Europe from within. European Union seen by Brussels correspondents from New Member States

Brussels features one of the biggest international press corps in the world. Day by day, foreign correspondents covering the European Union from Brussels enter in close contact with the EU, its main actors and institutions. They are experiencing the most concrete aspects of European integration but also its less visible elements, such as norms, values and representations characteristic of this political project. The correspondents‘ job is to inform about current developments in European affairs. To do so, they need to understand the functioning of the European political system and interpret its actions. This “sense-making” is necessary in order to make the EU news intelligible for their publics. Our aim is to look at how Brussels correspondents see the European project and how are those representations constructed. Instead of looking at the media content as the final product of correspondents’ work, which might be subject to editorial and deontological pressures, this paper chooses to concentrate on in-depth interviews with the journalists. It explores the representations about the EU held by correspondents from New Member States (enlargements 2004, 2007 and 2013) present in Brussels. We ask the following research question :How is the European Union seen (and discursively constructed) by the correspondents from New Member States? What are the reoccurring frames and narratives? Ten years after the big-bang enlargement, we might expect a certain phasing-down of the „return-to-Europe“ narrative that has been typical for the accession period when Europe was seen as a role-model and political authority by actors coming from Central and Eastern Europe. Two contrasting hypotheses can be formulated. The first one stipulates a continuity of pre-enlargement narrative and reinforcement of positive framing of the EU project, while the second one expects a certain disenchantment experienced by those who are looking at the EU from within - from Brussels. The interviews with correspondents are analyzed using discourse analysis with particular emphasis put on studying narratives and frames.The paper is strongly embedded in the overall theme of the conference. Indeed, journalists can act as both transmission channels of EU’s official discourse to its citizens and as active participants in the construction of the European discourse. Media are a powerful arena of debate about the form that European Union takes or should take. It is also a space that allows for emergence of potentially (new) controversies and polemics. Journalist’s views and opinions about EU can influence their way of reporting the EU and eventually have an impact on the formation of European public space.