The European Commission’s Production of Public Opinion. Strategic or Neutral

Previous research has shown that the European Commission is not just a neutral broker, but also acts as a skillful policy entrepreneur with a view to broaden, deepen en widen European integration. Whereas the existing literature emphasizes that the Commission uses knowledge gained from expert committees and networks as well as stakeholder consultation to set or shape the EU agenda, our project is based on the idea that the Commission might also increasingly relies on public opinion. Against the shift from a permissive consensus to a constraining dissensus, results of Eurobarometer surveys might be used as a functional equivalent for input legitimacy, constituting an important resource for the Commission to increase and widen its competencies. To this end, the Commission might deal strategically with the Eurobarometer; not only in the way it presents the results but also already in the selection of topics and questions that make it into the Eurobarometer. Since its inception in 1974, we have seen a gradual expansion in the content and scope of the issues included in the Eurobarometer opinion polls as well as ups and downs in their frequency. Our paper seeks to answer the question whether the Commission indeed selects and deselects topics and questions in a strategic way, hence deliberately “producing” public opinion concerning some issues to the expense of other issues. We have content coded Eurobarometer surveys, conducted between 1980 and 2010 using the EU Code Book of the Comparative Agenda Setting Project to explore the scope and direction of changes in the topics addressed by the Eurobarometer.