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Work package 6
Transparency, accountability and responsibility in an enlarged Europe
‘MAKING’ Security: Citizenship, Public Sphere and the Condition of Symbolic Annihilation
Dr. Katharine Sarikakis
November 2006-12-01
University of Leeds, UKJean Monnet European Centre of Excellence
Institute of Communications Studies
‘MAKING’ Security: Citizenship, Public Sphere and the Condition of Symbolic Annihilation
Dr Katharine Sarikakis
Abstract
This paper explores the relationship between new forms of European governance, as expressed through security-focused policies, and the European citizen. It seeks to unravel the contextual framework within which the notion of civil liberties, citizens’ participation in the democratisation of supranational and international politics, and the supranational governance are re-defined. The paper argues that the processes of ‘securitisation’ have an impact for the democratic functioning of citizenship by a) restricting the spaces and processes of action and communication among citizens b) restricting citizens’ access to policymaking, in particular in highly sensitive areas, for their effect on civil liberties; and c) prioritising the executive branches of the European polity at the expense of representative politics and the judiciary. This combination of policy trends contributes to the ‘symbolic annihilation’ of EU citizens.
Katharine Sarikakis is Director of the Centre for International Communications Research at the Institute of Communications Studies, the University of Leeds and a member of the Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence. This work was carried out in the context of CHALLENGE-programme (Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security), a research project funded by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission’s DG for Research (www.libertysecurity.org).
Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed are attributable only to the author in a personal capacity and not to any institution with which she is associated.
Copyright 2006, Katharine Sarikakis
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‘Making’ Security: Citizenship, Public Sphere and the Condition of Symbolic
Annihilation
Katharine Sarikakis
Introduction
It has been widely claimed, both in the mass media and by politicians that terrorism has
changed the way we ‘look at the world’ for ever; that the western world has ‘lost its
innocence’ and that these are indeed times of crisis. In the post-9/11 era, European
nations have found themselves under pressure to prove an ally in the ‘war against
terrorism’ and demonstrate a state of ‘readiness’ to combat the threat at an international
level. Some EU member States more readily than others have entered the rhetoric of
‘threat’ and ‘defense’ by participating in armed conflict outside their own boundaries and
by intensifying the use of surveillance and policing technologies and policies within their
borders. Others more reluctantly have entered the debate and policy arena of ‘making’
security for their own citizens, by participating in EU wide and international policy
measures. At an EU level, national policies have sought to influence EU policy and vice
versa, transforming and actively shaping the character of EU governance. Through a
series of policies framed as counter-terrorism measures, the EU is gradually introducing
new definitional sets about good governance and security, and makes new claims for
legitimacy of decisions that are highly contested. In this process, notions of citizenship
and democratic participation are redefined to fit in the framework of securitisation.
This paper discusses the ways in which the gradual bypassing of active citizenship, as
understood through the process of communication, information and participation in
policymaking, is creating the conditions for the ‘symbolic annihilation’ of citizens, as an
essential definitional and normative category in the political process. The impact of such
processes can be detrimental for the legitimacy of the European project, as well as the
moral and normative superiority of human rights vis a vis the symbolic and physical
violence against human beings, their political and creative expression and their societies.
Moreover, such processes undermine the very core of European values, stated in the
3
programmatic documents in connection to EU citizenship, such as the European Charter
of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
Securitisation, transparency and accountability
The securitisation of issues, that is the abrupt break from the norm of definitional politics,
which is expressed through political deliberation that takes place in a widely accessible
public sphere, bears a set of questions and contestations about the legitimacy and
accountability of a governing authority. There is nothing inherently ‘natural’ about the
definition of issues as matter of ‘security’, as issues previously regarded as part of
established laws and procedures, suddenly obtain an additional attribute that situates them
in the realm of exceptionality. For example, the hegemonic discourses around global
terrorism point to phenomena little different from long-standing expressions of political
violence, familiar to many nation states since the post world war 2 era (Didier 2006).
Moreover, the exceptionality applied by states to the treatment of political violence is
also nothing new. There is a historical record of exceptional measures taken by nation
states in their attempt to deal with the ‘threats’, as they saw and defined them in different
historical periods, up to our days. However, the degree, extent and processes through
which this exceptionality is expanded and applied as an international policy regime raises
questions about the role and indeed survival of democratic citizenship, as bound to
democratic governance.
