According to some scholars, the European Wide Public Sphere is a phantasm - impossible, misconceived and misguided. It is hard to imagine and only for utopian speculation. Now, however, we have seen and heard it. And for those who were not in the room Oct 12-14, you can go to the website and play the video and see and hear what it would look like.
The citizens of Europe dealt with complex and difficult issues in their most preferred languages - 22 of them. Unlike meetings of elites, which invariably use English or perhaps French or German, only five of the small groups met in English. Translators had to deal with difficult combinations - Finnish, Portugese, Italian for example.
Participant answers to the information questions showed that they had massive knowledge increases. They knew a lot by the end despite the difficulty of the issues and the language impediments. And the evaluation questions show that they say that by the end, most of them had read most of the briefing materials, most of them thought the materials, and the moderators were balanced and most of them thought the event was very worthwhile.
They also came out of it with greatly increased mutual respect (agreement with the question that others with whom they disagreed strongly often had good reasons for their views) and they even liked each other more (as measured by an index of how much they liked or disliked various nationalities before and after deliberation).
The biggest divide was between the old and new member states. On some questions the new members states moved 20 or 25 points. These are massive changes. But by the end, the old and new states, with very different starting points, had moved much closer together.
On the substance, the participants were asked two basic kinds of questions: Did they want a deeper Europe? Did they want a wider Europe. On the first, they offered a qualified yes. On the second, a qualified no.
There was majority support for more EU involvement in a host of policy areas: international trade (52%), military action (65%), climate change (83%), foreign aid (71%), energy supply (59%), and diplomatic relations (63%).
But there was also consistent resistance to qualified majority rule in most policy areas. They wanted to the EU to be more involved, but they also were very respectful of national sovereignty. If there had been more time, this would have been an excellent focus for more deliberation.
On enlargement, there was still majority support at the end of the process (60%) for further enlargement but it decreased significantly (from 65%). And there was a definite turn against enlargement for Turkey and for the Ukraine - but this came almost entirely from the new member states.
Interestingly it was also the new member states who increased their willingness to see a Muslim country in the EU. But these same participants also were the ones who primarily took the view that too many states were being admitted too fast and having more member states would make decison making difficult. Given their resistance to qualified majority rule, this may be an understandable reaction.
The Europe-wide Deliberative Poll brought old and new Europe into the same room, both physically and in terms of their views. Europe in microcosm can achieve mutual understanding and respect and its public can deal knowledgeably with very difficult issues.
The Europe-wide public sphere is not only possible, it is also worth listening to. With the right institutional design, EU citizens can be consulted in a thoughtful and representative fashion, no matter how apparently abstruse the subject.
