much, and instead passively accept its authority and policies. 1.3

Mid-2014 to November 2016: From Agonistic Europeanisation to the Emergence of an Episodic Transnational Public Sphere on TTIP

The debate’s second period contrasts from the first, both in the high salience of TTIP and in that a wide range of agonistic frames emerged, and particularly the agonistic master frame—corporations vs democracy. The second period departs broadly as of mid-2014, even though in some countries started earlier than in others. A common element to the three countries analysed is the October 2014 European day of action to stop TTIP, on the 11th of October, which took place shortly after the start of the self-organised European Citizens’ Initiative, on the 7th of October 2014. That day there were mass demonstrations taking place across Europe, including Madrid, Paris and London, the capital cities of Spain, France and the UK, protests that were widely and transnationally covered by the media. Images of protests, coded under the mass opposition visual category, entered the national media extensively in the three countries analysed during the second period of the TTIP debate, alongside agonistic frames. In this debate’s second period, TTIP travels to the national public spheres as a matter of democracy and big corporations’ power in the EU, as well as connecting with other national political issues. In consequence, during this second period we see an agonistic politicisation emerging in the three public spheres questioning the neoliberal hegemony in the EU. This is an episode of politics in the Union rather than of the Union, where TTIP is perceived as a contentious one that deserved to be discussed among citizens at large rather than simply by technocrats behind closed doors. Agonistic frames overwhelmingly dominated the TTIP debate’s second period. Particularly in Spain and the UK

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

191

the progressive media (eldiario.es and The Guardian) drove the agreement’s salience from a critical perspective in their respective countries, providing a space where agonistic frames thrived, including corporations vs democracy. This second period’s agonistic Europeanisation is reflected in the Fig. 7, which summarises the visibility of the leading opportunity, agonistic and antagonistic frames, where the agonistic ones dominate the coverage, opportunity frames remain a minority and the antagonistic frame is almost invisible. The rise of agonistic frames coincides with a shift in the visibility of process frames, that fundamentally changes the story that is told about TTIP in the three countries. While the first period refers essentially to the regular updates of the state of play of the negotiations, the second is focused on the increasing opposition to TTIP by citizens, and the threatening content of the negotiations. This is illustrated by the dramatic increase in the mass opposition frame in relation to the horse race, as the Fig. 8 shows. While progressive media was the leading critical space in overall terms, the mainstream news outlets picked up the same public discourse. The gradual travelling of frames from the progressive to the mainstream media reflects this, touching the economic media as well. Agonistic frames’ Jobs and Growth Corporations vs democracy Lack of Transparency

Global leadership Private tribunals Sovereignty

Challenge to standards Threat to public services

UK

Spain

France

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 7 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the content frames in the sampled articles during the second period

192

A. OLEART

Horse race

Mass opposition

Period 1 Period 2 0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Fig. 8 Framing ratio in terms of percentage of the leading process frames by period across the three public spheres

circulation from the progressive towards the mainstream and economic media is a first sign of the left-wing’s success in making their voice heard in the public sphere, to a great extent due to the increasing protests across Europe, which is also reflected in the visual representation of TTIP. Even the Financial Times reproduced images of the mass protests that took place against TTIP. Unlike the first period, where TTIP is presented in a rather uncontroversial way, the picture during the second period radically changes over time, particularly from 2015 onwards, in the three countries analysed, also at the level of visual categories. While executive actors’ images remain present to an extent, their weight is dramatically reduced. This massive change empowers from a visual perspective the engaged citizens that protest TTIP, as well as MPs, MEPs and local or regional elected officials, that also make their voice heard in the debate. The ‘trading goods’ visual category almost disappears, exemplifying the absence of the opportunity frame jobs and growth during the debate’s second period and its subordination vis-à-vis agonistic frames. There are some specificities by country, but there is an overall coherence. In the three countries there is a prevalence of protest images, which overwhelmingly dominate the public spheres. Institutional non-executive actors are widely present, as are images related to food safety or the environment. In Spain, in addition, there is a considerable number of images of NGO and trade union representatives, academics or journalists, a type of image that is generally absent in the French and British public spheres. In the case of the UK, the nurses’ collective mobilised massively against the possible privatisation of the NHS, and linked that struggle to their mobilisation against TTIP, and are visually represented in the TTIP debate, unlike in the French and Spanish public spheres, where TTIP is not as connected as much to public services. The protestors’ visual presence is particularly high in

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

193

Spain, where there are three times more images of protests than executive actors during the second period. The visual diversity during this debate’s second period in the three countries reflects well the politicisation of TTIP and its break with the EU’s traditionally depoliticised policy-making. During this second period, TTIP is no longer a technical agreement that only concerns ‘technocrats’. Instead, TTIP concerns everyone: civil servants defending public services, nurses, environmental activists, judges, academics and citizens at large (Table 6). Within the second period, a particular episode led the media coverage to peak in all the countries analysed: the Greenpeace leaks (see Conrad & Oleart, 2019). The May 2016 Greenpeace leaks is the best illustration of an episode of Agonistic Europeanisation in the national public spheres. The most common frame in the French, Spanish and British media is that by which TTIP could lower or bypass certain European standards through either harmonisation or mutual recognition with the US, putting at risk consumer, environmental or food safety regulations. Within this frame, the different national media landscapes have a general coherence in holding big businesses responsible for lowering European standards, therefore reproducing the agonistic corporations vs democracy master frame as well. However, not all the news outlets point out the corporations’ role in this process: while progressive news outlets tend to blame big businesses and corporations for TTIP’s potential lowering of European standards, mainstream and economic journals are more shy in situating who the villains are. In the progressive The Guardian, Larry Elliott (2016, May 3) claimed that ‘the main driving forces behind TTIP Table 6 Presence of images by visual category and by country during the second period Images in the media in the second period Mass opposition MPs/MEPs Trading goods Executive actors Public services (NHS) Food safety and environment Others

UK (227)

France (299)

Spain (389)

Total (915)

77 15 6 53 6 10 23

70 12 10 88 0 6 29

118 53 9 42 0 22 47

265 80 25 183 6 38 99

194

A. OLEART

have been multinational corporations and business lobby groups, who stand to gain from harmonised regulations’. Instead, the mainstream Spanish journal, EL PAÍS (Pérez & Planelles, 2016, May 2), argued that ‘the leak reveals that Washington is putting pressure to lower European standards’. Similarly to EL PAÍS, the French economic news outlet Les Échos (Hiault, 2016, May 2) titled an article in the following way: ‘Americans little inclined to reach a compromise’. The nuance of which actors are to blame for reducing standards is important. While the challenge to standards frame tends to report a conflict between governments, the agonistic master frame corporations vs democracy implies that big businesses are using TTIP to increase their power vis-à-vis governments. The May 2016 Greenpeace leaks episode illustrates the importance of political entrepreneurs’ agency in combination with that of eager journalists. This episode drew attention to TTIP in the three public spheres by framing the negotiations in a very similar way. The TTIP leaks was a coordinated action by Greenpeace, an organisation that managed to situate the leaks on the front page of major newspapers in Europe, such as The Guardian, Le Monde and EL PAÍS. Greenpeace invited to its Brussels’ headquarters journalists from these news outlets to provide them with exclusive access to the documents in advance. The journalists not only learnt about the TTIP leaked documents, but also about Greenpeace’s views on the issue. Greenpeace’s entrepreneurship is an example of a media-savvy organisation that takes advantage of a window of opportunity (the general politicisation of TTIP, and the material possession of the leaks about the content of the negotiations) to put forward their views in the European public spheres. The fact that Greenpeace provided the leaked documents as a national exclusive to the newspapers incentivised them to make as much impact as possible. For example, EL PAÍS published a number of articles that essentially contradicted the organisation’s editorial line, generally supporting TTIP. In that regard, Claudi Pérez, the EU correspondent for EL PAÍS at the time, said the following: When the newspaper started to get interested, I started to follow it closer. When you receive an information that nobody else has, there is no doubt. The day of Greenpeace we opened the newspaper with the leaks: it is something that nobody else has, it is someone that knows how to communicate very well like Greenpeace (they communicate very well and with a clear bias), the newspaper liked it and it was a counterweight of months of giving other information. And I thought that was worth it. To the reader

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

195

you have to give meat, fish, salad… Then the reader has to make sense of things. (Claudi Pérez, EU correspondent of EL PAÍS, interviewed in November 2016)

The agonistic Europeanisation of the TTIP debate surprised many people working in EU politics, but particularly the European Commission, the institution leading the EU’s policy-making. A European Commission official expressed its surprise regarding the massive debate on TTIP in an interview, saying the following: Well, honestly, there was never an issue for 20 years, so we did not think that there would be an issue. That was the assumption, if there was not an issue for 20 years, why would there be an issue now? So that was a bit of an understatement on our side. (…) The public debate that has taken place on TTIP has been a surprising and unusual thing for us. It is basically a new thing for DG Trade, because most of the trade agreements were discussed in narrow circles of stakeholders, some associations, some companies, and never to the general public. (European Commission official 1, interviewed in April 2016)

Similarly, another European Commission official argued that ‘previous to the Malmström era there was a presumption that trade was an interest area of nerds and narrow interest groups, and experts, and journalists that dealt exclusively with the topic’ (European Commission official 3, interviewed in June 2020). The European Commission’s surprise at the debate that TTIP sparked in different countries was also surprising for people who had been involved in EU politics for decades. For instance, Jude Kirton Darling MEP argued that I’ve worked around EU institutions for 20 years. In my experience there have been only 2 times that there has been something here in Brussels and has immediately been understandable at the local level: Bolkestein directive and ISDS. One Saturday I went shopping in the town centre where I live, and there were campaigners taking petitions about corporate courts ‘we are against ISDS’. It is very rare that you have something quite technical piece of EU legislation that goes directly to the man in the street. (MEP Jude Kirton Darling, interviewed in January 2018)

The anti-TTIP campaign’s success has largely been making TTIP not a matter of international trade, but rather a question of how democracy at

196

A. OLEART

its different levels (regional, national or European) is under threat given the influence of big corporations. In this sense, a member of the Transnational Institute (interviewed in July 2016) argued ‘TTIP has become a question of democracy, of not being able to decide on our future’. The TTIP debate’s second period in the three countries analysed emphasised the agonistic master frame, corporations vs democracy, which was very common during the negotiations’ final two years, 2015 and 2016. This frame goes to the root of capitalism as a system, pointing out big businesses’ structural superiority in policy-making vis-à-vis citizens at large. Following this frame, the main threat to democracy is big corporations’ power. The perception that the Commission is too close to these corporations is among civil society actors’ main criticisms of the Commission’s free trade agenda. In that regard, a European Commission official argued in an interview ‘we are not crazy neoliberals’ (European Commission official 2, interviewed in September 2016). The European Commission’s defensive stance, which found itself under intense scrutiny from the left, indicates the Alter-globalists’ success in forcing executive actors to play in its ideational playing field. During this debate’s second period, rather than discussing how TTIP would affect individual EU countries or simply reproduce the opportunity frames, the debate in the Spanish, French and British public spheres took on overwhelmingly transnational frames of reference and a complex EU issue’s unusual politicisation. Instead of a debate on whether there should be ‘more’ or ‘less’ Europe, it has encouraged a discussion of what type of Europe is wanted: a neoliberal Europe or a Europe that protects its citizens from multinational corporations. Both camps however accept the EU as the political playing field, a sign of agonism rather than antagonism, of politics in the Union as opposed to politics of the Union. 1.4

Europeanising the Public Spheres and Nationalising the TTIP Debate: Two Intertwined Processes

The empirical analysis has shown that the TTIP debate in the three national public spheres analysed had two differentiated periods, each of which was Europeanised in a different way. The first period fits with what has been described as depoliticised Europeanisation, while the second has been conceptualised as agonistic Europeanisation. There is an initial period of ‘permissive consensus’ and a second of ‘empowering dissensus’. Interestingly, however, the fact that the two periods do not coincide

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

197

chronologically in the same way in the three countries points not only towards the Europeanisation of public spheres, but also towards the nationalisation of EU politics. That is, in the three public spheres TTIP was ‘translated’ or ‘mediated’ by media and political actors in the national context. TTIP was adapted to the internal dynamics of the national public spheres and national politics. The process of Europeanisation of public spheres took place in parallel to the nationalisation of the European debate, which had particular features in each public sphere. Because the national context plays an influential role in the discursive struggle to define and frame ‘Europe’ (Díez Medrano, 2003) and the EU in the (national) public spheres, TTIP was framed in slightly different ways in Spain, France and the UK, but maintained a similar interpretive framework across all three. The similarities of the framing of TTIP in the three countries are not a process that happened in parallel by coincidence, but rather the consequence of strategic action triggered by the transnational Stop TTIP campaign. The differences in the framing of TTIP can be explained on the basis of the European and national Stop TTIP campaigns’ cultural resonance. Given the importance of the actors’ entrepreneurship for circulating agonistic frames in each national public sphere, actors can adapt their discourse to the national context, in order to find more resonance in the national public spheres. The capacity to reach different national publics is precisely the outcome of a coordinated strategy by the Stop TTIP campaign to focus on the issues that are more likely to resonate in different national contexts. As a leading activist of the transnational Stop TTIP campaign, Lora Verhecke, argued: We build a bridge, because we were doing a lot of technical work, and at the national level they were transforming Brussels language into something that people would care about. In the UK, it was the NHS. In Germany it was Genetically modified organisms. In Italy it was about food. In Austria, public services. (Lora Verhecke of Corporate Europe Observatory, interviewed in February 2016)

The best example of nationalising the TTIP debate is the introduction of the threat to public services frame in the British context, referring more precisely to the threat that TTIP poses to the NHS. Interviews with activists and elected representatives confirmed that activists’ emphasis on this frame was a planned strategy, connecting the ‘Save the NHS’ campaign to STOP TTIP. Generally, adapting the TTIP

198

A. OLEART

debate to the three national public spheres entailed dividing actors along a left-right cleavage, with the left opposing the negotiations and the right supporting them. This logic was reproduced also as governmentopposition dynamics. Right-wing governments in the UK (Conservative Party) and Spain (Partido Popular) confronted the left-wing opposition (the Labour Party in the UK, Podemos in Spain, as the Spanish centre-left PSOE never really opposed it) on TTIP in the public sphere. The case of France is particular, because the centre-left Parti Socialiste was in government. However, it was precisely the French left that attacked TTIP, and the centre-left French government ultimately opposed it as well under the pressure of many of their supporters. The findings indicate that in the TTIP debate we see not only the Europeanisation of public spheres, but also the nationalisation of European debate. Rather than creating a European public sphere, the empirical analysis has shown how each national public sphere had its own dynamics and specificities, but a general transnational coherence remained. This important finding must be highlighted. While the type of politicisation that takes place in the public sphere can change over time, the public spheres’ structural dynamics are unlikely to change in the short term. EU politics are filtered through national cultures, and the national public spheres are here to stay. However, over time, the public spheres can become more intertwined with each other in a process where issues are framed in a similar way across borders, while public spheres retain their own dynamics. The TTIP debate’s Agonistic Europeanisation has illustrated how this process can take place. The Europeanisation of the national public spheres is mediated by national actors, and the normalisation of EU affairs at the national level implies precisely the reproduction of national political dynamics on EU issues, rather than the replacement of national politics by EU politics.

