EU Information Policies: A Case-Study in the Environmental Sector

The creation of a European public sphere is a very topical issue at the current stage of development of the European Union. It has gained a particular momentum since the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in the public referenda held in France and the Netherlands in 2005, but the emerging gap between the European institutions and the citizens of Europe had been recognized already in the early 1990s at the time of the Maastricht Treaty, and has been well documented since by successive polls of public opinion organized by the Commission through its Eurobarometer surveys. The purpose of this chapter is to give evidence of the initiatives put in place to develop such European public sphere from the particular angle of information policies in general, and environmental information policies in particular. The political and contested nature of information policies is highlighted as a contribution to the debates about democracy and governance in the Union.JRC.H.6-Spatial data infrastructure