As Taureck (2006) points out, one of the core characteristics of securitisation is the fact
that policy questions are moved outside the sphere of normal politics. This means that the
standard procedures which are known, and applied to the process of agenda setting,
debate and decision making1 are bypassed and often replaced by shorter and non-
transparent procedures. Discussion around the (defined as) securitised issue becomes a
privilege of selected elites on the one hand, while the application of normal law is also
selective, on the other. The process by which securitisation takes place is observed to
1 Of course this is an oversimplified description of the policymaking process, but for the purpose of this part of the paper, the emphasis is placed on the ‘normality’ of standard and widely accepted systems within the democratic polity.
4
consist of three phases: first the identification of an external threat that renders the issue
at hand as one of security; second, the proposed- and applied- state of emergency,
accompanied by corresponding action, whereby the government in principle, at the
national level, or the executive branch of the polity, at the supranational level, self-
extends its powers above and beyond the normatively ascribed ones; and third, as a
consequence the ‘inter-unit’ relations of the political system are affected through the
operationalisation of power outside the socially contracted rules between the State (or
state-like formation such as the EU) and the citizen (Buzan et al. 1998: 6 in Taureck
2006).
The consequences of this process become soon obvious: on a first and immediate level,
the principle of transparency is violated through the application of the definition of
‘exceptionality on issues that then are dealt with outside the realm of normal politics and
therefore away from public scrutiny. As Lodge (2005) explains :
Transparency means everything and nothing. There is a lack of clarity as to the real purpose of advocating transparency in the EU. For heuristic reasons transparency will be portrayed as a multi-dimensional adventure in European integration where transparency presents challenges to: 1. the EU’s structures (authority reconfiguration); 2. accountability and values (rectification of the democratic deficit); 3. accessibility (procedural gates to information); 4. vigilance and attentiveness (a listening EU), and emergent forms of e-governance.
Second, the principle of accountability, as a prerequisite for the democratic exercise of
power is being undermined and in some cases rendered irrelevant, as again the State and
its Executive branch assume more powers than assigned to it, according to the principle
of balance and checking of powers through the interaction of the other two estates, the
Legislative and the Judiciary. Finally, there is a knock-on effect upon the functioning of
the Fourth Estate, the mass media, through denial of access to information, labelled
‘sensitive’.
The problems of transparency and accountability are exacerbated in the case of a
supranational structure, such as the EU. The reason lies in the polity’s relatively brief
history, when compared to nation states, whereby the time necessary for the cultivation of
a European identity, and indeed even traits, such as loyalty to and familiarity with the
5
polity is simply inadequate- if we accept that internal social cohesion is one of the
prerequisites for the normative justification of a governing authority. Normative
justification or the raison d’ être is one of the three components of legitimacy for any
authority, and decision making privileges exercised by powerful actors. The second
component is the existence of widely known and accepted procedures for decision-
making, and the final component is that of legality. Therefore, transparency, expressed
through the first two elements and accountability, a combination of all three are the
overarching goals for any public authority with the power to affect citizens’ lives.
Accountability also bears a moral dimension, that of the moral responsibility of the state,
in our case the EU polity, towards its citizens that it will withhold the principles and obey
the rules of the social contract between citizens and power, as it has been trusted in the
polity.
The main difference between the classic notion of the (nation or federal) State and the EU
lies in the very construction of the EU. The polity only very recently and in particularly
in the past decade has succeeded in actively addressing the question of legitimacy, which
was concentrated mainly around the lack of an understanding of who makes decisions
that are far reaching and ultimately transferred to national contexts. But additionally, it is
the objective cause, that is not simply the ‘feelings’ of citizens, but the lack of democratic
structures and commitment that bring the citizen at the core of the polity. These
problematic aspects of the EU construction have been addressed successfully to a great,
but incomplete, extent through the meaningful involvement of the European Parliament
in the decision-making process, in a legally more substantial role than it has enjoyed
before. This development, making the EP a co-legislator together with the Council of
Ministers2 only begins to project the image of a democratic EU – and substantially
address its democratic deficit. Again this effort is seriously undermined through the
exception of EP’s involvement from any security-related issues3, such as regulation
2 The most important role is that in the co-decision process, which was provided for by the Amsterdam Treaty and signaled the day of a more democratic representational politics in the EU. 3 According to the Hague protocol the following areas are of particular priority in the EU- completing the second phase of the common asylum policy by 2010;- initiating a debate on the possible creation of a European corps of border guards;- setting up the Schengen Information System (or SIS II, due to be up and running by 2007) and the Visa Information System (VIS);
6
dealing with data protection and transfer, the establishment of an EU wide Police
controlled database/s affecting citizens’s levels of privacy and independence, as well as
changes in criminal (common) law. The democratic vacuum is further exacerbated by the
fact that national parliaments, too, find themselves excluded from national procedures of
amending (or driving) such policies, which in their majority are drafted as matters of
security, and therefore as matters of emergency and exceptionality. The EP’s
dissatisfaction with the level of involvement of representational politics in such sensitive
decision-making areas is echoed is the following statement:
Parliament notes that the establishment of such an area [freedom, security and justice] is today one of the main priorities of European integration. It believes that it is vital to ensure a balance between the aims of freedom, security and justice, taking account of fundamental rights and citizens' freedoms. However, it considers that as a representative of the peoples of the EU, and without prejudice to its formal competences, it should be involved in the adoption of all measures, including those adopted within the framework of the third pillar. It highlights the negative consequences that the division between the first and third pillar entails for the achievement of an area of freedom, security and justice, including a serious lack of parliamentary control. Cooperation with the Council is considered to be insufficient. The EP hopes that the post-Nice process will see the codecision procedure being extended to all areas within justice and home affairs. The European Parliament strongly supports the developments which the Constitution, particularly Article III-396 thereof, would bring in the field of freedom, security and justice as it would give the EP codecision powers on almost all AFSJ matters. In addition, most Council decisions would be taken by qualified majority voting (QMV), which would speed up the development of the AFSJ4.