2 TTIP and the Bursting of the Brussels Bubble Through (Agonistic) Politicisation The EU’s media coverage at the national level has hardly been a priority for national media outlets, given that only a few elite media outlets have focused on it (Machill, Beiler, & Fischer, 2006; Trenz, 2004). However, the empirical analysis has shown that the case of the TTIP negotiations is very different, since it was widely covered in the three countries analysed, and with similar interpretive structures, to a considerable extent.

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

199

TTIP received extensive and critical media coverage, and not only from progressive news outlets (such as Médiapart in France, The Guardian in the UK or eldiario.es in Spain). Elite newspapers such as Les Échos , the Financial Times (FT ) or Expansión published critical articles about TTIP, something that also happened in the mainstream media, in platforms such as Le Monde, BBC or EL PAÍS. This is uncommon, given that research has shown that most EU issues are presented in elite and mainstream media as little controversial and led by executive actors (Koopmans & Statham, 2010). The TTIP debate’s Europeanisation is connected to the negotiations’ increasing politicisation: the growing anti-TTIP protests in different countries at the same time motivated further reporting on the negotiations, and the protestors’ coordination of anti-TTIP frames encouraged a similar way of reporting about TTIP in terms of its content. In this way, a transnational flow of ideas and frames has been identified. However, question arise about what made possible such a transnational and agonistic debate. This section addresses the ideational explanation as to ‘why’ we have seen this process of both politicisation and Europeanisation, taking into account both the ideas and the actors that have managed to ‘burst’ the Brussels bubble. The TTIP debate in Spain, France and the UK has been Europeanised with agonistic frames, particularly in its second period, when agonistic frames were much more prominent than opportunity frames. The deliberation around TTIP in the public sphere has allowed for a plural and agonistic debate. The analysis has indicated that the politicisation of TTIP opened the window for other actors, beyond executive ones, to make their voices heard in the public sphere and introduce agonistic frames. The ideational conflict empirically traced in the Spanish, French and British media is perhaps best exemplified by the much higher presence of agonistic frames vis-à-vis opportunity or antagonistic ones. This indicates the emergence of a strong counter-hegemonic discourse that differs widely from the neoliberal discourse launched by the pro-TTIP camp. Instead, the counter-hegemonic discourse present in the TTIP debate is framed as championing labour and environmental standards, and public services from the threat posed by big multinational corporations. There is a story common to the three countries during the second period: TTIP is about multinational corporations taking over democracy, and a large part of European citizens are opposing it. TTIP is therefore presented as having an active agent beyond government, even a villain (Conrad, Hallgrímsdóttir, & Brunet-Jailly, 2020): multinational corporations. This

200

A. OLEART

debate in the Spanish, French and British public spheres is coherent with the Agonistic Europeanisation of public spheres discussed in the theoretical chapter, and has positive normative implications for the democratic legitimacy of the EU from both deliberative and agonistic conceptions of democracy. The much wider presence of agonistic frames—and particularly the most radical corporations vs democracy—in comparison with opportunity frames indicates that the ideational playing field was set up by the antiTTIP camp: rather than entering a battle of numbers and arguing whether TTIP would create ‘jobs and growth’, the opponents put forward alternative frames. The main empirical finding of the book is the transnational resonance of these counter-hegemonic frames in the public spheres: the opponents of TTIP managed to frame TTIP as a matter of democracy. Rather than a matter of jobs and growth, TTIP became a matter of the capacity of citizens to govern themselves free from the corporate agenda led by corporations, and therefore forced pro-TTIP actors to play defence. The relatively high number of counter-frames of agonistic frames indicates precisely that: defenders of TTIP used agonistic frames to champion TTIP. On many occasions executive actors were forced to argue that TTIP would not lower environmental standards or, in the British context, would not lead to the privatisation of public services such as the NHS. The denial of frames ‘de facto’ reproduces and expands its reach (Lakoff, 2014). This finding illustrates that narratives of the EU are constructed through both top-down and bottom-up processes (Bouza García, 2017). The empirical analysis has shown a high correlation between the Europeanisation of public spheres and the politicisation of TTIP, which highlights the connection between the two phenomena. Political conflict attracts media attention by incentivising journalists and editors. In the case of TTIP, the negotiations’ increasing coverage is correlated with the reporting of mass protests in different countries. In some occasions, protests in Germany or other countries were reported in the Spanish, French and British media. And on other occasions, TTIP has been connected in demonstrations to other issues, such as poverty or austerity. The most Europeanised moment of the TTIP negotiations coincides with the Greenpeace leaks in May 2016, a moment of particular politicisation of TTIP given the widespread dominance of agonistic frames and the large amount of articles published during that period in all the news outlets analysed.

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

201

The agonistic politicisation of TTIP, as opposed to an antagonistic one, is evident in the dominance of agonistic frames in the three national public spheres, and the general absence of the antagonistic threat to sovereignty frame. In fact, a plausible explanation for the phenomenon of Europeanisation of public spheres in different countries at the same time is that the conflict took place in an agonistic way. An agonistic conflict does not pit nation-states—or, in the EU context, ‘member states’ (Bickerton, 2012)—against each other or against the EU, but rather takes place beyond borders, creating divisions within the countries for and against TTIP, but not for and against the EU as a polity. The agonistic character of the debate surrounding the TTIP negotiations, and particularly during the second period, matched ‘policy with politics’ (Schmidt, 2019). A dossier managed by the European Commission travelled to the European public spheres and was heavily discussed agonistically by a wide range of actors, not only those active in the Brussels bubble. In the case of TTIP, the ‘us’ and the ‘them’ were constructed discursively on the basis of agonistic conflict, where the ‘us’ championed regulatory standards and public services, and multinational corporations represented the ‘them’. Normalising EU issues as controversies at the national level is a sign of agonism, as opposed to a context where it is expressed against another nation-state or the EU as a whole. In consequence, the concept of ‘sovereignty’ was almost absent from the TTIP debate in the three countries analysed. The transnational conflict that emerged promoted values such as democracy, the rule of law or the social protection in opposition to the neoliberal values of jobs, growth or competitiveness. The empirical analysis supports this argument, since the idea that the EU questions national sovereignty is hardly present in the TTIP debate. This is particularly interesting in the case of TTIP, because the European Commission was negotiating a trade agreement on behalf of its member states. Even though the Commission was negotiating a trade agreement with the US as a representative of all EU member states, the criticisms were never that the EU or the European Commission was illegitimate to negotiate such a trade agreement. Rather, opponents argued that the particular agreement was undemocratic on the basis of the power it gave big corporations, that it was being negotiated in a non-transparent way, and that it followed an economic paradigm (neoliberalism) that causes detriment to the environment, labour rights, food safety and other areas.

202

A. OLEART

In the TTIP debate, the common story across the three countries in which multinational corporations are the villains taking over democracy is combined with certain specificities particular to each country. The TTIP debate’s focus in the UK is largely driven by defending the NHS. According to this framing, TTIP would facilitate privatisation of the NHS, benefitting big corporations at the expense of democracy and citizens at large. In Spain and France, there was little threat posed to public services, but the overarching frame remained the same. The ISDS mechanism within TTIP would give corporations more power in policy-making, at the expense of citizens at large, the environment and consumer protection. ISDS is the most common subject across news outlets and countries. This can be explained by civil society actors’ emphasis on this mechanism, which portrayed ISDS as reflecting TTIP’s general image, a trade agreement perceived to benefit multinational corporations at the expense of citizens and democracy. The politicisation of TTIP is not ‘Eurosceptic’: while TTIP as a policy is heavily contested, the European project is never questioned. The TTIP debate has neither put countries against each other nor treated nonnational actors as illegitimate debate participants (which would have been tracked by the threat to sovereignty frame). The politicisation of TTIP in the Spanish, French and British public spheres constructed an inclusive ‘us’ and ‘them’ that created a division between the interests of European citizens and those of corporations. This confrontation resembles a European left united against TTIP that confronted the neoliberalism on display in TTIP. Additionally, the TTIP debate has not been based on questioning the EU as a polity, which confirms the lack of an antagonistic discourse circulating in the Spanish, French and British public spheres. The TTIP debate has been about politics in the union, against the background of the different relationship that the three countries have had with the EU historically. Despite the historically different discourses circulating in Spain, France and the UK about ‘Europe’ and the European integration project, a common framing of TTIP has been identified, and a process of agonistic Europeanisation has been traced. This type of Europeanisation matches ‘policy with politics’ at the European level. The TTIP debate is interesting precisely because counter-hegemonic discourses travelled to the mainstream in different national public spheres at the same time, giving a voice to a wide range of actors and making an EU-level issue like TTIP a subject of controversy at the national level. It gave a voice to Alter-globalist actors such as Global Justice Now in

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

203

the UK, ATTAC in France, or Ecologistas en Acción in Spain, among others, which formed a pan-European network of actors operating outside the EU policy-making’s traditional ‘stakeholder’ approach. These outsider actors narrated TTIP based on the agonistic corporations vs democracy master frame while touching upon other agonistic frames subordinated to it. The empirical analysis has shown that the three national public spheres have become more Europeanised the more (agonistic) political conflict has been visible, and particularly when the corporations vs democracy and mass opposition frames became salient. In consequence, the debate has become more agonistic and Europeanised the more radical ideas were present in the public sphere, and the more protests arised. When ideas put forward by these actors were represented in the mainstream spaces of the national public spheres, they managed to burst the Brussels bubble, expanding EU politics beyond the institutional Brussels-based EU policymaking (Bouza & Oleart, 2018; Sánchez Salgado, 2014; Sánchez Salgado & Demidov, 2018). The bursting of the Brussels bubble in the case of TTIP is not a natural process that just ‘happened’. Rather, it emerged from the agency of political entrepreneurs who were able to contest the executive actors’ frames in different countries at the same time and make their voice heard across public spheres. The Europe-wide counter-hegemonic narrative that politicised TTIP emerged from actions by skilled social actors, capable of bridging different (national) struggles with TTIP, such as by connecting it to the defence of the NHS in the UK. In the Bolkestein directive debate (Crespy, 2012), the frames of a ‘Social Europe’ versus a ‘Neoliberal Europe’ were proposed by trade unionists and Alter-globalist actors in different countries at the same time. In the TTIP debate, Alter-globalist civil society actors basically launched the corporations vs democracy frame (Oleart & Bouza, 2018a). The ideational clash was created by mobilising frames based on values strategically proposed by different actors from different countries. This finding is in line with the argument put forward by Kauppi (2018), by which new forms of transnational capital are being created that transcend the nation-state. The Europeanisation and politicisation of TTIP have to be understood as the result of entrepreneurship by a group of highly skilled actors cooperating transnationally. In the case of TTIP, it was a transnational network of a wide range of civil society actors who managed to introduce their formerly considered ‘radical’ ideas into the mainstream. The network’s core is part of the Seattle to Brussels network (S2B), a network of trade

204

A. OLEART

experts and activists (Strange, 2013). The process by which TTIP travelled to the national level in many countries at once can be considered a success of the anti-TTIP movement, which changed the rules of the game by doing so. The TTIP debate was not played under the traditional Brussels bubble rules by which only a few professionalised umbrella organisations have a say. Instead, a much wider range of actors made their voices heard in the public sphere. How did this network of activists manage to politicise and Europeanise several national public spheres in the case of TTIP? The challenges of mass transnational collective action across borders are several, including the national fragmentation of the European public spheres (Eriksen, 2007; Risse, 2014). While the segmentation of public spheres complicates collective action for EU-level actors, European transnational coalitions in the case of TTIP managed to undertake a boomerang tactic (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, p. 12). The boomerang strategy in the EU is based on transnational civil society actors travelling to several national arenas by forging coalitions with national actors in order to involve them and gain political capital, so as to apply pressure later at the EU level. The boomerang tactic in the EU requires horizontal, rather than vertical, dynamics between EU-level actors and national ones. This process entails forging a coalition that includes different types of actors with different types of expertise, working in different geographical contexts. Activists working transnationally have to navigate politically to construct an inclusive discourse that transcends the pro versus anti supranationalism (SilesBrügge & Strange, 2020). The Stop TTIP campaign showed that it is possible to politicise their campaign and mobilise people at the national level in different member states, while also being active at the European level in Brussels. Oleart and Bouza (2018a) conceptualised the skilled social actors who managed to play a role at different levels at the same time as ‘multi-positional actors’. The interaction between EU level and national CSOs has feedback loops between the national and the EU level, where actors active in one level benefit from actions in the other. Most of the actors involved in the Stop TTIP campaign were connected to S2B, a global network rather than an autonomous actor, whose role was to coordinate national actions, as well as providing expertise on trade. The lack of a single European or global public sphere gives national actors the responsibility of making their voices heard, and S2B plays a central role in coordinating actors from different national contexts. In the UK, Global Justice Now, Friends of the Earth UK and War on

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

205

Want were the main actors who led the Stop TTIP campaign, in coordination with a wide range of national groups, such as British trade unions and the NHS campaign. The same happened in Spain, with Ecologistas en Acción and ATTAC leading the Spanish ‘No al TTIP’ campaign in coordination to a wide range of Spanish actors, such as the left-wing political party Podemos, Greenpeace or Comisiones Obreras, all of whom played an important role in politicising TTIP in Spain. In France, ATTAC and AITEC (Association internationale des techniciens, experts et chercheurs) were the leading ‘Stop Tafta’ actors, coordinating with other French actors and the EU-wide campaign. National actors’s predominance when contesting TTIP in the different national arenas highlights the need for ‘mediators’ of Europe, the actors that are key in bridging the different spaces that compose the public spheres, and the difficulties for EU-level actors to be regularly present at the national level.1 In addition to the large-scale transnational Stop TTIP coalition formed by a wide range of civil society actors, influencing the national media was key to introducing TTIP in the public sphere, reaching beyond the traditional activist base. In this way, the connection between activists and journalists is relevant. In the French progressive news outlet Médiapart , Brussels correspondent Ludovic Lamant was the first person to cover TTIP in February 2013, situating it on the French public agenda early on. Médiapart and Ludovic Lamant also organised a livestream debate between a European Commission representative, Édouard Bourcieu and one of the coordinators of the French STOP TTIP campaign, Amélie Cannone, in October 2016. In Spain, Ekaitz Cancela is a freelance journalist who published a number of articles in different Spanish media, including eldiario.es and EL PAÍS. Also in Spain, university professor Adoración Guamán published several articles in eldiario.es given her expertise on TTIP (Guamán went on to publish a book on TTIP in 2015). Later on, Guamán created her own blog within the progressive news outlet eldiario.es , labelled ‘El rapto de Europa’ (‘The kidnapping of Europe’). In the UK, George Monbiot and Owen Jones, two prominent The Guardian columnists, published several articles on TTIP, contributing to the British general public’s knowledge of the negotiations in the UK. All of these were connected in one way or another to

1 This situation in European civil society is similar to the dynamics in the Multilevel Parliamentary Field theorised by Crum and Fossum (2009).

