Lacomeuropeene has already covered academic research on the media coverage of the European Parliament elections in 2009, and so has Die Presse (via @_paulschmidt).

In a similar direction, The Journal of Political Marketing (Issue 1, 2013) has recently published a series of four articles coverin campaign news coverage, journalists’ source use, campaign foci and Eurosceptic campaigning during the 2009 European election campaign. new media & society (Issue 1, 2013) also has two articles on web campaigning in 2009.

But while these are just the most recent outputs in academic research, there’s more to look into. Electoral Studies (Issue 1, 2011) covered a symposium on electoral democracy in the EU. Articles published in this issue deal with the second-order nature of EP elections, the role of information voters’ decisions, party conflicts covered in the news, individual campaigns as well as low turnout.

On the side of the media-related studies, there’s also more, including research on individual campaign blogs, on national elections overshadowing the EP elections, on the not-so-strategic use of the internet in UK campaigning, on differences in campaign professionalisation in Finland, Sweden, Austria and Germany during the 2009 EP elections, on Twitter in the Dutch 2009 EP campaign, on party websites in Western and Southern EU countries

A German study published in 2010 found that higher turnout would actually not change the composition of the European Parliament. A study by Spanish-German mathematicians traced the calculations of EP seats based on the 27 electoral laws. Research on the determinants of candidates’ list position in Romania revealed that electoral experience and wealth seemed to be quite important.

UK studies cannot ignore UKIP’s 2009 electoral success. Swedish studies cannot ignore the Pirate Party success. Estonian studies cannot ignore the success of individual candidates in Estonia in 2009. There’s also some work on the Austrian campaign. And on the Irish campaign. Not to forget Portugal and the True Finns in Finland.

There’s also research on the Greek part of the 2009 EP elections and on media coverage in Italy in 2009. In a much wider scope, this article looks into main campaign issues all across Southern Europe. The Romanian results are discussed here, the Hungarian EP elections here.

Simon Hix devoted some space for an essay on the failure of social democracy in 2009, while Isabelle Hertner analysed whether member state socialist parties’ campaigns had been “Europeanised” (not really). Others took a look at the Green’s differing success across Europe. There’s also studies on ethnic minority parties in Central and Eastern Europe, e.g. in Lithuania.

Other research finds that the preferences of voters and the preferences of MEPs do not necessarily overlap, especially relating to cultural aspects where MEPs seem to be much more liberal than their voters. On the other hand, Italian research argues that the preferences of member parties of the EU-level parties are quite coherent internally while they contrast to members of other Europarties (in a left-right & anti-pro EU space).

Christina Chiva researched the selection of female EP election candidates in new EU member states More recent research studies this phenomenon for all the EU countries. And related research looks into more general selection criteria for candidates in 12 EU countries, gender being just one of the aspects covered.

Now, that’s just a selection of studies one can find with a quick research on Google Scholar. Reading all these can give a hint at how and why we may or may not observe certain phenomena ahead of and during the 2014 European Parliament elections. What is obvious is that there has been quite some interest in the past EP elections, and the diversity of potential views and the variety of researchers involves actually allows a quite complex picture of what is a quite complex political process.

In my view, research on the 2014 EP elections actually should start now, because many decisions on substance and on persons are taken now, campaign strategies are starting to evolve and the attention to 2014 is slowly rising (at least in an EU attention scale). The next EP elections will definitely be different to the last ones, and it will be academic research that might be able to establish why and how.

PS: Please feel free to share any interesting research not covered in this post in the comments below.

Disclaimer: I work for the Transparency International EU Office, including on issues relating to the (financing) rules for European Political Parties ahead of the 2014 European Parliament elections. These thoughts are published in my private capacity, following earlier blog posts such as this one. or this one.

Jon has listed a number of candidates for the next European Commission President (of the centre-right, the centre left, or the rest), for the next European Council President and for the next EU foreign minister (“High Representative”).

