Building the EU’s social constituency: exploring the dynamics of public claims-making and collective representation in Europe and assessing the implications for the EU’s legitimacy

The project “Building the EU´s Social Constituency: Exploring the Dynamics of Public Claims-Making and Collective Representation in Europe” (short: EU-Constituency) was financed by the ESF (European Science Foundation) and the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).

The EU has entered a process of constitutionalisation. The “Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe” makes it necessary to address questions concerning the relationship of the emerging European polity and its social constituency (“the people” or the “public” of the polity). Even though the process of ratification is currently in a period of reflection, the question if these constitutional arrangements are consistent with citizens’ demands and expectations remains valid.

Starting from prior work on the European public sphere, we analyse newspaper articles that refer to the European Constitution relying the method of claims-analysis to assess the EU’s social constituency. In a second step, interviews with representatives of civil society will be conducted to balance the media-analysis approach.

The EU is often associated with notions that there is a gap between the EU and its citizens. Or the EU is seen as a project of elites. Our research questions are - in very general words – “How wide is the gap?” “Whose project is it?”