206

A. OLEART

the respective national Stop TTIP campaigns, since they reproduced the same interpretive frameworks to make sense of TTIP. The politicisation of TTIP changed the actors involved in the fight, and the way in which actors could enter the TTIP debate, and by doing so changed the rules of the game. While technical expertise has so far been the most important resource for civil society actors to engage in EU politics, constructing an alternative narrative in the European public spheres has had the effect of involving many more actors in the EU policymaking. Until recently, grassroots mobilisation and the presence in the public sphere were not considered important resources for civil society actors participating in EU policy-making (Oleart & Bouza, 2018a), who tended to focus on the technical dimension, generally bureaucratic and depoliticised. Expertise on issues and the capacity to adapt the demands to the EU institutions’ ideological framework were more important for EU civil society actors than large-scale grassroots mobilisation by constructing an alternative narrative and framing in the European public spheres. The Stop TTIP campaign exemplifies how EU civil society actors can mobilise people at the national level in different member states by circulating a resonant narrative that encouraged informed citizens to become involved (Oleart & Bouza, 2018b). The discourse surrounding the politicisation of TTIP broke the established pattern of conflict over EU policies. Several established actors across Europe, both based in Brussels and in different member states, openly opposed TTIP, a process that rarely happens, given that most Brussels-based established actors prefer to influence EU’s policies through inside channels. The tension between standing up to the European Commission by opposing frontally an EU policy through mass demonstrations, and having the possibility of influencing such policy through inside mechanisms, was well summarised by Pablo Sánchez Centellas, part of the policy staff of the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), an organisation that was an important member of the Stop TTIP coalition as both a Brussels-insider but also an ally to the transnational protest coalition, who argued that the friendly relationship that exists between many Brussels-based organisations and the European Commission is their only source of influence, no real confrontation. There is a big problem among Brussels-based players; they still have this vision of the ‘bad Eurosceptic’ of anyone who heavily criticises the European Commission. Those that defend the current mainstream European policy-making label their opponents ‘Eurosceptics’ to

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

207

undermine their position on certain policies. Within a nation-state, when the government does something that you consider against your interests, you try to attack it politically to push your position. Here, in Brussels, some organisations think that by being too aggressive, their point of view will become marginal. Trade unions are meant to be organising 60 million people who suffer from the political decisions made by the EU. You have to fight against the policies that go against the interest of working people in the EU. EU institutions have this aura that ‘we are pro-European’, but this is a question of European policy. Right-wing federalists use the term ‘more Europe’ to further liberalise things. By accepting this logic, the trade unions subsequently become part of the dismantling of what is left of the welfare state. (Pablo Sánchez Centellas, EPSU policy staff, October 2016)

The protest actors’ inclusion in EU policy-making is deeply political, in that it changes the power relations and the rules of the EU as a political arena. Bringing national and protest actors to the political battle by politicising an EU issue at the national level can change the power relations to the benefit of institutionally weaker actors, who are more closely connected to mass mobilisation than Brussels-based ones. As Béland and Cox argue (2010, p. 35), ‘in any fight, there are many more that are unconcerned than there are mobilised on either side and that therefore it is to the advantage of the weaker side to find a way to frame the issue that will bring in more of the uninvolved bystanders on their side’. From this perspective, politicising EU issues comes about through the social skills of actors, capable of making their voices heard by proposing messages that resonate among the (national) public(s). This process benefits those actors that have less access within traditional EU policy-making’s ‘rules of the game’. When politicisation of the EU happens, well-established business actors find it harder to enter the debate and make their voices heard, as the case of TTIP has demonstrated. While business organisations prefer ‘quiet’ politics conducted behind closed doors by ‘experts’ in a ‘technical’ discussion and without a salient debate in the public sphere, civil society actors, and particularly those focused more on the grassroots than the EU institutional level based in Brussels, are more likely to benefit from politicisation. This is well-known by civil society actors that want to fundamentally change the EU. Lora Verheecke, a trade policy researcher at Corporate Europe Observatory, an organisation that participated in the organisation of the campaign against TTIP, argued the following:

208

A. OLEART

We need to be careful to not only talk to people that are part of the Brussels bubble and that are already convinced, but also to spread information with people outside the bubble. Otherwise we will never change Europe. (Lora Verheecke, interviewed in February 2016)

The transnational grassroots dimension of the Stop TTIP campaign is well reflected in the way of thinking about it of Global Justice Now’s director Nick Dearden, one of the coordinators of the British Stop TTIP campaign, who argued the following: you do not need to be the person who travels to Madrid or to other city, by being part of the TTIP movement you feel you are part of the same thing as some Germans, or French. You feel you are on the same side. So that is great, that gives people concrete expression of the stuff that we are all doing together. There is a huge feeling of a democratic black hole, both at the national and European level. This is very big in our societies at the moment. (Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, interviewed in March 2016)

The TTIP debate also highlighted the division within civil society actors working on EU issues (see Bouza García, 2015). On the one hand, we find traditional Brussels-based professionalised NGOs and trade unions, federations or membership organisations that have a high level of expertise in the institutional EU policy-making, but little expertise in mobilising transnationally the grassroots. On the other hand, we find grassroots organisations, usually based at the national level, with little expertise in the functioning of the institutionalised EU policy-making, but a lot of expertise in grassroots mobilisation, in some cases transnationally. The TTIP debate favoured the latter group, and exposed the competitive dynamics between these two groups of civil society actors. This is perhaps best exemplified by the relationship between British development NGO War on Want and Brussels-based development organisation SOLIDAR, which several national development organisations as members (War on Want was among these organisations, but it no longer is the case). While in principle they should cooperate and work together on certain issues given their common focus on development, the former director of War on Want and co-coordinator of the British Stop TTIP campaign, John Hilary, argued the following:

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

209

We used to be a member of SOLIDAR, but we withdrew because they do not have our politics really. Every year you pay them a lot of money to be a member, but there was never really a sense of what you were doing, except to pay for them to do what they want to do in Brussels. So for example on TTIP, they told us ‘we will not be anti-TTIP’. Why would we be a member of them? We are not members anymore. (John Hilary, former director of War on Want, interviewed in March 2016)

The functioning of the transnational and grassroots Stop TTIP campaign contrasts greatly with the way in which Brussels-based civil society actors participate in the EU policy-making. Interviews with staff members of two leading organisations based in Brussels, the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), illustrate the differences. While BEUC and ETUC did not reject TTIP as a whole, as they recognised its potential economic benefits, they criticised certain elements of the agreement.2 In an interview, a staff member of BEUC argued that we do not have the same adversarial relationship with some of the business organisations as it would be at the national level. It is much more ‘professional’. Professional not because they are unprofessional, but professional in the sense of going to meetings, seeing each other, we talk to each other… Maybe it is less politicised because there is no audience which looks at the different players, there is no European public opinion. (Official of BEUC, interviewed in June 2016)

Similarly, ETUC acknowledged that, in contrast to those actors frontally opposing TTIP, they attempted to make changes through inside lobbying. The ETUC case is particularly interesting, because several of its members, national trade unions, actively opposed TTIP, while ETUC itself maintained a lighter position. This is attributed to the fact that other trade unions supported the agreement, particularly in northern Europe. Questioned on whether ETUC’s position could be considered too ‘light’, the ETUC official argued the following:

2 Interestingly, however, BEUC and ETUC opposed TTIP in the negotiations’ final months and CETA after it was signed, mainly because the European Commission was unwilling to leave out the investor protection provisions.

210

A. OLEART

We do not have any problems with light positions. We want to negotiate. This is the role of trade unions. To negotiate. I think that to just say ‘no’ from the beginning is not really constructive or helpful. NGOs might say ‘it is better to say no from the start than to change something’. But we represent many workers, with many organisations that do not necessarily have the same position, so we can’t really campaign against or for something. We have to find a balance and a compromise between our members. (ETUC official, interviewed in June 2016)

In a similar line of thought, an official of the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the research and training centre of ETUC, rationalised the less contentious position taken by ETUC: the logic with TTIP was very clear for everybody, if this is going to happen, then let’s make it as good as possible. So try to argue for changes within it. You can take another view, which is to oppose the whole thing in total, but then it is much more difficult to argue for changes to improve it. So you sort of become trapped in a position of what they come out with if they accept some of the changes you have advocated. (ETUI official, interviewed in June 2016)

The transnational and grassroots TTIP campaign turned the traditional EU policy-making process upside-down, changing the rules of the game and giving a voice to grassroots civil society actors rather than the traditional Brussels-based institutionalised umbrella organisations. Political entrepreneurs’ bursting of the Brussels bubble could be conceived as a boomerang strategy of a transnational advocacy network (Keck & Sikkink, 1998): EU-level actors (such as the S2B or FoEE) have travelled to different national arenas through pre-established networks in order to have an effect back in Brussels. This process has left traditional Brussels-based institutionalised actors out of the game and created a conflictual dynamic that does not happen often at the EU level (see Bouza & Oleart, Forthcoming). This type of contentious politics on the EU normalises political conflict and, most importantly, encourages the traditional dynamics of national politics, where there is a government and an opposition, something which is usually invisible when EU affairs are discussed in the national political debate (Rauh & De Wilde, 2018). The politicisation of TTIP had the effect of setting up a dividing line between the ‘right-wing’ (national governments and the EU Commission) and the ‘left’ (many civil society actors, left-wing political parties and trade

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

211

unions), forcing institutionalised actors to position themselves in a clearer way: either for or against TTIP. This conflict is agonistic, in that the EU as a polity is not questioned, but a policy like TTIP is contested. This is a sign of politics in the Union, where the ‘us’ and the ‘them’ is built on an agonistic conflict. Most literature on transnational politics argues that transnational mobilisation of civil society tends to be explained as the transfer of authority to supranational authorities (Zürn, 2012), and more broadly the process of neoliberal globalisation. In the EU, the increasing competences transferred from the national level to the EU provides incentives for all actors concerned to coordinate, cooperate and act together transnationally. Recently, Young (2017, p. 531) has argued that transnational cooperation of both businesses and civil society actors can be explained on the basis of having a ‘motive to mobilise’, a ‘motive to cooperate’ and an ‘opportunity to cooperate’. Young attempts to add a layer of complexity to the simplistic view that authority transfer will immediately result in greater transnational cooperation, taking into account other elements, such as political context and actors’ social skills. Following this view, prior empirical research (Bouza & Oleart, 2018; Oleart & Bouza, 2018a) and the semi-structured interviews conducted for this book indicate that the TTIP debate’s Agonistic Europeanisation is broadly the consequence of the grassroots organising of Alter-globalist actors. The growing political conflict in the public sphere due to contestation by non-institutional actors led many institutional actors to take a more hostile position visà-vis TTIP. Involving many national civil society groups and citizens at large in EU politics is fundamental to politicise the public debate and, consequently, Europeanise it. The more an issue becomes politicised in the public sphere, the more actors are likely to join the fight. Europeanisation and politicisation are the results of political entrepreneurs’ agency: those entrepreneurs were necessary to bring TTIP to the national public spheres. A second clue to understanding the agonistic Europeanisation of TTIP is how the European campaign’s connection to national politics is articulated. The STOP TTIP campaign is articulated differently in each country, and depending to a large extent on its relation with the S2B network. For instance, S2B has very few members in Eastern European countries, which correlates strongly with those countries’ low degree of politicisation (see Bouza & Oleart, Forthcoming). Instead, in countries with strong

212

A. OLEART

S2B members, such as Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and the UK, the national campaigns were much stronger. The Europe-wide movement’s strength rested on the success of the national campaigns and the national actors who drove them. In countries where national actors played a large role in national politics, they were stronger. In Spain, the leading actors were Ecologistas en Acción and ATTAC, which already had a pre-existing network of NGOs with whom to mobilise, and in the case of TTIP were able to attract a wide range of Spanish actors, including associations of judges and taxi drivers (Bouza & Oleart, 2018). In France, leading actors ATTAC and AITEC engaged trade unions such as the CGT in the campaign. In the UK, War on Want and Global Justice Now, the British STOP TTIP campaign’s two leading members, were strong enough nationally to connect the anti-TTIP campaign with the ‘Save the NHS’ campaign. Similarly, in Germany the S2B members Powershift and Forum Umwelt connected with other German organisations, such as CAMPACT and other NGOs to work on more direct democracy (e.g. Mehr Democratie). Additionally, this network also made a link with the anti-nuclear movement, since Germany’s leading actors of the STOP TTIP campaign, such as Forum Umwelt, Campact, ATTAC or Powershift, were able to connect the Vattenfall ISDS case3 to TTIP. These actors were skilful enough to connect TTIP to national specificities in order to build a bridge with the national context, which gave the Stop TTIP campaign greater resonance in different national public spheres, bridging in this way European and national politics. The ideational success of the Stop TTIP campaign is based on the fact that it managed to redefine the interests of many actors playing a role in the campaign. As argued by Blyth (2002, p. VII), ‘ideas matter because they can actually alter people’s conception of their own selfinterest’. While the frame used by the Stop TTIP coalition was based on ‘democracy’, there are many distributive issues within TTIP, which is why many trade unions were massively involved in the campaign, including public services unions, such as EPSU. This diversity of publics is the key feature of the transnational Stop TTIP coalition: while trade activists led the campaign, many organisations from a wide range of countries and

3 Vattenfall used ISDS to contest a new German government policy that banned nuclear energy in Germany.

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

213

policy areas joined, including farmers, trade unions, environmental organisations or, in Spain, taxi drivers and judges (see Bouza & Oleart, 2018). The Stop TTIP campaign had the capacity to reach very diverse national publics in different countries at the same time, since the protests gathered actors from different policy communities, building bridges between them. The bursting of the Brussels bubble in the case of TTIP entailed both EU level and national dynamics. The coordination of a transnational campaign and a ‘boomerang’ strategy by the S2B network was fundamental, but the capacity of the national-level actors was equally important to reproduce pre-existing networks and enlarge them at the national level to reach a wider public. The importance of pre-existing networks in the case of TTIP might explain why the issue was less politicised in Eastern European countries, as the Stop TTIP movement remained very much a Western European campaign, strongest in countries where the alter-globalisation movement already had well-established networks.