But while Jon has put some thoughts into potential candidates for next time, it’s worth looking back to the dynamics of 2009 when the last EU leadership was chosen to figure out the potential dynamics we could expect, as speculations such as this one about who could be winner of the race were largely unsuccessful back at the time (see EurActiv link list for more reading).

What do we know about last time?

Interestingly, there’s very little academic writing about the process in 2009. In fact, the only article focussed on “The appointments of Herman van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton” (JCMS, Volume 48) I could find was actually written by a journalist, Tony Barber of the Financial Times, not by a scholar. Some of what is in there can be found in related press reports, but some issues are worth (re-)reporting.

Barber’s account differs a little from what Jean Quatremer reports, i.e. that Nicolas Sarkozy had “killed” Jean-Claude Juncker’s bid for the European Council presidency on the evening of the 29 October 2009 European Council. Barber reports that Juncker only put forward his candidacy to definitely “kill” Blair, while Merkel and Sarkozy had contacted van Rompuy already the evening before and got his interest. Interestingly, thearticle mentions a paper from Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands arguing that the European Council President should be a committed European, which effectively meant: not Tony Blair, a fact I don’t remember from back then.

What’s missing from any of the academic or journalist accounts I could find is how van Rompuy actually become part of the game, that is how, if true, Merkel and Sarkozy had thought he could become European Council President. If somebody has any sources for that, I’d be happy to read. If not, why did nobody look into that?

What is noticeable compared to national politics is that the account of party politics is a little in the background, although Barber clearly reports that it was important for the European People’s Party (EPP) to secure the the European Council presidency. After they had secured this post, this left the EU foreign minister to the Party of European Socialists (PES), who then proposed (according to Barber) the following list:

• Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Germany)
• Miguel Ángel Moratinos (Spain)
• Elisabeth Guigou (France)
• Alfred Gusenbauer (Austria)
• Adrian Severin (Romania)
• David Miliband (UK)

With Miliband declining after the others were ruled out, two more names were put forward by Gordon Brown, Geoff Hoon and John Hutton, but these failed to get support. Finally, with a push from the socialists for a female candidate for one of the top EU jobs, Catherine Ashton (EU Trade Commissioner until then) made it onto the ticket (source: Tony Barber). It’s worth pointing out that none of the other political parties seemed to have played a crucial role in 2009.

Why is all that relevant?

Jon Worth‘ and others’ speculations about who could end up on top of the list cannot be separated from the process and from timing.

On the one hand, 2009 showed that the political environment at the time of the nomination for the EU’s top jobs is crucial for who can become what. Majorities in the European Parliament and the composition of the European Council (i.e national governments and presidents) count as much as the egos of some of the individuals involved and the need to balance selections so that everyone (except the citizens) can feel satisfied.

The selection procedure last time was a political balance act in which, after the nomination of Barroso as the quasi-uncontested Commission President candidate, van Rompuy appeared to be a equilibrium between political orientation (centre-right, pro-EU), member state size (no large member state), and profile (no big egos or controversial figure), while Ashton was the political balance rounding up the field after all the other choices – including giving the European Parliament leadership to a Pole and after some countries had made clear their preferences for European Commission portfolios – had been made.

The big question for 2014 will be: Who selects or nominates the next European leaders, who will be queen- or king-makers?

How much will depend on the campaign for and the outcome of the European Parliament elections? Different to last time, there may be several figures running for European Commission President, hoping for the right majorities in the European Parliament.

In how far will timing play a role? Different to last time, the European Parliament elections will be held earlier (22-25 May 2014), so that the European Commission President (and the European Parliament President) could be nominated before the summer break in 2014, while all the haggling over all the other posts (Commissioners, EU foreign minister, European Council President) could go on all summer and up into the autumn – or will the dynamics change and everything will be clear by July?

How will national elections taking place before the nomination of the European Commission President and before the nomination of the other leaders change the composition of the European Council and “free” certain persons who could then become candidates for European offices? There will be at least parliament elections in Germany (currently EPP-led, September 2013), Austria (PES-led, September 2013), Hungary (EPP-led, April 2014), Czech Republic (AECR-led, possibly in May 2014), Belgium (PES-led, likely parallel to EP elections), Sweden (EPP-led, September 2014) or presidential elections in Lithuania (independent but conservative-supported, May 2014).

