Agenda Setting by the European Commission. Seeking Public Opinion?

Abstract

Historically, the European Commission has followed a depoliticised route to gain attention for and credibility to deal with policy issues. Given growing politicization, we ask whether the Commission might increasingly seek citizens’ views and whether there is patterned variation. We provide the first mapping of Special Eurobarometers, the massive instrument for issue-specific public opinion. We found a steep increase and a curvilinear pattern: public opinion is rarely invited in areas of exclusive EU competencies and exclusive national competencies. Most Special EBs focus on shared competencies. Citizens are almost never asked about expenditure programs and are kept silent on immigration. There is large variation across the DGs, which is only weakly related to the amount of planned legislation and the number of expert committees. Business oriented DGs are much less likely to seek public opinion. These results open up promising avenues for research on agenda setting strategies at times of politicisation.

Keywords: European Commission, Agenda Setting, Public Opinion, Citizen Participation, Politicisation, Legitimacy, Eurobarometer, Bureaucratic Politics