Bibliography Béland, D., & Cox, R. H. (Eds.) (2010). Ideas and politics in social science research. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bickerton, C. J. (2012). European integration: From nation-states to member states. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blyth, M. (2002). Great transformations: Economic ideas and institutional change in the twentieth century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bouza Garcia, L. (2015). Participatory democracy and civil society in the EU: Agenda-setting and institutionalisation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bouza Garcia, L. (2017). The ‘New Narrative Project’ and the politicisation of the EU. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 25(3), 340–353. Bouza, L., & Oleart, A. (2018). From the 2005 constitution’s “Permissive Consensus” to TTIP’s “Empowering Dissensus”: The EU as a playing field for Spanish civil society. Journal of Contemporary European Research, 14(2), 87–104. Bouza, L., & Oleart, A. (Forthcoming). The national filter of Europe-wide citizen mobilisation: The Stop TTIP Boomerang and the ‘empowering dissensus’ for European integration. In J. Organ & A. Alemanno (Eds.), Citizen participation in democratic europe: What next for the EU? London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Conrad, M., Hallgrímsdóttir, H. K., & Brunet-Jailly, E. (2020). The heroes and villains of an alternative Europe—How EU contestation shapes narratives of Europe in Germany. Politique Européenne, 66(4), 96–119.

214

A. OLEART

Conrad, M., & Oleart, A. (2019). Framing TTIP in the wake of the Greenpeace leaks: Agonistic and deliberative perspectives on frame resonance and communicative power. Journal of European Integration, 42, 1–19. Crespy, A. (2012). Qui a peur de Bolkestein? conflit, résistances et démocratie dans l’Union européenne. Paris: Economica. Crum, B., & Fossum, J. E. (2009). The multilevel parliamentary field: A framework for theorizing representative democracy in the EU. European Political Science Review, 1(29), 249–271. De Vries, C. E., & Hobolt, S. (2020). Political entrepreneurs: The rise of challenger parties in Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Díez Medrano, J. (2003). Framing Europe. Attitudes to European integration in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press. Elliott, L. (2016, May 3). TTIP has been kicked into the long grass … for a very long time. The Guardian. Available Online: https://www.theguardian. com/business/2016/may/03/ttip-has-been-kicked-into-the-long-grass-fora-very-long-time. Accessed 6 July 2020. Eriksen, E. O. (2007). Conceptualising European public spheres. General, segmented and strong publics. In F. J. Erik & P. Schlesinger (Eds.), The European union and the public sphere. A communicative space in the making? (pp. 23–41). London: Routledge. Hiault, R. (2016, May 3). Traité transatlantique: les Etats-Unis peu enclins au compromis. Les Échos. Available Online: https://www.lesechos.fr/2016/ 05/traite-transatlantique-les-etats-unis-peu-enclins-au-compromis-225138. Accessed 6 July 2020. Kauppi, N. (2018). Toward a reflexive political sociology of the European Union: Fields, intellectuals and politicians. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Keck, M., & Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in International politics. New York: Cornell University Press. Koopmans, R., & Statham, P. (Eds.). (2010). The making of a European public sphere: The Europeanization of media discourse and political contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. (2014). Don’t think of an elephant! Know your values and frame the debate. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing. Machill, M., Beiler, M., & Fischer, C. (2006). Europe-topics in Europe’s media: The debate about the European Public Sphere—A meta-analysis of media content analyses. European Journal of Communication, 21(1), 57–88. Oleart, A., & Bouza, L. (2018a). Democracy at stake: Multipositional actors and politicization in the EU civil society field. Journal of Common Market Studies, 56(4), 870–887. Oleart, A., & Bouza, L. (2018b). Overcoming the taboo: Disputes over European values via the European Citizens’ initiative. In F. Foret & O. Calligaro

7

FRAMING TTIP ACROSS THE SPANISH, FRENCH …

215

(Eds.), European values: Challenges and opportunities for EU governance (pp. 157–173). New York: Routledge. Pérez, C., & Planelles, M. (2016, May 2). EE UU presiona en secreto para rebajar las reglas de la UE en el TTIP. EL PAÍS. Available Online: https://elpais.com/internacional/2016/05/01/actualidad/146211 7710_697215.html. Accessed 6 July 2020. Rauh, C., & De Wilde, P. (2018). The opposition deficit in EU accountability: Evidence from over 20 years of plenary debate in four member states. European Journal of Political Research, 57 (1), 194–216. Risse, T. (2014). European public spheres: Politics is back. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sánchez Salgado, R. (2014). Rebalancing EU interest representation? Assocative democracy and EU funding of civil society organizations. Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(2), 337–353. Sánchez Salgado, R., & Demidov, A. (2018). Beyond the Brussels bubble? National civil society organisations in the European union. Journal of Contemporary European Research, 14(2), 56–67. Schmidt, V. A. (2019). Politicization in the EU: Between national politics and EU political dynamics. Journal of European Public Policy, 26(7), 1018–1036. Siles-Brügge, G., & Strange, M. (2020). National autonomy or transnational solidarity? Using multiple geographic frames to politicize EU trade policy. Politics and Governance, 8(1), 277–289. Strange, M. (2013). A European identity in global campaigning? Activist groups and the ‘Seattle to Brussels’(S2B) network. Geopolitics, 18(3), 612–632. Trenz, H. J. (2004). Media coverage on European governance: Exploring the European public sphere in national quality newspapers. European Journal of Communication, 19(3), 291–319. Young, A. R. (2017). Intergovernmental policy makes transnational politics? The unusually transnational politics of TTIP. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 30(5–6), 527–548. Zürn, M. (2012). Global governance as multi-level governance. In D. Levi-Faur (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Interviews 1. Lora Verheecke, Former researcher of Corporate Europe Observatory, February 2016. 2. Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, March 2016. 3. John Hilary, former director of War on Want, March 2016. 4. European Commission official 1, April 2016. 5. Official of BEUC, June 2016. 6. ETUC official, June 2016.

216

A. OLEART

7. ETUI official, June 2016. 8. Researcher of the Transnational Institute, July 2016. 9. European Commission official 2, September 2016. 10. Pablo Sánchez Centellas, EPSU, October 2016. 11. Claudi Pérez, EU correspondent of EL PAÍS, November 2016. 12. Jude Kirton Darling, MEP, S&D, January 2018. 13. European Commission official 3, June 2020.

CHAPTER 8

The Transnational TTIP Debate: Politicisation Empowers Further European Integration

1 Contribution to the Literature, Shortcomings and Avenues for Further Research: Bridging the European Public Sphere Literature with EU Politicisation The book has argued that the literature on EU politicisation has not paid enough attention to the work of European public sphere scholars, and European public sphere scholars have not paid enough attention to conflict’s role and its different forms (agonistic or antagonistic) in a public sphere. The book complements the literature on the European public sphere and the politicisation of European and global governance, and the academic contribution is both theoretical and empirical. Theoretically, the book contributed to the literature on the European public sphere and the politicisation of European and global governance. Empirically, the book has contributed to the dialogue between media content analysis and discourse analysis, bridging the two approaches as well as combining analysis of written texts with that of their accompanying images. The book also contributed to the literature on interest groups in the EU and the role of civil society (Eising, 2009; Kohler-Koch, 2010), the way in which ‘Europe’ is socially constructed and framed in the European public spheres, and how trade policy is politicised in the European public spheres.

© The Author(s) 2021 A. Oleart, Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53637-4_8

217

218

A. OLEART

The theoretical framework’s first novelty has been bridging Chantal Mouffe’s work with the European public sphere literature, situating (agonistic) conflict at the heart of deliberative democracy. The book has made the case for paying further attention not only to interpretive structures and the quantity of transnational communication flows, but also to the degree and type of conflict taking place in the European public spheres. A democratic polity should acknowledge the existence of unreconcilable interests and ideological positions, and deal with them in an agonistic way, rather than aspire to reach a ‘rational’ consensus. The second originality has been to engage with the literature on politicisation of global governance and the EU in a critical way, empirically applying Mouffe’s distinction between agonistic and antagonistic conflict, a novelty that has not been put forward in prior work. This distinction is inspired by Mouffe’s work, but it is adapted and reworked, in order to operationalise such concepts through a framing analysis. The literature on the politicisation of European and global governance has focused essentially on measuring the degree of political conflict, rather than attempting to distinguish between different types of politicisation. In consequence, the literature has been rather pessimistic about the increasing political conflict of EU affairs, concluding that politicisation is most likely going to lead European integration towards a ‘constraining dissensus’. Instead, the normative implication of the argument put forward in this book is that the EU can be legitimised through (agonistic) politicisation, such as in the case of the TTIP debate. In consequence, EU politicisation will not necessarily lead towards a ‘constraining dissensus’, but could in fact lead to an ‘empowering dissensus’ for European integration (Bouza & Oleart, 2018). These two original elements of the present book have straightforward empirical implications. The literature on the European public sphere and politicisation of global governance have so far placed emphasis on attempting to measure the degree of Europeanisation and politicisation. This has often been done using quantitative methods that provide an interesting picture, but an incomplete one. Instead, the theoretical framework has led the empirical research to focus on the type of Europeanisation and politicisation, taking a more qualitative perspective. The book has focused on the circulation of frames in the public spheres, and how do those frames relate to the type of politicisation. Semi-structured interviews with actors involved in the TTIP debate and its negotiations have been conducted in order to add context to how the process of Europeanisation of politicisation (and what type) took place. In consequence, I encourage future research to engage in distinguishing between

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

219

different types of Europeanisation and politicisation, and pay more attention to the role of ideas rather than focus purely on measuring the degree of Europeanisation or politicisation. Empirically, the framing analysis has been undertaken to study the discourse circulating in the national news outlets of Spain, France and the UK, as well as their similarities across the different countries and all along the TTIP negotiations. As for the methodology, the book has attempted to bridge two approaches that are not often used together. The qualitative framing analysis has been complemented by also taking into account the accompanying images (other interesting visual analyses are those present in Bleiker [2018]). Academics studying the media have often omitted images from media content analysis, which is problematic as news consumption simultaneously integrates written text and images (see as well Bleiker, 2015, for a discussion on the methodological challenges and some solutions of undertaking visual analysis). These methodological innovations are also a contribution to the literature. The book has also contributed to the literature on interest groups in the EU (Sanchez Salgado, 2014), the role of civil society in the EU policy-making (Bouza Garcia, 2015; Kohler-Koch, 2010), and how ‘Europe’ is socially constructed (Christiansen et al., 2001) and framed in the public sphere (Díez Medrano, 2003). The findings in this book revealed a tension between the professionalised Brussels-based civil society organisations, and the more grassroots organisations we find at the national level, who were the main drivers of the national Stop TTIP campaigns. The book also signalled how ‘Europe’ is a concept under dispute (Oleart & Bouza García, 2020; Oleart & van Weyenberg, 2020), in which different actors champion different versions of ‘Europe’, and how the frames regarding EU affairs travel in a segmented way throughout Europe, given the public spheres’ national fragmentation (Koopmans and Statham, 2010; Risse, 2010, 2014). Lastly, the book contributed to the literature on the politicisation of EU trade policy in general (Siles-Brügge & Strange, 2020), and TTIP in particular (Gheyle, 2020; Siles-Brügge, 2017). Given that the empirical choices of the book are focused on qualitative news outlets based in Western European countries, further research about the emergence of a European public sphere would benefit from further empirical studies that take into account a wider range of European countries (such as Northern, Central and Eastern European countries), and different type of data sets. Even though the empirical research was

220

A. OLEART

focused on a substantial part of the media reporting on TTIP in selected countries, it is by no means the only space interesting to research on. Additionally, as Bennett and Pfetsch (2018) have recently argued, the political communication in current democracies requires to challenge the traditional assumptions about the relationship between traditional media and politics, as public spheres have been ‘disrupted’ by the emergence of social media and digital networks. The increasing ‘disruption’ has, to a certain extent, des-intermediated the public sphere, empowered anti-democratic domestic and foreign actors, demolished the business model of traditional news outlets, and meaningfully affected processes of consensus seeking. Academics researching the politicisation of EU affairs have looked at other dimensions beyond the news media, such as social media (Barisione & Michailidou, 2017; Trenz, 2013), political parties (Hooghe & Marks, 2009; Hooghe, Marks, & Wilson, 2002), protests (Imig & Tarrow, 2001) and social movements (Della Porta & Caiani, 2009; Guiraudon, 2011), national parliaments and local governments (Roederer-Rynning & Kallestrup, 2017), EU civil society mobilisation beyond the Brussels bubble (Bouza & Oleart, 2018; Sánchez Salgado & Demidov, 2018) or the policy consequences of politicisation at a European level (Rauh, 2016). Future research that combines several of these directions, and the relationship between them, might be an interesting avenue to contribute to the study of the increasing politicisation of EU affairs and the Europeanisation of public spheres.

2 Policy Effects of the TTIP Debate’s Agonistic Europeanisation: Towards a Great Transformation in EU Trade Policy? The transnational politicisation of TTIP changed the functioning of the EU policy-making process and the actors involved in it, given the prominent presence of civil society actors in the European public spheres. In essence, the empirical analysis has shown that transnational patterns of deliberation and discourse were fostered, thereby contributing to the generation of (transnational) communicative power, a process that might contribute to change the way in which EU trade policy is constructed (Siles-Brügge, 2014). In the TTIP negotiations, many national organisations played a role in them through the public sphere, even though many of them have often not participated in the EU policy-making in the past.