Conclusions

I’m not sure the process of 2009 gives a clear picture of how the process in 2014 will look like. It only gives an indication that speculations about who has a chance may be a little early today. It could hardly get more unpredictable than last time regarding who will or will not win what post, so we may at least come to a point where speculations a week ahead of the nominations will be more telling than they were last time.

The making of European leaders will however remain a game in which many might (want to) have their say, and whether the left or the right, the European or the national interests, the small or the large countries, the outspoken or the quiet leaders will dominate is hard to forecast.

It would just be nice if someone would inform the public about the who and why. But that could be too high a hope.

Disclaimer: I work for the Transparency International EU Office, including on issues relating to the (financing) rules for European Political Parties ahead of the 2014 European Parliament elections. These thoughts are published in my private capacity, following earlier blog posts such as this one.

This article has been corrected and slightly adapted on 21 May 2013.

The tweet was online for 10 minutes, and then disappeared. Just before it was erased, it had 130 retweets, and so I thought I’d preserve that. Many seemed to think that this was Schulz’ comment ahead of next weeks European Council, or his follow-up to the meeting of the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament tonight.

We may never know…

Update (40 minutes later):

Previous tweet was clearly an accident – apologise everybody. But I’m glad that it made you laugh

— Martin Schulz (@MartinSchulz) May 16, 2013

I haven’t yet read the book, except for the chapter titled “Producteurs, courtiers et experts de l’information européenne“** by Philippe Adrian for which a manuscript version has been published.  This chapters looks at the profession and the professionalisation of EU information people (‘les gens de l’information’) in and around the Brussels institutions.

The chapter starts out as a historical account of how the European Commission Directorate General for Communications (DG Comm) has evolved separately from the spokespersons (service) of the European Commissioners. While the former is responsible for defending the “truth” about European policies towards the rest of Europe, the latter has been in the dirty in-fight with the Brussels press corps, often by former (EU) journalists themselves.

The chapters highlights the lack of power of the DG Comm, being a low profile portfolio for the respective European Commissioners and being a place within the Commission’s administration that isn’t very helpful for making a career. This traditional conflict between spokesperson and the DG Comm that existed since the early 1960s was even further enlarged by the creation of specialised communication units within the policy-oriented Directorates General of the European Commission, a necessity for those DGs to win the political fights with other EU institutions by winning over the public opinion. At the same time, more and more “production” of information was outsourced to (private) contractors, not seldom equipped with personnel that formerly worked as communications professionals within the institution.

The chapter then moves to the Brussels’ journalists, starting with the claim that, in the early times, the institutions “convinced” certain media companies to send permanent correspondents to Brussels by ordering several dozens of subscriptions of said press products. It then continues to notice the creation of a “Brussels” or “European” press corps by a specialised system of accreditation, including the “Midday briefing” and off-the-record access, or by involving freelance journalists in creating European information (e.g. in the form of institutional newsletters etc.). In recent times, however, Adrian notes a certain normalisation of the formerly close relations between institutions and the press, and a more critical stance towards institutional spin.

Finally, the chapter closes with the field of “communications experts” that populate the boundaries between media, EU institutions, consultancies and information specialists in think tanks and in others types of organisations.

All in all, it’s an interesting account of a particular professional landscape in the Eurobubble. For anyone reading Michaël’s blog “Décrypter la communication européenne“, none of the topics covered is particularly revelatory and few things will surprise the permanent observer of the Brussels bubble communications.

However, this article should be seen in relation to other current sociological research into the people inside the Eurobubble – the field of the eurocracy, from Members of the European Parliament, conflicts between European Commissioners and high-level officials or personal characteristics of Commissioners, the establishment of the European administrative corps.

Academia is starting to help us understand why and how the Brussels Brussels or the Eurobubble is what it is, beyond anecdotal evidence or generalised assumptions. If you’ve got good research to share (your own or others), I’d be happy to write about it.