Public Sphere and the changing framework of EU governance
It is clear that securitisation is ‘based on power and capability’ (Taureck 2006) and is by
definition contrary to the principle of openness and accountability. The ways in which
Nation states in the EU, but also abroad and in particular in the USA, have attempted to
provide a normative justification for the new state of emergency- and therefore the
- establishing the Internal Security Committee as set out in the Constitution;- introducing the European evidence warrant by 2005;- setting up a European police record information system.4 EP fact sheets. 4.11.1. An area of freedom, security and justice: general aspects
7
effective cancellation of openness and transparency- have been reflected through a
discourse of binary oppositions such as ‘threat vs. defense’ and ‘us vs. them’ in the public
sphere. With these, the gradual establishment of a mode of ‘governmentality of fear and
unease’ (Tsoukala 2006, Bigo 2004, Huysmans 2004) takes place, that comes to replace
not only the practice of governance in the EU and within Nation States, but also the
criteria for good governance, and therefore the measuring, and moral, standards of the
practice and normative shaping of democracy. The technologisation of policing of
everyday life through surveillance, retention of data and files on citizens’ activities, the
exchange and unauthorised access to personal information by the executive and private
companies without the legal seal of courts, general invasion of privacy, interceptions of
electronic communications and processing of thought and expression provide ‘a good
definition of a police state’ (Caspar Bowden, Foundation for Information Policy
Research, in The Guardian, 2001 in Tsoukala 2006: 616). The systemic effects of this
trend are far reaching, as they form the future of EU governance and its relationship with
citizens, with reactions that are unlikely to go unnoticed and with the likelihood of
leaning heavier towards an intentional apathy and political disregard towards the polity.
There is evidence form research in environmental policy, as well as risk regulation that
citizens ‘assent to rules only if they have the impression that their own concerns have
been treated fairly in the rule making process’ (Thompson and Rayner in Nanz and
Steffek 2004: 320). The disassociation of citizens from the workings of the polity will
effectively constitute a permanent fracture in the delicate relationship between civil
society and EU institutions.
Even more worryingly however, we witness an unprecedented assault on the rationale
and legal framework of human rights, in particular in nation states, such as the UK, where
the constitutional recognition of such rights has been resisted by political elites, as they
interfere with policies and practices of the British polity– that however have also been
questioned by civil society and media professionals alike5. As research into the public
5 The wide range of application of human rights has brought to the light a number of problematic and arguably unjust policies, such as the ineligibility to legal aid when accused of libel, which was overturned by the European Court of Human Rights in 2006 in the famous McLibel case, whereby two activists were sued by the corporation of McDonald’s for disseminating information about the effects of the corporation on the environment, human health, treatment of animals and unionization. According to UK libel law, the weight falls on the defendant to prove the basis of such information, while at the same time legal aid is
8
discourses has indicated (Tsoukala 2006; Welch 2003), references and a discursive
framework on insecurity aims to discredit and render irrelevant (indeed often also present
as dangerous) the legal and normative framework of human rights, by providing
exceptions to these rights and therefore indirectly to the very definition of ‘human’.