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

221

National civil society actors have done so through the European public spheres, rather than through official public consultations or institutional channels, an inclusion that made the rounds of negotiations of TTIP more democratic than previous trade negotiations. The actors that contest EU policies such as TTIP are thus contributing to the Europeanisation of the national public spheres and the emergence of the EU as a political arena, a process that also has ideational policy implications, contesting the hegemony of neoliberalism in EU trade policy. The TTIP debate in the three analysed public spheres had a deep ideological foundation, since the hegemonic neoliberal paradigm that drove TTIP in the first place was frontally opposed in the three public spheres in an agonistic way. Especially during the second period described in the empirical chapters, the Europeanised debate was dominated by value-based left-wing ideas that prioritise democratic values, the environment or workers’ rights to the neoliberal ones, such as the belief in ‘the market’, ‘growth’ or ‘competitiveness’. The transnational widespread opposition to the TTIP negotiations can be seen as another episode of the widespread social mobilisation in Western countries after the 2008 financial crisis, particularly in London (Occupy London and the Anti-austerity movement), Madrid and Barcelona (the Indignados movement, or 15-M) and New York (Occupy Wall Street). The common idea behind the different mobilisations was a demand for ‘real democracy’, often connecting the democratic deficit to big corporations’ power, ‘the market’ and ‘the 1%’. This framing strongly resembles the corporations vs democracy frame put forward by the opponents of TTIP in the European public spheres. The normalisation of agonistic politicisation in the European public spheres with regard to the TTIP debate is not a neutral process, since it gives a louder voice to progressive actors and citizens in general, and reduces the weight of actors perceived as ‘experts’. Presenting EU initiatives as ‘technical’, as only a matter of discussion among ‘experts’, situates them as unworthy of controversy in the public sphere in a process of depoliticisation (Hay & Rosamond, 2002). Instead, politicising the EU has the potential to prompt actors from different levels (regional, national and European) to engage in EU politics. This process, by which political conflict on EU issues becomes normalised at the national level, can have an effect on the EU’s neoliberal hegemony. The EU is not inherently neoliberal, as some left-wing academics have argued (see Bickerton et al., 2018). In fact, Rauh (2016) pointed out the important policy influence that politicisation has had on several dossiers managed by the European Commission.

222

A. OLEART

The hegemony of neoliberalism after the 2008 financial crisis within EU member states, and particularly in EU trade policy, is visible in the very idea of starting the TTIP negotiations and its legitimising discourse, but also in austerity policies (Blyth, 2013). Both left and right-wing political parties implemented austerity policies in the EU under a common Thatcherite discourse that ‘there is no alternative’, best exemplified by Colin Crouch’s (2011) book’s title ‘the strange non-death of neoliberalism’. The converging mainstream centre-right and centre-left parties have discouraged the contestation of policies proposed by both the EU and its member states in a polity that is already prone to consensus rather than conflict (Magnette, 2003). The TTIP debate’s particularity lies in the agonistic politicisation between its proponents and opponents, where the hegemony of neoliberalism has been largely contested. This ideational cleavage is fundamentally different from the one politicised by extreme-right political parties that accuse the ‘Brussels elite’ of taking over nation-states’ sovereignty, and has often immigration as its central concern. Instead, the politicisation of TTIP has come from the left and has included a wide range of actors from both the EU and national level, such as consumer and environmental organisations, trade unions and political parties. Previous research has revealed that the collective framing of an issue in the public sphere dramatically influences the winners and losers of the policy debate (Junk & Rasmussen, 2018). Winning the debate in the public sphere has an influence over the content of the policy. The public spheres’ agonistic Europeanisation has given a voice to civil society actors and trade unions that opposed TTIP on the basis of a worldview that differs from the neoliberal paradigm, which might indicate the first steps of a great transformation (Polanyi, 1964) in EU trade policy. The politicisation of TTIP had policy implications, empowering contentious actors able to introduce their ideas in the public sphere, while reducing the influence of institutionalised Brussels-based actors. The TTIP debate in the European public spheres generated a communicative power (Conrad & Oleart, 2019) that has shaped EU trade policy, therefore serving as a counterweight to the administrative power held by EU policy-makers. Technocracy has been a buzzword when talking about EU institutions in general, and the European Commission in particular, given the technical nature of its work and the general perception that its policy-making does not take citizens’ opinions into account. The European Commission’s image as an elite institution detached from its citizens is widely

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

223

echoed, both from the right (such as Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, leading politicians supporting Brexit) and the left (such as Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister). However, as Rauh has shown (2016) on consumer protection policy, the European Commission is highly responsive to politicisation. Under pressure from public opinion, the European Commission is likely to modify its position, because it has incentives to break with its traditional policy of market liberalisation in Europe. Interventionist policies are seen, in the context of politicised dossiers, as more beneficial to European consumers, instead of benefiting the narrow interests of private producers who want to save costs by having fewer regulations and at the expense of European consumers’ general welfare, which could be harmed by weak regulation. The political translation is that those actors favouring a more neoliberal European Commission stance will likely try to keep the EU as depoliticised as possible. Reversing the equation, those actors favouring a more interventionist policy are likely to attempt to politicise the EU and increase the issues’ salience to give the Commission an incentive to break with its traditional policy of market liberalisation. Departing from the EU’s neoliberal approach to trade policy (SilesBrügge, 2014) and TTIP, it is then important to consider whether the European Commission was responsive to the public debate on TTIP. This complex issue is not the subject of research of the book, but it is relevant to reflect upon the neoliberal discourse’s defeat on TTIP and how it might indicate a certain trend towards a policy paradigm change (a ‘Great Transformation’) in the near future. While not being an integral part of the empirical analysis, I will highlight the policy impact that politicisation has had in the case of TTIP, since one of the public sphere’s central functions is precisely to shape public policies. In the case of TTIP, Rauh’s argument (2016) finds extensive support. Politicising TTIP at the national level has had direct implications in terms of policy impact and indicates how the European Commission reacts to a highly salient and politicised debate, and how civil society actors successfully used outside lobbying to pressure the Commission. The most immediate consequences of the politicised TTIP debate were procedural, mostly in the realm of participation of diverse stakeholders and transparency (Coremans, 2017). The European Commission set up an ‘Advisory Group’ in 2014 that included a wide range of actors, including NGOs, trade unions and business organisations, an unprecedented decision in the trade agreements negotiated by the EU until now. The formal

224

A. OLEART

inclusion of multiple ‘stakeholders’ in trade negotiations after its politicisation had precedent in WTO procedures, as it has been demonstrated by Charnovitz (2004) and Hocking (2004). Zürn (2012, 2014, 2018) has consistently argued that international institutions tend to respond to politicisation with greater transparency and further access to a diversity of stakeholders. This has been the case of the TTIP negotiations, and it is likely that future trade agreements negotiated by the EU will follow a similar process. This gives further evidence of the ‘good governance turn’ of the European Commission (Cini, 2015), based on a different model of accountability (Grant & Keohane, 2005; Nanz & Steffek, 2004) that stresses the importance of a certain degree of citizen participation to legitimise public policies undertaken by public institutions, and particularly supranational ones. A European Commission official explained the changes in regards to the increased transparency on trade as a response to the politicisation, arguing that ‘not legitimating the critics was not an option. People were throwing eggs at the Commissioner at the beginning of the (Juncker) Commission. People were protesting out in the streets. It was a genuine response to do trade in a different way’ (European Commission official 2, interviewed in June 2020). However, the most interesting and long-term consequences of the politicisation of the TTIP debate deal with the frontal opposition to the neoliberal paradigm embedded in EU trade policy. Beyond the procedural aspect, the public debate around TTIP had far broader implications for EU trade policy. The TTIP negotiations’ wide contestation on the basis of a different set of ideas opposed to neoliberalism has had policy effects that start to question the neoliberal paradigm and can have wide range implications for EU trade policy on the long term. The Stop TTIP coalition put forward an alternative frame led by the value of ‘democracy’, frontally opposing a TTIP project that was perceived as driven by big corporations. The left-wing alternative to neoliberalism views democracy as more than a process of consulting ‘stakeholders’, but also includes content: governments’ role is to protect its citizens from externalities created by the ‘market’. It is in this context that some of TTIP opponents argued that TTIP is a corporate coup d’état (see Oleart & Bouza García, 2020) by which big corporations are taking over democracy, a frame that travelled across different European public spheres. Neoliberal ideas were introduced into the mainstream during the late 1970s and became hegemonic during the 1980s and 1990s, entering

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

225

mainly through the UK but expanding all throughout Europe’s political economy (Hall, 1993; Schmidt & Thatcher, 2014). They became dominant in Europe, particularly in the European integration process, since its priority was to construct a European ‘single market’ based on negative integration (Scharpf, 1999), rather than a political union that would lead to positive integration and pave the way for ambitious Europe-wide regulations on labour standards, environmental protection, fiscal harmonisation or wealth redistribution. TTIP entered the ‘Global Europe’ agenda drafted by Peter Mandelson in 2006 while he was EU Trade Commissioner. As discussed in Chapter 3, the neoliberal ‘Global Europe’ agenda focused on tearing down ‘non-tariff barriers’, and that was the goal of TTIP, rather than building ambitious environmental, labour or social standards. Against this background, in October 2015, when TTIP was already politicised, Cecilia Malmström, EU Trade Commissioner, launched the ‘Trade for All’ strategy, which would replace the ‘Global Europe’ agenda. In ‘Trade for All’, there are many discursive concessions to EU trade policy critics, given that rather than ‘competitiveness’, the new agenda attempts to protect ‘human rights and sustainable development around the world or high quality safety and environmental regulation and public services at home’ (European Commission, 2015). The change in the European Commission EU trade policy discourse might be caused by the politicisation of EU trade policy, and the more supranational rather than intergovernmental character of the debate. While left-wing critics of the EU, such as Bickerton (2012) or Lapavitsas (2018), tend to argue that it is the supranational dimension of the EU (and the influence of some countries in particular, such as Germany) what has led neoliberal policies, I contend that it is the intergovernmental logic that has encouraged neoliberalism (see Mulder, 2019). The debate surrounding the TTIP negotiations has opened the negotiations beyond executive actors, breaking the intergovernmental logic and bringing a wide range of actors into the political arena. In turn, the debate followed a rather federal logic, in which actors from different countries made claims as European actors, advocating for a different type of EU trade policy. In turn, the neoliberal consensus constructed by national governments at the European level, and illustrated by the TTIP mandate provided by the Council to the Commission, was brought down by transnational politicisation. Even though it is still too early to tell, the episode of politicisation of TTIP in the European public spheres might indicate the start

226

A. OLEART

of a paradigm change or great transformation in the making. From this perspective, the Stop TTIP coalition did much more than stop TTIP, an effort that was ironically helped by the election of Donald Trump as US president, but shape future EU trade policy as a whole. The efforts were not merely oppositional, in terms of bringing down a trade agreement such as TTIP, but also constructive in terms of shaping the trade policies of the future. Opposing TTIP did not only mean preventing the agreement from happening, but also setting stepping stones for the policy of the future. In fact, a European Commission official said the following in an interview: [The anti-TTIP coalition] Managed to make their ideas mainstream. This had an effect on the Commission in that it had to respond to those concerns. It has also had an impact on CETA, because (initially) it was felt unnecessary to change ISDS in CETA. (European Commission official 1, interviewed in September 2016) Similarly, Ernest Urtasun, a Green MEP argued the following: the TTIP movement managed to generate a European debate, with demonstrations in several cities… and also to have a policy impact. I think that many of the things that we saw on TTIP would not have happened without mobilisation. Malmström would not have presented an alternative to ISDS without citizen mobilisation. Institutions were forced to respond because there was an increasing unrest. And there is a certain worry about how trade policy will be done in the future. The general consensus on free-trade is now put into question, which is very positive. (MEP Ernest Urtasun, interviewed in July 2018)

Great transformations take place when the dominant framework of thinking about a policy area fundamentally changes. In the case of TTIP, many European citizens not only entered the political process on a complex policy matter like EU trade policy, but overwhelmingly expressed concern about the neoliberal paradigm driving it. The transnational struggle against TTIP, far from being an isolated episode, has the potential to fundamentally reshape the neoliberal underlying paradigm that led to TTIP in the first place. In addition to Malmström’s new trade strategy ‘Trade for All’ put forward in October 2015, there are some contemporaneous signs that a great transformation is indeed taking place, in line with the TTIP debate. As Blyth (2002) reminds us, periods of perceived general economic crisis are windows of opportunity where

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

227

‘common sense’, the ruling hegemonic paradigm, is questioned and new ideas can enter the mainstream. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered during the first months of 2020, which unleashed a global public health and economic crisis, has proven an interesting test to this hypothesis, whereby periods of perceived economic crisis are windows of opportunity for political entrepreneurs. The universally accepted policy response in the EU has been a Keynesian one: the ‘market’ is not viewed as a viable solution to the public health and economic crisis. The European Commission reacted as swiftly as they could considering their available competencies, deploying all the resources at its disposal in order to address the economic consequences triggered by the spread of the COVID-19. The Commission activated the general escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), in order to provide EU member states with a certain flexibility in their budgets to address the consequences of the economic crisis. In accordance with this perspective, the Commission also set up a e100 billion solidarity instrument that helped EU member states cope with the crisis and the increasing unemployment, named Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency (SURE), created the COVID-19 Response Investment Initiative (CRII), as well as mobilised the European Investment Fund, the European Social Fund and the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund. In line with the work of the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) put forward the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP), which would ensure e750 billion in bond purchases in order to help EU member states to have resources to address the crisis, arguing that the ECB ‘will do everything necessary within its mandate’ (ECB, 2020). While these policies might not necessarily indicate a permanent policy paradigm, the COVID-19 crisis response by European institutions might be a sign of a wider trend that follows the TTIP debate. The Financial Times , the liberal newspaper par excellence of the European and global elites, published an editorial in which called for a review of the social contract between states and citizens: Radical reforms are required to forge a society that will work for all (…) Radical reforms - reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades - will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less

228

A. OLEART

insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix. (Financial Times, 2020)

The connection between the TTIP debate and the response to the COVID-19 crisis is not a direct one. However, the TTIP debate galvanised many of the opponents of neoliberal globalisation, a process that broadly departed with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, and that has become increasingly under contention. As noted in the editorial of the Financial Times , policy-makers in the postCOVID-19 world might need to reverse the policy paradigm of the last four decades. The argument made in this section is that the TTIP debate consolidated a progressive opposition to neoliberalism as a policy paradigm. When the COVID-19 crisis came, the ideas were ready to address and had already been built through debates such as the one triggered by TTIP, and the market was not there to solve it. This perspective was also interestingly argued, in a good example of cross-national media engagement, by Pablo Iglesias, Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister, in an interview with the FT : ‘People think catastrophes turn atheists into believers; in fact they turn neoliberals into neo-Keynesians. The ideas of Thatcher, of Schröder and Tony Blair have been buried by history; no one can defend them now’ (Dombey, 2020). However, while there are certain signs that point in the direction of a paradigm change towards Keynesianism, in case this trend continues the process is likely to take time, and will not be a simple process. Neoliberalism might remain resilient while adopting a few cosmetic changes, possibly related to the discourse mobilised to justify it. Additionally, there is an emerging conservative paradigm, driven by actors such as US President Donald Trump or Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, that also challenges in its discourse free-trade neoliberalism, but from the radical right, favouring nationalism, protectionism and the securitisation of trade policy, elements that can in fact be complementary to neoliberalism. In practice, rather than a straightforward great transformation, the most likely scenario is a ‘confluence of different paradigms’ (Orbie & De Ville 2020, p. 16), in which neoliberalism is influenced and shaped by nationalist ideas, or (in the more hopeful scenario) by progressive Keynesian ideas such as in the case of TTIP. This ideational battle is likely to continue in the short and medium-term.

