conferences

Research and opinion surveys diagnose a growing gap between
what "EU elites" is called and EU citizens. The EU has a legitimacy problem, support rates have been decreasing during the financial crisis, despite the economic situation improving, votes for populist, extremist, anti-EU and anti-democrat parties and movements are on the rise, the Europeanisation of politics and decision making continues o impact and transform the national democratic systems.

The Jean Monnet Network "Debating Europe" (DebatEU) uses
debate as a methodology for

• spreading knowledge on the European Union (EU) to target groups previously not well informed
• gaining knowledge about citizens' opinions
• integrating teaching and research activities
• enhancing exchange between citizens, students, academics and EU practitioners via conferences, events, a website, social media and various publications

Despite the activities of the EU and national institutions as well as intermediate institutions and actors, research as well as opinion surveys diagnose a growing gap between what has been termed “EU elites” and EU citizens. The EU has a legitimacy problem, support rates have been decreasing during the peak of the financial crisis and despite the economic situation improving, votes for populist, extremist, anti-EU and anti-democrat parties and movements are on the rise throughout the EU. At the same time, the Europeanisation of politics and decision making continues to impact and transform the national democratic systems of the member states.

What explains the distance between EU institutions and EU citizens? The event will present the first results of the Jean Monnet research projects "Debating Europe" and the Jean Monnet Chair "BridgE" on this question. A total of 18 international focus groups have been and are being conducted in Bulgaria, Finland, France, Croatia, Slovenia, and Germany as part of the projects. Twelve of them have already taken place, and the results are available.

There are three public panels:

The interim results of the Jean Monnet Network “Debating Europe” will be presented on September 11 at 6:00 pm by Claudia Wiesner (Fulda University of Applied Sciences), Cecile Robert (Sciences Po Lyon) Willy Beauvallet (Université de Lyon II), Ana Matan; (University of Zagreb), Meta Novak (University of Ljubljana), Niilo Kauppi and Kim Zilliacus (University of Helsinki) and Ruzha Smilova (Centre for Liberal Strategies).

Despite the activities of the EU and national institutions as well as intermediate institutions and actors, research as well as opinion surveys diagnose a growing gap between what has been termed “EU elites” and EU citizens. The EU has a legitimacy problem, support rates have been decreasing during the peak of the financial crisis (see also the respective Eurobarometer data) and despite the economic situation improving, votes for populist, extremist, anti-EU and anti-democrat parties and movements are on the rise throughout the EU. At the same time, the Europeanisation of politics and decision making continues to impact and transform the national democratic systems of the member states.

Our network takes stock of this situation. The primary aim is to open debate and get into a dialogue on the EU with citizens that are neither engaged in EU-oriented civil-society organisations, nor in political parties, in order to bridge the gap between the EU and its citizens. The core of the network consists in citizen focus group discussions that the network members will organise in their home countries – three focus group discussions per country and 18 altogether in three years, with minimum ten citizen participants. The country selection is particularly adequate for our task.