Commissioning Eurobarometers in order to “give voice to the voiceless”. Producing women and young people’s opinions, a two faces legitimizing strategy

This paper explores the “unmuting narrative” hypothesis of the European Union (EU) looking at the very specific instrument mostly used to produce a European public opinion, the Eurobarometer. Works on the genesis of such instrument showed how it was developed by its promotors to palliate the EU’s - and specifically the European Commission’s (EC) - loose connection to representative democracy. Needless is to say that the EC is however not commissioning polls on each and every subject, looking at these polls thus tell us about the voices which the EC wants to hear. Women and young people, two voiceless groups, have been repetitively targeted by the Eurobarometers. Throughout an analysis of these specific Eurobarometers (12 polls for the last two Commission’s mandates, more than 40 polls since the 1970’s) and their uses in EU communication, our paper aims at unveiling the kind of voices produced and the role assigned to such voices in EU decision making. What are these groups asked about, what kind of results are made public and which voice is thus made audible? Our results show that the production of women and youth public opinions indeed participate to a two faces legitimizing strategy. Giving voice to the voiceless helps to strengthen and develop targeted policies inside the Commission and the institutional triangle while at the same time participating to the legitimizing EU strategy in the European public sphere