PS: It’s been a while that I haven’t written about political science on this blog. This has largely to do with the fact that used my political science brain in my free time (i.e. outside my day job) to finalise the text of my PhD thesis. I hope to be a little more prolific from now on.

* English: “The field of the eurocracy: a political sociology of the European Union’s personnel”

** English: “Producers, brokers, and experts of European information”

The 35 years old author looks at how the babyboomer generation grow older and shape life of everyone around themselves because they are the majority. And they will be with us (younger people) for quite a while to come, shaping our lives more than we will be able to take over society. While focused on Germany, the article also took a look next door in Europe where an 87 year old man has just been re-elected Italian President. He’s not a babyboomer but a sign that the trend of aging societies also affect the age of their leaders (not to say that there weren’t old leaders in the past).

When you look at the EU level, the picture is similar: In 2008, the average EU leader was 55, and if my own calculations are correct the average European Council member is 53.9 years old – the youngest is 39. The average age for a European Commissioner, again according to my own calculation is 57.1 today – the youngest is 43. According to this article, the average age of Members of the European Parliament was 55 in 2012. [Update: According to this academic study, the average age of an MEP at the start of the legislative period was 51.2, with MEPs from countries that joined in 2004-2007 being in average about 2 years younger.]

Next year, there will be European Parliament elections – and my guess is that young(er) people will not get a great share on the candidate lists. My guess is also that member states will propose European Commission candidates that are mainly from the babyboomer generation, maybe with some exceptions from Central and Eastern Europe where the old elites had a bit of a hard time after the transition. And my guess is that the EU’s top jobs will go to people beyond the 55, even though the second youngest European Council member has been seen jockeying for one of those jobs.

And so we will continue to get policies made by the average 55 year old person for the average 55 year old person’s life. Eurostat finds that youth unemployment rates are double as high in Europe as the average unemployment rate, which may well be a sign of how existing jobs and job policies favour the upper-middle-aged.

More than that: Technology has evolved in the last 20 years at a speed that only a small part of that generation is and was able to understand. The fact that the oldest EU Commissioner (also older than any European Council member) is responsible for the EU’s Digitial Agenda is just an indicator of where we are standing. No offense, Neelie Kroes, you seem to be the exception to the rule in this regard…

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s funny to watch the trailer of the show again having just spent my prolonged Easter weekend traveling through Belgium, trying to get out of the Eurobubble and into (sic!) a country in which the conductor speaks to you in different languages depending on which direction the train is going.

We’ve taken the train, mostly using the Rail Pass, from Brussels to Genk and Oostende, from Oostende to Brugge, and from Brussels to Antwerp and Mons (image below is the town hall of Mons). Adding these to previous travels with Belgian friends to Namur, Dinant, La Louvière, Knokke and some other small places, I think I’m slowly getting a feel for the country that surrounds the bubble in which I work.

In Brussels, it’s really hard to escape the Eurobubble once you’ve become sucked into it – and if it’s just because you’ll see an EU journalist and his family while eating out for an Easter Sunday brunch.

But even outside the city you end up with the bubble: in the train to Antwerp we could listen to a 30-minutes conversation of a group of young Germans – interns or young professionals – that sounded very much like cut-and-paste of this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

My former Belgian flatmate (working outside the Eurobubble) often asked me whether I’d be going ‘to Europe’ (“à l’Europe”) at the start of the day. For her, the EU quarter, even though our flat was only a 20 minutes walk from the Schuman roundabout and even though her place of work even closer, was a different world. And it definitely is, which you realise just by going to the other side of Brussels.

Traveling through Belgium in the last days – without EU bubble emails, EU bubble social media, EU bubble news – quickly replaced the EU foam with foam created by the ocean waves. EU social media and public affairs conferences in grey office buildings became replaced by real-life public communication in the form of graffiti for which social media is just part of the joke.

All this was quite relaxing, even without taking a plane to a far-away country ending up in tourist bubbles. But then tomorrow, I’ll be back in the bubble and probably watch “The Eurobubble” as soon as it is out – hoping to get back to Belgium soon.

