Politicisation of the EU's communication to citizens in times of crisis: mission impossible or secret weapon of European institutions?
Politicisation of the EU's communication to citizens in times of crisis: mission impossible or secret weapon of European institutions?

Summary/Abstract: This article presents selected aspects of the change in the way the EU communicates with its citizens during the numerous crises faced by it recently. The study fills in a gap regarding the impact of the EU institutions' communication activities, including influence on the resilience of the citizens of the Member States to the anti-European narrative of populists. Cases of the European Green Deal (in particular communicating it in Poland) and the situation in Ukraine were selected for the study. The analysis also includes selected statements by top EU officials, pointing out politicisation of the EU's communication. The used research methods are: elements of the system method (for the analysis of the communication activities related to the EU policies within the EU political system), discourse analysis (to understand the main themes appearing in the EU leaders' and officials' statements), as well as a case study method (to analyse two cases of the EU's communication strategies implementation). The latter method will be related to key cases as presented by Yin (see: Yin 2003). The research results confirm that the efficiency of the EU's communication actions is limited mainly due to a lack of the unified approach supported by the determination to cooperate with the Member States in this regard, as well as due to a lack of coherent counter-narrative to the story that the right-wing populists talk about the EU. In contrast, the general paradigm shifts in EU's communication to citizens, evident in recent years, has been to make the message increasingly political instead of communicating administration and to place increasing emphasis on values instead of communicating the economic benefits of membership. To some extent, this shift is the result of the need to respond to the anti-European narrative of populists.

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