The Discourse of Romanian Elites on an EU Topic: Islands of Europeanization in the Romanian Public Sphere

Abstract

This article presents some results of a large research project premised on the model of the Europeanized public spheres. The research was initiated at the beginning of 2011 in the context of the proposal made by the French and German Ministers of Internal Affairs on the 21st of December 2010 to postpone Ro mania’s accession to the Schengen area of free movement. This proposal sparked a lively debate in the Romanian media during the following two months. The research project had several objectives: to content analyse the coverage of the Schengen topic in the media of different EU member states; to content analyse the coverage of the Schengen topic in the Romanian national media (TV and online news); to analyse the public perception created around the Schengen issue; to explore the perception of public elites on the same topic. For the purpose of this article, we shall only present and interpret the data obtained from the 10 interviews, with a special emphasis on the degree to which the statements of the interviewees – high profile political figures or experts in EU affairs – were placed in a European rather than a purely national frame of reference.