We need to Talk about Europe. How Parliaments Communicate EU Affairs to their Citizens

Democratic legitimacy depends on a vibrant public debate on political solutions and alternatives to allow citizens to make informed political (electoral) choices and to exercise democratic control. Within the multilevel polity of the EU, it is precisely the opacity of policy-making processes and the lack of public discourse that have been defined as core problems of democratic legitimacy. The paper therefore analyses if and to what extent national parliaments tap into their potential to connect their citizens to ‘Europe’ by communicating EU affairs. Based on comparative quantitative and qualitative data on parliamentary communication in Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom, the paper discusses whether national parliaments play their part in legitimising EU politics or whether the EU’s democratic deficit is not t least partly ‘homemade’. (author's abstract)