'The EU as a political community: A media analysis of the ‘Haider debate' in the European Union"

There is huge skepticism in the scientific literature published during the 1990s whether a "European public sphere" actually exists. Many scholars have linked the democracy deficit of the European Union (EU) to a so-called Offentlichkeitsdefizit (literally a "public-sphere-deficit"). Since the existence of a public sphere uniting the whole EU is often indicated as a precondition for taking up any democratization project demonstrating that this public sphere actually extends beyond the nation-state's borders could be an argument in favor of a Constitution that gives the European citizens a voice. This makes this field of research of crucial importance for the political future of the European Union. ... To evaluate whether this criterion of a shared horizon of reference is fulfilled at the European level, we studied media representations of the "Haider debate" in five EU member states, namely Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Austria. In early October 1999, Jorg Haider's right-wing populist Freibeitliche Partei Osterreich (FPO) won a major electoral victory in Austria. The coalition formed by the FPO and the center-right Osterreichische Volkspartei in February 2000 led to protests all over Europe as a result of which the Presidency of the European Council of Ministers decided in favor of so-called "bilateral sanctions" of EU member-states against the Austrian government. Eventually, these sanctions were withdrawn in September 2000 when a commission of "Wise Men" judged the situation in Austria in line with the founding values expressed in the EU treaties