PS: I love Mons, just in case you haven’t been there yet.

The leader of the directly elected European Parliament involving 754 members from 27 European countries (plus the Croatian observers) is able to criticise that deal. The leaders of the four largest political party groups (those leaders come from 4 different countries) of said European Parliament can agree not to accept the deal made by the country leaders.

The proceeds and outcomes of the negotiations are reported in numerous newspapers and TV stations in those 28 countries, e.g. here in Estonia, Bulgaria, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Italy, Germany, Malta, Denmark, Poland, Croatia, France, Netherlands, Romania as well as in EU news.

If I may give my 95,998,800,000,000 Euro-Cents:

We seem far from being ruled by a dictatorship given the multitude of democratically elected voices. We seem far from being unable to reach compromises despite the differences in ideological and regional views.

We seem far from censorship of European media, politicians or other individuals when it comes to European affairs. We seem far from having only technocratic European debates. We seem far from only hearing national politician’s views on the national aspects of European politics.

Listening to the 2014-2020 EU budget debate very much sounds like traditional democratic politics, with all its good and bad sides, all its deficiencies (e.g. this one) and all its great little moments. Could be worse.

“The next step ahead of us must clearly be to complete the unity of Europe including Britain […]. It is more than important, it is essential that Britain should join our European Community under the same conditions as the Six.

The negotiations have been going on too long but they can be rapidly concluded. We must remember that on fundamental issues, as two world wars have proved, Britain is part of Europe.

People in Britain and on the continent must free their minds of the obsolete and static idea that Britain, being an island, is bound to be insular, that she does not belong to Europe and that her commercial policies and interests will keep her forever apart from the natural trend towards European unit.

Entry into Europe would be good for Britain, for Europe, for the West and for world peace. I still hope and believe, like most people in the Six, that the negotations on Britain’s entry into Europe will succeed.”

The UK joined the European Community ten years later. And I have managed to keep my own “good” intentions for about three weeks.

Since it is a report about journalism, including challenges from new media, let’s start this blog post with an actual piece of semi-journalistic research:

First, download the data on beneficiaries of EU Commission funds for 2011 which you find here. Second, write down the names of the four members of the High Level Group: (1) Vaira Vike-Freiberga, (2) Herta Däubler-Gmelin, (3) Ben Hammersley, (4) Luís Miguel Poiares Pessoa Maduro.

Third, search for the family names of these persons in the data you downloaded. Fourth, write down what you will find under “Name of beneficiary”, “Subject of grant or contract” and “Total amount” in your data for the year 2011:

• “Natural Person”, “COMMITTEE ON PLURALISM AND FREEDOM OF THE MEDIA (FREIBERGA)” and “11098.08 €”
• “Natural Person”, “COMMITTEE ON PLURALISM AND FREEDOM OF THE MEDIA (MADURO)” and “9800 €”
• “Natural Person”, “COMMITTEE ON PLURALISM AND FREEDOM OF THE MEDIA (HAMMERSLEY)” and “9100 €”

And if you then look for “COMMITTEE ON PLURALISM AND FREEDOM OF THE MEDIA”, you will find another line with “Name of beneficiary”, “Country”, “Subject of grant or contract” and “Total amount:

• d) “Natural Person”, “Germany”, “COMMITTEE ON PLURALISM AND FREEDOM OF THE MEDIA” and “10100 €”

The first thing we have learnt through a simple research is that in a “High Level Group” not everyone is necessarily at the same level. Since the EU beneficiaries data for 2012 is not published, we can only speculate whether the difference in height was equalised in 2012.

Now, this is the moment when we look into the actual report. What do we learn about the role of the four members of the group? On one side, it is noted that:

“The members of the Group have drawn up the recommendations in this Report independently. They do not represent a particular organisation or any particular interest and are acting here in a personal capacity.”

On the other side, we also learn that:

“The Group would like to thank the Secretariat of DG Connect for the support received in drawing up this Report.”