8

3

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

229

An Empowering Dissensus for an Increasingly Federal European Integration

The politicisation of the EU is a deeply influential factor for the future of European integration (De Vries, 2018). The literature so far has been generally pessimistic regarding European integration and the politicisation of the EU. The extreme right’s politicisation of EU issues incurs a greater political cost for further European integration, since they contest European integration processes, and public opinion becomes divided between those in favour and those against integration. In consequence, national elites are likely to be constrained in the decisions that touch upon European issues and European integration. However, how does the empirical analysis developed in this book relate to this argument, and what does the agonistic Europeanisation of the TTIP debate mean for the future of European integration? This section argues that being critical with the current EU, as it was the case with TTIP, is the first step towards empowering further democratic integration. As argued by Trenz (2018, p. 70), if EU studies scholars take our job seriously, ‘we are in the best tradition of carrying the European project forward’. The ‘constraining dissensus’ argument developed by Hooghe and Marks (2009) essentially refers to what has been conceived in this book as antagonistic politicisation, which empirically is often translated into the GAL-TAN cleavage. Such antagonistic politicisation has grown progressively since the 2010s, a type of conflict that led to the June 2016 Brexit vote and is led by defence of the ‘national identity’, which is seen as opposing the EU as a political project. This antagonistic politicisation is also pursued by France’s Front National (renamed Rassemblement National as of June 2018), Italy’s Lega, Hungary’s Fidesz or Poland’s Law and Justice. The antagonistic discourse promoted by these extreme right ‘populist’ parties (Mudde, 2007) is without a doubt a threat to the European project, where nation-states are situated discursively in opposition to other nation-states and/or the EU. In consequence, the success of these actors pursuing antagonistic politicisation constrains political actors when advocating for further European integration, because it is increasingly seen as a threat to national sovereignty and identity. However, the results of the empirical analysis undertaken on TTIP point in a different direction from the ‘constraining dissensus’ hypothesis. Rather than to constraining European integration by the lack of consensus, the politicisation of the EU policy-making in the way it took

230

A. OLEART

place in the TTIP case can lead to an ‘empowering dissensus’, as long as the conflict is developed in an agonistic way. The ‘empowering dissensus’ argument (Bouza & Oleart, 2018) implies that there is an empowerment of the EU, since the contestation of EU policies at the national level normalises the EU as a polity. The agonistic politicisation of TTIP in Spain, France and the UK, which took place mainly during the second period (from the second half of 2014 until the end of the negotiations in 2016) encouraged a division between an ‘us’ and ‘them’, but this division is made within the same political community (the EU). This process not only contributes to the Europeanisation of public spheres, but also to the inclusion of an increasing number and range of actors who were previously excluded from the EU policy-making process. This process legitimises and reinforces the EU. The TTIP debate’s inclusiveness indicates that it is possible to create the conditions that encourage a wider involvement of civil society groups and citizens at large, both at the national and EU level. This has deep implications for the EU’s future as a polity. The TTIP debate’s Agonistic Europeanisation, involving transnational collective action and politicisation in Europe, encourages the acceptance of the EU as the legitimate political playing field. In the same way that contesting a national government is not a sign of being ‘sceptic’ of the legitimacy of the polity, challenging EU policies legitimises the polity. This process implies that transnational collective action and politicisation can, instead of driving European citizens from different countries apart, pull them together to find common solutions. In this case, it would bring citizens to Stop TTIP from a European perspective, championing democracy in the EU and changing, to an extent, common sense in Europe by challenging the hegemony of neoliberalism. The bridging of EU and national politics in the case of TTIP has been a novelty in respect to traditional EU affairs. The literature had long established that the transfer of competences from the national to the European level has been accompanied by increasing public debates on those policy areas, but it remained to be seen whether there was a meaningful and agonistic politicisation of EU affairs. For instance, Rauh and De Wilde (2018) found through a longitudinal analysis of parliamentary records that the emphasis on EU issues in national parliaments is overwhelmingly driven by national governments, concluding that the EU at the national level faces an ‘opposition deficit’. It therefore can hardly be said that generally there is a government-opposition logic when dealing with EU affairs at the national level, since the opposition at the

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

231

national level is often reluctant to bring up EU issues in the same way that national issues are used politically. The EU is embedded in national politics, but national political actors (and also the national media) rarely introduce EU affairs on the political agenda. Against this background, the empirical analysis of the TTIP debate has shown that in the Spanish, French and British public spheres this ‘opposition deficit’ was overcome, and a government-opposition logic was developed in the three countries. The TTIP debate has also shown that the circulation of ideas has transnational patterns within the European public spheres. The emergence of certain ideas in a country encourages their emergence in other countries, triggering a process of Europeanisation, even if there is no single European public sphere. This process is however not neutral, tending to favour actors that are less represented in the Brussels’ bubble, such as grassroots national organisations. The agonistic politicisation of the EU shapes the conditions in such a way that empowers those actors with a social view of Europe, while disempowering the extreme right that promotes antagonistic politicisation. Agonistic politicisation could in the long-term in fact prevent antagonistic conflict from taking place. Instead, if EU institutions attempt to block agonistic conflict, discontent vis-à-vis the status quo is likely to be channelled in an increasingly antagonistic way. If protest actors continue to be excluded from EU policy-making, antagonism will likely be the type of conflict promoted by nationalist actors. The mass movement against TTIP, but also the nationalist movements that have emerged contemporaneously (such as Salvini in Italy, or Orbán in Hungary), indicate that it is no longer possible to present EU policies as simply ‘technical’ decisions independent from ‘politics’ as it was mainly the case during the ‘permissive consensus’ era. The politicisation of TTIP is not ‘Eurosceptic’, since while the TTIP project is heavily contested, the European project is never under threat, nor even questioned. The TTIP debate has neither put countries against each other nor treated non-national actors as illegitimate debate participants (which would have been traced by the threat to sovereignty frame). The politicisation of TTIP in the Spanish, French and British public spheres constructed an inclusive ‘us’ and ‘them’ that situated a dividing line between European citizens and the big corporations. This confrontation resembles a European left united against TTIP that confronted the neoliberalism on display in TTIP. The TTIP debate has been about politics in the union, against the background of the different relationship that the three countries have had with the EU historically. Despite the

232

A. OLEART

historically different discourses circulating in Spain, France and the UK about ‘Europe’, a common framing of TTIP has been identified, and a process of agonistic Europeanisation has been traced. This type of Europeanisation matches ‘policy with politics’ at the European level. The absence of antagonistic discourse over TTIP is precisely illustrated by the fact that the contestation against the negotiations was not understood as being ‘Eurosceptic’, a term that was in general absent of the debate. The TTIP negotiations can then be considered to have contributed to the normalisation of the EU as a polity because (1) TTIP has been discussed in a similar way in a number of European countries, (2) fundamentally different discourses on it have confronted each other in the European public spheres in an agonistic way and (3) it has brought national actors that were often excluded from the EU policy-making into it. These three elements, which conform the Agonistic Europeanisation of public spheres, or politics in the Union, are the way in which ‘policy’ matches ‘politics’ at the European level. In other words, the EU’s administrative power to negotiate trade agreements was matched by civil society’s communicative power across national public spheres, thereby legitimising the EU’s authority. EU ‘policies’ (in this case, TTIP) were matched with ‘politics’ at the national level. In this way, dissensus is understood to empower the EU as a polity by including a much wider range of actors in its policy-making. Reproducing this type of (agonistic) conflict can empower the EU as a polity, by making it more inclusive of protest actors and normalising agonistic conflict at the national level. While the empirical research described in this book does not provide data on the influence of debates in the public sphere and the emergence of transnational identities, transnational debates encourage people to connect different grievances beyond borders. In consequence, participating in a common transnational struggle, transnational identities might emerge as a consequence of the transnational debate on TTIP. Connecting debates might spillover on identities. This in turn can lead to political actors to claim transnational representation (Kinski & Crum, 2019), whereby actors in one country connect their struggles to other actors in different countries. These processes can have a consequence for the construction of transnational identities. Even if the claims of transnational representation by political actors are purely instrumental, such claims are still relevant and might also have positive unintended consequences.

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

233

During the debate surrounding TTIP, there is not only a change of thinking in terms of policy at the grassroots level about trade policy, but a changed perception of who the ‘we’ is in the EU. This is a process of identity extension, organising beyond the nation-state and strengthening transnational ties. The ‘we’ that opposed TTIP is not a national ‘we’, but a transnational one that is in fact not necessarily specifically ‘European’, given the ties are also global. This process leads to the materialisation of transnational identities that are constructed on the basis of working together in transnational campaigns and transnational debates, a process that leads to an increasingly transnational civil society (Kaldor, 2003; Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Transnational identities do not pre-exist political struggles. Instead, it is the struggle what triggers the emergence of transnational identities. An increasing European identity is reinforced through struggle and social processes that transcend the nation-state, such as the transnational TTIP debate, on which this book has focused. The case of the campaign against TTIP is an episode that built upon previous struggles, such as the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, and future transnational campaigns will build upon the TTIP campaign. Sociologists have long connected social movements and democratisation (Giugni, McAdam, & Tilly, 1998), as well as state formation. From this perspective, the transnational TTIP debate has in itself encouraged the democratisation of the EU through the transnational collective action of the anti-TTIP campaign, ‘making European citizens’ (Bellamy, Castiglione, & Shaw, 2006) in the process. The book has explicitly not (yet) addressed one key question: What sort of European integration is agonistic politicisation really empowering? The public sphere has an institutional anchoring that ought to be inherently connecting communication flows with the institutional policy-making, the communicative power with the administrative power. Processes of transnational collective action and communication are driving beyond the nation-state perspectives, which require an eventual institutional translation. The type of European integration empowered by the agonistic politicisation of the EU is necessarily a much more federal integration, rather than intergovernmental. Currently, the EU is a much more intergovernmental than federal polity, where EU member states remain mostly in control, with the most important decisions taken in summits behind closed doors and with limited accountability through the public sphere.

234

A. OLEART

In the agonistic politicisation of TTIP narrated throughout this book, the EU level actions were accompanied with a process of Europeanisation of public spheres. Far from being an outlier, the case of the TTIP debate is the tip of the iceberg that represents the transnational reality that we live in. Civil society, political parties, trade unions and citizens in general are increasingly organising beyond the nation-state. These processes are driving beyond the nation-state perspectives by encouraging people to participate in transnational collective action. In the current state of globalisation, meaningful political action in Europe, is at the very least, Europe-wide and transnational. This requires civil society and political actors to act at a European and national level, intertwining the two, but also EU institutions to adapt to this process. The COVID-19 crisis of 2020 has demonstrated the need for a much more integrated institutional action at a European and global level. Global problems require transnational solutions that are not dealt with purely through intergovernmental processes led by nation-states. In order to deal effectively with issues that transcend the nation-state, such as the COVID-19 global pandemic, as well as economic inequality or climate change, the EU ought to be reclaimed as a more integrated union, while contesting its policies at the same time, as it happens with any democratic government. The TTIP episode analysed in this book matched ‘policy with politics’, given that the EU-led common trade policy was matched by a transnational debate. In light of the COVID-19 crisis response by European institutions and national governments, the match between ‘policy and politics’ requires a more federally integrated European policy and decision-making process. The democratisation of the EU through an empowering dissensus thus requires a more integrated and transnational policy and decisionmaking process, whereby there is a central administrative power that holds the policy authority (mainly the European Commission), and a network of counter-powers able to exert communicative power in the European public spheres that holds the administrative power to account. In this way, similar dynamics compared to the national government could be encouraged, in which there is a (sort of) government, the Commission, and an opposition, which institutionally ought to be increasingly in the European Parliament (EP), rather than in the Council, where national governments are represented. In the EU policy-making, the institutions that are systematically blocking a dynamic of government and opposition are the European Council and the Council of Ministers, where national governments bargain behind closed doors. The empowering

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

235

dissensus puts pressure on the European integration process towards a stronger role for the European Parliament, at the expense of the European Council, and the Council of Ministers, both of which follow an intergovernmental logic. In practice, this would mean that the EP would end up playing a similar role to national parliaments at the member state level, and a left-right cleavage would more clearly emerge, rather than the GAL-TAN. Broadly this pattern was reproduced on TTIP at national level, where as we have seen the left-right cleavage was clear, and at the European level, where political groups largely aligned along the left (against the agreement) and the right (in support of it). In this scenario, the left of centre European political groups, such as the Socialists and Democrats, the Greens and the European United Left (GUE/NGL) and in some cases the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), would increasingly oppose right of centre European groups, such as the European People’s Party (EPP) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). The normalisation of this type of political divide both at the national and European level would normalise (agonistic) conflict, and eliminate the idea that every politicisation of EU affairs is an existential moment for the EU. Critical debate about the EU is necessary in order to overcome the ‘take it or leave it’ rhetoric that has become so common when discussing the future of Europe. There is a space of critical engagement where different scenarios for a better EU can be confronted in an agonistic way, in which the future of Europe is discussed beyond ‘more’ or ‘less’ integration and the lines of division are not dominated by supporters and opponents of integration. The refusal to accept the present ‘status quo’ at the EU level cannot be simply understood as a sort of ‘Euroscepticism’. At the time of finalising this book (November 2020), the world, and Europe in particular, is facing one of the biggest public health challenges triggered by the global spread of the COVID-19 global pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis dominated the media coverage across EU member states, becoming the main topic of public debate across Europe and the world. However, while the national public spheres were increasingly aligned and politicised around the COVID-19 coverage, EU member states lacked policy coordination, and took different approaches to counter the spread of the virus. While an increasing consensus emerged in the scientific community, as well as in the respective public spheres, about how the COVID-19 crisis required a transnational, or at the very least

236

A. OLEART

European, approach, national governments were unable to take a joint approach. Ultimately, this led initially to a European flawed coordination and an inefficient response, which improved later on (Alemanno, 2020). A more federal rather than intergovernmental European integration would facilitate the construction of a more direct relationship between European citizens and EU institutions, in such a way that this relationship is not filtered by national governments. Further federal European integration would not only affect the policy process, giving more weight to the European Commission and European Parliament, but also imply the transfer of further policy competences from the national to the EU level. The COVID-19 crisis has shown the importance of a deeper and more federal European integration both in terms of process, but also from a policy perspective. Healthcare policy is a national competence in which the EU has very limited competences, beyond attempting to coordinate national healthcare policies. In the same way, Eurobonds won’t be enough without a coordinated European fiscal policy, another national competence. The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, published a relevant piece in April 2020 simultaneously in EL PAÍS, Le Monde, The Guardian (three news outlets from the three countries analysed in this book) and the German FAZ , in which he argued in favour of taking EUlevel measures that go beyond the current competences of the EU, such as those regarding health policy (Sánchez, 2020). Similarly, the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, called for a ‘massive investment in the form of a Marshall Plan for Europe. And at the heart of it should lie a powerful new EU budget’ (Von der Leyen, 2020). The COVID-19 crisis exposed the contradictions of the EU as a polity in its current state, and shown why further European integration is policywise desirable, and legitimately democratic as long as there is a vibrant and agonistic Europeanisation of public spheres. The type of integration ought to be federal, whereby national governments stop being the main drivers of the EU policy-making, and the European Commission and the European Parliament gain autonomy and political weight vis-àvis national governments. Generally, the EU as a polity is prone for ‘policy without politics’, in which EU-level policy dossier hardly is matched by ‘politics’, in which public debate across EU member states takes place on EU policy dossiers. In the COVID-19 crisis, the situation was reversed: there was a mismatch between politics (a transnational public sphere and an increasing demand for EU-level action at the level of citizens) and policy (led by national governments).

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

237

During the COVID-19 crisis, there has been an interesting pattern of cross-national media engagement by a wide range of actors. Germany’s largest newspaper, the tabloid Bild, published a front page calling for solidarity with Italy and ‘Siamo con Voi’ (the English translation is ‘We are with you’). Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s PM, was interviewed live on Spanish television to discuss the importance of a European response to the crisis, as did Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President, appearing live on different national media. It was however not only Prime Ministers and the president of the European Commission that engaged in cross-national media communication, as several national ministers also followed. Mário Centeno, the former Eurogroup’s president and the Portuguese finance minister, was interviewed in the Dutch newspaper NRC in the midst of a row over coronabonds between the Netherlands and several Southern European countries, including Portugal, Spain and Italy. Similarly interesting was an op-ed, published simultaneously by the Spanish news outlet La Vanguardia, the Portuguese Público and the Italian Il Corriere della Sera, written by Ana Mendes Godinho and Nunzia Catalfo, the social affairs ministers of Portugal and Italy, respectively, and Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister, Pablo Iglesias, calling for a European minimum income in order to strengthen the European Social Pillar (Iglesias, Catalfo, & Mendes Godinho, 2020). The Europeanisation of public spheres and its politicisation continues, as it was illustrated during the European Council summit of July 2020. In a marathon summit of five days, the division between the self-identified as the ‘frugal’ countries, led by the Dutch government, attempted to minimise as much as possible the European recovery fund, which would mainly benefit Southern European countries, the most affected by the global pandemic. The European Council summit was widely politicised across Europe, and arguably played a role in putting pressure on governments to reach a deal. Ultimately the European Council agreed to issue common European debt, crossing the Rubicon and potentially becoming a ‘Hamiltonian’ moment, as this crisis has been acknowledged as a European one that required a beyond the nation-state policy approach illustrated by the mutualisation of debt (Sandbu, 2020). However, the Europeanisation of public spheres, and the increasing politicisation of European politics is unlikely to be channelled institutionally, as long as the intergovernmental body of the EU, the Council, remains the most influential of EU institutions. Driven uniquely by national governments, the Europeanisation and politicisation pattern

238

A. OLEART

could be an illustration of the reinforcement of ‘new intergovernmentalism’ (Bickerton et al., 2015), in which the European Council becomes the main forum of EU decision-making, and intergovernmental processes, rather than supranational, drive European integration. In spite of this, as nuanced by De Wilde (2019), the increasing politicisation of the EU is encouraging ‘discursive intergovernmentalism’ in which national governments are forced to put forward their preferences in the public sphere, a process that provides opportunities for political entrepreneurs to put pressure in policy areas where the EU has competences. Altogether, this encourages an increasingly European perspective in the national public spheres, which contributes to bringing EU affairs to the domestic political debate and, by doing so, facilitates the involvement of other non-executive national actors. In fact, during the COVID-19 crisis there have also been examples of political actors that are not part of national governments reaching beyond their nation-state. Interesting examples are the group of mayors from different parties representing northern Italian cities, such as Bergamo and Milan, that on March 31st bought a page in the German news outlet FAZ , in which they called for solidarity and debt relief, referencing the leniency given to Germany after World War II. In a similar effort, on Europe’s Day, 9 May 2020, the Presidents of the national parliaments of the four biggest EU member states, the Spanish Meritxell Batet, the French Richard Ferrand, the Italian Roberto Fico and the German Wolfgang Schäuble, published a joint article in EL PAÍS, Ouest-France, the Corriere della Sera and FAZ , in which they argued that ‘Europe is our best instrument to shape reality according to our values’ (Batet, Ferrand, Fico, & Schäuble, 2020). This process can slowly lead towards breaking with the ‘opposition deficit’ (Rauh & De Wilde, 2018) of the EU at the national level, introducing EU affairs in the national public spheres, often triggering a wider political debate about the future of the EU. However, despite the emerging transnational circulation of ideas and communicative power within the EU (and concentrated overwhelmingly in Western European countries), as it is currently designed, the EU is not institutionally equipped to address transnational crises such as COVID-19. The increasing politicisation of the EU along the lines of the empowering dissensus should lead towards a more clearly delineated governmentopposition logic both at the national and European level, which would be

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

239

facilitated by transferring further competencies to the European Commission (and not only emergency-related) and empowering the European Parliament vis-à-vis the intergovernmental Council. In this increasingly politicised context, the renewed European Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen and the European Parliament proposed in the fall of 2019 the organisation of the Conference on the Future of Europe, a structured reflection on the path forward for European integration meant to last two years. The exact structure, scope and objectives of the Conference are still unclear, as the COVID19 pandemic has delayed its start, as it has to be agreed between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission. However, this Conference might be an ideal setting to learn the lessons from the transnational debate surrounding TTIP. Far from leading towards a ‘constraining dissensus’, the democratic contestation of the current ‘status quo’ of the EU can enlarge the political arena beyond the national public spheres and ‘empower’ European issues to be considered matters worth discussing at the national level. The EU and its member states ought to accommodate its critics, such as those contesting TTIP, as legitimate actors of the European polity and open the possibility of reforming the EU. Member states are inextricably linked to one another: what happens in one member state has a direct influence on other member states, as the recent COVID-19 pandemic has shown. However, despite the increasingly transnational flow of politics and ideas, including the recent MeToo movement, Fridays for Future or Black Lives Matter, there is a mismatch with the transnationalisation of institutions. Transnational politics are more necessary than ever before, and the national public spheres seem to travel in that direction, but governing political institutions remain anchored at the national level. The book departed from the idea that the spectre of politicisation is haunting Europe, paraphrasing the 1848 Communist Manifesto. Democracy in European nation-states emerged as a reaction to contentious politics from below (Tilly, 2003), and democracy at the European and transnational level will also emerge out of the reaction to transnational social movements and contentious politics. Far from being a threat to European democracy and the European project, the agonistic politicisation of EU issues is a necessary ingredient for the democratisation of the EU. As European societies and public spheres become increasingly intertwined, the politicisation of Europe is likely to keep growing in the upcoming years, a process that will encourage integrating an important

240

A. OLEART

number of actors that have not traditionally been involved in the EU policy-making. In the case of TTIP, many (national) protest actors joined the debate on the issue and made their voice heard in their respective countries, a process which enlarged the political playing field to include EU issues and actors, rather than remaining limited to the nation-state or the Brussels bubble. The debate’s agonistic Europeanisation beyond the Brussels bubble is a symptom of the normalisation of the EU as a political arena, where the dominant arguments are EU-critical, rather than anti-EU. In the same way that criticisms of national governments are not equivalent to attempts of breaking up a polity, criticisms of the EU and its policies are not destructive in regard to European integration, but constitutive of the democratisation of the EU. Demands for a different EU or ‘Another Europe is Possible’ reinforce rather than hinder the legitimacy of the EU and the European integration process.

Bibliography Alemanno, A. (2020). The European Response to COVID19: From Regulatory Emulation to Regulatory Coordination? European Journal of Risk Regulation, 11(2), 307–316. Barisione, M., & Michailidou, A. (Eds.). (2017). Social media and European politics: Rethinking power and legitimacy in the digital era. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Batet, M., Ferrand, R., Fico, R. & Schäuble, W. (2020, May 8). Europa, reconstrucción y reforma. EL PAÍS. Available online: https://elpais.com/internaci onal/2020-05-08/europa-reconstruccion-y-reforma.html. Accessed 20 May 2018. Bellamy, R., Castiglione, D., & Shaw, J. (2006). Making European citizens: Civic inclusion in a transnational context. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bennett, W. L., & Pfetsch, B. (2018). Rethinking political communication in a time of disrupted public spheres. Journal of Communication, 68(2), 243–253. Bickerton, C., Glasman, M., Goodwin, M., Lapavitsas, C., & Tuck, R. (2018, June 11). Let’s have the full Brexit for political and economic renewal. The Guardian. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/ jun/11/lets-have-the-full-brexit-for-political-and-economic-renewal. Accessed 18 July 2016. Bickerton, C. J. (2012). European integration: From nation-states to member states. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bickerton, C. J., Hodson, D., & Puetter, U. (2015). The new intergovernmentalism: European integration in the Post-Maastricht Era. Journal of Common Market Studies, 53(4), 703–722.

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

241

Bleiker, R. (2015). Pluralist methods for visual global politics. Millennium, 43(3), 872–890. Bleiker, R. (Ed.). (2018). Visual global politics. London: Routledge. Blyth, M. (2013). Austerity: The history of a dangerous idea. New York: Oxford University Press. Bouza Garcia, L. (2015). Participatory democracy and civil society in the EU: Agenda-setting and institutionalisation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bouza, L., & Oleart, A. (2018). From the 2005 constitution’s “permissive consensus” to TTIP’s “empowering dissensus”: The EU as a playing field for Spanish civil society. Journal of Contemporary European Research, 14(2), 87–104. Cabrera, L. (2007). The inconveniences of transnational democracy. Ethics & International Affairs, 21(2), 219–238. Charnovitz, S. (2004). The WTO and cosmopolitics. Journal of International Economic Law, 7 (3), 675–682. Christiansen, T., Jorgensen, K. E., & Wiener, A. (Eds.). (2001). Social construction of Europe. London: Sage. Cini, M. (2015). Good governance and institutional change: Administrative ethics reform in the European Commission. Journal of Contemporary European Research, 12(1), 440–454. Conrad, M., & Oleart, A. (2019). Framing TTIP in the wake of the Greenpeace leaks: Agonistic and deliberative perspectives on frame resonance and communicative power. Journal of European Integration, 42, 527–545. Coremans, E. (2017). From access to documents to consumption of information: The European Commission transparency policy for the TTIP negotiations. Politics and Governance, 5(3), 29–39. Crouch, C. (2011). The strange non-death of neo-liberalism. Cambridge: Polity. Della Porta, D., & Caiani, M. (2009). Social movements and Europeanization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Vries, C. E. (2018). Euroscepticism and the future of European integration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Vries, C. E., & Hobolt, S. (2020). Political entrepreneurs: The rise of challenger parties in Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. De Wilde, P. (2019). Media logic and grand theories of European integration. Journal of European Public Policy, 26(8), 1193–1212. Díez Medrano, J. (2003). Framing Europe. Attitudes to European integration in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Dombey, D. (2020, May 8). Spain’s deputy PM calls for EU to step up or risk extinction. Financial Times. Available online: https://www.ft.com/content/ e37718a5-8e1c-4ef4-93c5-72801773ca39. Accessed 8 May 2020.

242

A. OLEART

ECB. (2020, March 18). ECB announces e750 billion Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP). Available online: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ press/pr/date/2020/html/ecb.pr200318_1~3949d6f266.en.html. Accessed 4 April 2020. Eising, R. (2009). The political economy of state-business relations in Europe: Interest mediation, capitalism and EU policy making. London: Routledge. European Commission. (2015, October 14). Trade for all: European Commission presents new trade and investment strategy. Available online: http://trade.ec. europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=1381. Accessed 20 May 2018. Financial Times. (2020, April 4). Virus lays bare the frailty of the social contract. Available online: https://www.ft.com/content/7eff769a-74dd-11ea-95fe-fcd 274e920ca. Accessed 4 April 2020. Galpin, C., & Trenz, H. J. (2017). The spiral of Euroscepticism: Media negativity, framing and opposition to the EU. In M. Caiani & S. Guerra (Eds.), Euroscepticism, democracy and the media: Communicating Europe, contesting Europe (pp. 49–72). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gheyle, N. (2020). Huddle up! Exploring domestic coalition formation dynamics in the differentiated politicization of TTIP. Politics and Governance, 8(1), 301–311. Giugni, M. G., McAdam, D., & Tilly, C. (Eds.). (1998). From contention to democracy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Gramsci, A. (1971), Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. NowellSmith, Eds. and Trans.). London: Lawrence & Wishart. Grant, R. W., & Keohane, R. O. (2005). Accountability and abuses of power in world politics. American Political Science Review, 99(1), 29–43. Guiraudon, V. (2011). Mobilization, social movements and the media. In A. Favell & V. Guiraudon (Eds.), Sociology of the European Union (pp. 128–149). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hall, P. A. (1993). Policy paradigms, social learning, and the state: The case of economic policymaking in Britain. Comparative Politics, 1993, 275–296. Hay, C., & Rosamond, B. (2002). Globalization, European integration and the discursive construction of external economic constraints. Journal of European Public Policy, 9(2), 147–167. Hocking, B. (2004). Changing the terms of trade policy making: From the ‘club’ to the ‘multistakeholder’ model. World Trade Review, 3(1), 3–26. Hooghe, L., & Marks, G. (2009). A postfunctionalist theory of European integration: From permissive consensus to constraining dissensus. British Journal of Political Science, 39(1), 1–23. Hooghe, L., Marks, G., & Wilson, C. J. (2002). Does left/right structure party positions on European integration? Comparative Political Studies, 35(8), 965– 989.

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

243

Iglesias, P., Catalfo, N. & Mendes Godinho, A. (2020, May 8). Hacia un ingreso mínimo europeo. La Vanguardia. Available online: https://www.lav anguardia.com/economia/20200508/481016963163/hacia-un-ingreso-min imo-europeo.html. Accessed 8 May 2020. Imig, D., & Tarrow, S. (Eds.). (2001). Contentious Europeans. Protest and politics in an emerging polity. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Junk, W. M., & Rasmussen, A. (2018). Framing by the flock: Collective issue definition and advocacy success. Comparative Political Studies, 52, 483–513. Kaldor, M. (2003). The idea of global civil society. International Affairs, 79(3), 583–593. Keck, M., & Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in international politics. New York: Cornell University Press. Kinski, L., & Crum, B. (2019). Transnational representation in EU national parliaments: Concept, case study, research agenda. Political Studies. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0032321719848565. Kohler-Koch, B. (2010). Civil society and EU democracy: ‘Astroturf’ representation? Journal of European Public Policy, 17 (1), 100–116. Koopmans, R., & Statham, P. (Eds.). (2010). The making of a European public sphere: The Europeanization of media discourse and political contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lapavitsas, C. (2018). The left case against the EU . Cambridge: Polity. Magnette, P. (2003). European governance and civic participation: Beyond elitist citizenship? Political Studies, 51(1), 144–160. Manin, B. (1997). The principles of representative government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Michailidou, A., & Trenz, H. J. (2013). Mediatized representative politics in the European Union: Towards audience democracy? Journal of European Public Policy, 20(2), 260–277. Mudde, C. (2007). Populist radical right parties in Europe (Vol. 22, No. 8). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mulder, N. (2019, April 29). The origins of European neoliberalism. Magazine n+1. Available online: https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/ the-origins-of-european-neoliberalism/. Accessed 15 April 2020. Nanz, P., & Steffek, J. (2004). Global governance, participation and the public sphere. Government and Opposition, 39(2), 314–335. Oleart, A., & Bouza García, L. (2020). La lutte narrative pour la signification et la politisation de «l’Europe» dans les négociations du TTIP: le récit de l’Europe bouclier contre le populisme transnational. Politique européenne, 66(4), 16–42. Oleart, A., & Van Weyenberg, A. (2020). Introduction. Politique européenne, 66(4), 6–14.

244

A. OLEART

Orbie, J., & De Ville, F. (2020). Impact of the corona crisis on EU trade policy: Our five cents to the debate (Reflection paper). Polanyi, K. (1964). The great transformation. Boston: Beacon Press. Rauh, C. (2016). A responsive technocracy? EU politicisation and the consumer policies of the European Commission. Colchester: ECPR Press. Rauh, C., & De Wilde, P. (2018). The opposition deficit in EU accountability: Evidence from over 20 years of plenary debate in four member states. European Journal of Political Research, 57 (1), 194–216. Reuters. (2020, May 31). Help us like you were helped after war, Italy’s virus hit cities tell Germany. Available online: https://www.reuters.com/article/ us-health-COVID-19-italy-germany/help-us-like-you-were-helped-after-waritalys-virus-hit-cities-tell-germany-idUSKBN21I1HT. Accessed 7 May 2020. Risse, T. (2010). A community of Europeans? Transnational identities and public spheres. New York: Cornell University Press. Risse, T. (2014). European public spheres. Politics is back. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roederer-Rynning, C., & Kallestrup, M. (2017). National parliaments and the new contentiousness of trade. Journal of European Integration, 39(7), 811– 825. Sánchez, P. (2020, April 5). Europa se la juega. EL PAÍS. Available online: https://elpais.com/elpais/2020/04/04/opinion/1586022750_086446. html. Accessed 5 April 2020. Sanchez Salgado, R. (2014). Rebalancing EU interest representation? Associative democracy and EU funding of civil society organizations. Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(2), 337–353. Sandbu, M. (2020, July 22). EU crosses the Rubicon with its emergency recovery fund. Financial Times. Available online: https://www.ft.com/content/bd5 70dde-3095-4074-bd37-18003f2bd3c2. Accessed 30 July 2020. Scharpf, F. W. (1999). Governing in Europe: Effective and democratic? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schattschneider, E. E. (1980 [1960]). The semisovereign people. Boston: Wandsworth. Schmidt, V. A., & Thatcher, M. (2014). Why are neoliberal ideas so resilient in Europe’s political economy? Critical Policy Studies, 8(3), 340–347. Siles-Brügge, G. (2013). The power of economic ideas: A constructivist political economy of EU trade policy. Journal of Contemporary European Research, 9(4), 597–617. Siles-Brügge, G. (2014). Constructing European Union trade policy: A global idea of Europe. London: Springer. Siles-Brügge, G. (2017). Transatlantic investor protection as a threat to democracy: The potency and limits of an emotive frame. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 30(5–6), 464–488.

8

THE TRANSNATIONAL TTIP DEBATE: POLITICISATION EMPOWERS …

245

Siles-Brügge, G., & Strange, M. (2020). National autonomy or transnational solidarity? Using multiple geographic frames to politicize EU trade policy. Politics and Governance, 8(1), 277–289. Tilly, C. (2003). Contention and democracy in Europe, 1650–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trenz, H. J. (2013). New media dynamics and European integration. IC Revista Científica de Información y Comunicación, 10, 35–51. Trenz, H. J. (2018). The political contestation of Europe: From integration to disintegration? Culture, Practice and Europeanization, 3(2), 59–73. Von der Leyen, U. (2020, April 4). How our Europe will regain its strength: op-ed by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. European Commission. Available online: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/pressc orner/detail/en/AC_20_602. Accessed 4 April 2020. Zürn, M. (2012). Global governance as multi-level governance. In D. Levi-Faur (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zürn, M. (2014). The politicization of world politics and its effects: Eight propositions. European Political Science Review, 6(1), 47–71. Zürn, M. (2018). A theory of global governance: Authority, legitimacy, and contestation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Interviews 1. European Commission official 1, September 2016. 2. Ernest Urtasun, MEP, Greens-EFA, July 2018. 3. European Commission official 2, June 2020.

Index

A Administrative power, 5, 8, 14, 18, 61, 75, 222, 232–234 Agonism, 17, 35, 40, 42, 196, 201 Alter-globalisation movement, 6, 7, 72, 91, 106, 213 Antagonism, 17, 35, 196, 231 Authority, 26, 36, 40, 44, 91, 98, 116, 148, 190, 211, 232, 234

COVID-19, 1, 9, 107, 130, 227, 228, 234–238

B Bolkestein Directive, 7, 39, 135, 150, 151, 203 Brexit, 7, 38, 157, 160, 170, 171, 174, 175, 223, 229

E Empowering dissensus, 40, 43, 44, 196, 218, 230, 234, 235, 238 EU political groups Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), 235 European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), 235 European People’s Party (EPP), 235 Gauche unitaire européenne/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL), 235

C Communicative power, 8, 14, 16, 75, 77, 220, 222, 232–234, 238 Constraining dissensus, 2, 38, 41–43, 218, 229, 239

D Deliberative democracy, 13, 14, 16–19, 218 Democratic deficit, 5, 6, 13, 15, 19, 27, 44, 71, 221 Depoliticisation, 25, 28, 33, 43, 186

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Oleart, Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53637-4

247

248

INDEX

Greens - European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA), 235 Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), 235 European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), 5, 114, 170, 190 European Commission (EC), 3, 5, 14, 15, 27, 29, 63, 64, 66–71, 76, 78, 87, 89, 91, 92, 94, 116, 148, 150, 155, 186, 195, 196, 201, 205, 206, 221–227, 234, 236, 237, 239 European Constitutional Treaty (ECT), 1, 7, 43, 106, 128, 135, 150 European Economic Community (EEC), 63, 64, 106, 153, 154 Europeanisation, 4, 6, 8, 9, 18, 20, 21, 23, 25–28, 30, 40–44, 57, 75, 76, 79, 83, 87, 88, 176, 180, 186–188, 190, 191, 193, 195–203, 211, 218–222, 229–232, 234, 236, 237, 240 European Parliament (EP), 5, 27, 34, 35, 65, 67, 68, 72, 98, 107, 123, 234–236, 239 European public sphere, 3–5, 13–15, 19–22, 24, 25, 30, 40–43, 57, 75, 87, 194, 198, 201, 204, 206, 217–222, 224, 225, 231, 232, 234 European Union (EU), 1–9, 13–15, 17–31, 34–44, 57, 59, 63–66, 68–72, 75–77, 79, 84, 88–91, 94–99, 105–107, 111, 113, 119, 122, 123, 125–130, 134–136, 139, 143, 145–148, 150, 151, 153, 155–157, 169–172, 174– 176, 182, 184, 185, 188–190, 193–198, 200–204, 206–211, 217–227, 229–240

Euroscepticism, 2, 3, 37, 38, 129, 235 Eurozone crisis, 1, 2, 7, 27, 62

F Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), 63, 69 Framing, 4, 6, 8, 9, 20, 23–25, 35, 39, 43, 59, 71–75, 83, 84, 91, 95, 98, 107, 111, 113, 114, 119, 127, 137, 142, 161, 165, 168, 170, 171, 183, 184, 186, 189, 190, 194, 197, 202, 206, 219, 221, 222 Framing ratio, 78, 85, 86, 114, 140, 142, 144–146, 160–162, 164, 167, 173, 183–185, 191

G General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 63 Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), 92, 197 Green-Alternative-Libertarian vs. Traditional-AuthoritarianNationalist (GAL-TAN), 34, 229, 235 Greenpeace leaks, 109, 124, 125, 127, 147, 159, 172, 179, 181, 193, 194, 200

H High-Level Working Group (HLWG), 66, 67, 77

I International Trade committee of the European Parliament (INTA), 67 Investment Court System (ICS), 69

INDEX

Investor-to-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), 69, 70, 94, 145, 166, 169, 173, 195, 202, 212, 226

L Legitimacy, 4, 9, 13, 14, 18, 24, 27, 28, 36, 39, 40, 43, 44, 57, 200, 230, 240

M Maastricht Treaty, 1, 7, 26, 64 Media organisations British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC ), 2, 80, 81, 158, 162–164, 167, 172, 173, 199 eldiario.es , 81, 108–111, 118, 122, 126, 136, 141, 159, 168, 199, 205 EL PAÍS, 80, 106, 108, 109, 111, 113, 116–118, 120, 122, 123, 125–127, 129, 141, 147, 172, 179, 181, 188, 194, 199, 205 Expansión, 80, 108, 109, 111, 113, 116, 118, 120, 122, 126, 127, 129, 142, 143, 179, 199 Financial Times (FT), 3, 76, 80, 130, 157–164, 167, 168, 172, 173, 188, 192, 199, 227, 228 Le Monde, 80, 136–139, 142–148, 172, 181, 185, 188, 194, 199 Les Échos , 80, 137–139, 142–144, 149, 194, 199 Médiapart , 81, 136–138, 141, 142, 147, 149, 150, 159, 188, 199, 205 The Guardian, 2, 81, 136, 157– 159, 162–165, 167, 168, 171–173, 191, 193, 194, 199 Member of the European Parliament (MEP), 78, 98, 123, 124, 140,

249

166, 169, 171, 189, 192, 195, 226 Member of the Parliament (at the national level) (MP), 93, 98, 140, 189, 192

N National Health Service (in the UK) (NHS), 7, 38, 93, 94, 98, 159, 160, 162, 163, 166–170, 173–176, 185, 197, 200, 202, 203, 205 National political parties Conservative Party, 155–157, 169, 175, 176, 198 Convergència i Unió (CiU), 124 Front National, 7, 37, 38, 95, 134, 135, 151, 229 Labour Party, 154–156, 166, 168, 169, 174, 176, 198 Partido Popular (PP), 106, 119, 121, 198 Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), 106, 107, 119, 121, 123, 124, 130 Podemos, 7, 107, 121, 123, 124, 129, 130, 198, 205 Syriza, 7 United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), 7, 38, 156, 157, 171, 176 Neoliberalism, 7, 39, 58–62, 201, 202, 221, 222, 224, 225, 228, 230, 231 Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and trade unions Association pour la Taxation des Transactions financières et pour l’Action Citoyenne (ATTAC), 7, 72, 106, 122, 134, 135, 150, 203, 205, 212

250

INDEX

Bureau Européen des Unions de Consommateurs (BEUC), 209 Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), 106, 119, 122, 205 Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), 72, 207 Ecologistas en Acción (EeA), 72, 106, 122, 203, 205, 212 Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), 124 European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), 206, 207 European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), 122, 209, 210 European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), 210 Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE), 72, 210 Friends of the Earth (FoE), 171 Global Justice Now, 72, 170, 202, 204, 208, 212 Greenpeace, 72, 127, 128, 194, 205 Seattle to Brussels network (S2B), 7, 72, 203, 204, 210–213 Transnational Institute (TNI), 196 Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), 106, 119 War on Want, 72, 92, 170, 171, 205, 208, 212 P Paradigm, 3, 7, 38, 39, 57–61, 70, 71, 76, 90, 111, 127, 201, 221–224, 226–228 Permissive consensus, 1, 2, 25, 26, 40, 41, 43, 106, 107, 119, 128, 129, 150, 165, 175, 184, 186, 190, 196, 231 Policy contestation, 6, 36

Policy without politics, 25, 28, 43, 236 Policy with politics, 4, 42, 44, 201, 202, 232, 234 Politicisation, 1–9, 26–28, 30, 31, 34–37, 39–44, 71, 75–77, 85, 87, 95, 106, 107, 120, 127–129, 135, 147, 150, 151, 155, 157, 165, 172–176, 183, 185–190, 193, 196, 198–203, 206, 207, 210, 211, 217–225, 229–231, 233–235, 237–239 Polity contestation, 6

S Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), 66 Social Europe, 7, 39, 135, 150, 203 Social movements, 30, 72, 122, 220, 233, 239 Sovereignty, 34, 37, 38, 95, 111, 134, 136, 154–157, 201, 222, 229 Spain, 2, 7–9, 62, 72, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 105–112, 114, 116, 117, 119, 120, 122–124, 127–129, 136, 141, 144, 147–150, 153, 156, 157, 159, 161–163, 172, 179, 184, 185, 188, 190, 192, 193, 197–199, 202, 203, 205, 212, 213, 219, 230, 232, 237

T Trade Agreements Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), 68, 71, 72, 137 Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), 65, 122, 127, 145, 147, 169, 172, 173, 226

INDEX

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 67, 69, 137 Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), 65 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 3–9, 22, 57, 65–71, 75–78, 81, 84–98, 108–130, 136–151, 157–176, 179–212, 218–226, 228–235, 239, 240 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 89 Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), 66, 67 Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA), 67 Transnational Advocacy Network (TAN), 28, 31

251

U United Kingdom (UK), 2, 7–9, 26, 58, 61, 62, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 92, 98, 109, 135, 148, 149, 153–159, 167, 168, 171, 174–176, 184, 185, 188, 190, 192, 197–199, 202–205, 212, 219, 225, 230, 232 United States Trade Representative (USTR), 66, 89 United States (US), 3, 5, 59, 62, 65–68, 70, 71, 75–77, 89, 90, 93, 96, 98, 99, 153–155, 193, 226, 228 W World Trade Organisation (WTO), 6, 63–65, 71, 224, 233