For some analysts, the climate of fear, arguably intimidation of public debate and even
national representative politics, as well as actions of violence raise the question as to the
terrorising effects of the state authority and mode of governance itself. Stohl (2006)
proposes a definition of terrorism, which focuses on the act itself, away from the alleged
perpetrator, including ‘not simply acts of violence but threats (implying credible threats)
of violence as well, so that all acts of instrumental violence which intend to influence an
audience (through fear of further violence if they do not comply with whatever demands
are being made) would be included’ (p. 6). According to this definition, it is possible to
consider the indirect ways of fear-inducing governance as an act of threat and violence. If
the selective use of legality and attention to human rights is suggested as a measure
against the minority of the –internal or external- ‘enemy’, with the aim to protect the
‘many’, then two problematic and arbitrary assumptions are made: first that the ‘many’
are supposedly ‘happy’ to exchange their civil liberties for security; second, that is
morally acceptable to condition an alleged civil, political, practical and philosophical
‘choice’ of giving up the principles and foundations of civil liberties ‘either’ to the enemy
‘or’ to one’s own political unit, in our case the European State and the European Union
polity. Indeed, there is evidence that the degree of authoritarian behaviour is a good
indicator as to whether people under threat are predisposed to accept abuse of human
rights and civil liberties and support policies of surveillance. Those with high scores of
such behaviour, as found by Cohrs, Kielmann, Maes, and Moschner (2005), will tend to
denied in libel cases. According to media professionals and activists this is just one but a significant example of the beneficiary effects of the Human Rights Act, whereby it has been possible for ordinary people to find protection in their right to express their opinion and critique against powerful transnational corporations. Libel laws in the UK have been often used to silence the media, due to costly and uncertain outcome in which a court case usually results. Due to the comprehensive character of Human Rights legislation, the benefits for the protection of the citizen against systemic and other abuses, including provisions such as fair trial, privacy etc, present surveillance policy supporters with many difficulties. The recent attempts by the UK government to persuade the European Parliament to deprioritise Human Rights in the face of ‘global terrorism’, during the UK EU presidency is a telling example of the systematic efforts to undermine the progressive framework of Human Rights.
9
accept such measures, while those with low such scores will tend to react to them.
George Gerbner has also reported similar findings in his longitudinal study of audience
effects through the long-term consumption of television violence. According to Gerbner
the heavier viewers were more likely to adopt authoritarian measures, than light viewers.
The common link between these studies is the perception and exposure to fear, that
triggers anti-democratic sentiments. The effects of authoritarian behaviour however
expand well beyond those of accepting surveillance measures or restriction of civil
liberties. They have far reaching implications for a nation’s and Europe’s internal social
cohesion, as authoritarian citizens express xenophobia, nationalistic, racist and sexist
beliefs and tend to consider diversity a problem (Cohrs, Kielmann, Maes, and Moschner
2005). In the multicultural, diverse and multiethnic fabric of Europe, it is obvious that
such attitudes are not helpful for the construction of cultural and structural solidarity, that
is urgently needed in the geopolitical space of the EU, especially given the increased
material, and symbolic, polarisations of it populations.
Conditioning the symbolic annihilation of citizens
Questions of social cohesion become prominent in 21st century Europe and attain
particular significance, not only due to the EU internal expansion but especially in
relation to the implications deriving from the climate of securitisation. The role of the
state in citizens’ lives, the ‘small places’ of lived experience, and in particular in the
communicative action and process is the nexus of global economic integration and local
sociocultural and political affirmation. Such ‘small places’ are located in the construction
of identity (national or European), where the media as well as general cultural policies
play an important role, the quality of communicative action within national boundaries,
such as freedom of expression or press freedom, but also across boundaries in the form of
communication and information (or content) flow, human mobility as in the case of
tourism or internet traffic. The fields of communicative expression, whether through data
exchange or mass media consumption, or whether in the form of political protest or
media use are paramount in the state agenda of sovereignty and role transformation. In
the current climate of broadening the EU and exercising policing control as a post 9/11
10
effect, communicative processes become more urgent as they obtain two characteristics,
according to which they are classified. First as an added value through commodification
and their position in existing or potential markets and second, for their political value
that, may or may not be a source for profit, clash unswervingly with the agenda of
securitization and militarization. Technology once again lies in the core of both new
profit-sources in the field of the leisure industry (including culture as a commodity and
the media) and of the military-government nexus, through the increased interest in
biometrics, the privatization of the correction system, contracts with the private sector
active in defense and military research or the collation and monitoring of personal data.
The technological possibilities that run through the ‘small places’ of everyday life,
whether through ordinary internet or television consumption or in forms that raise the
antennas of civil rights organizations such as the case of identity cards in the UK, are
there, bringing with them an active and sophisticated populace that asserts its own
strategies to deal with them. It is well documented and much researched, that the civil
society at large, not only organized in NGOs, but also in loose, ephemeral and issue-
driven groups are expressing concerns and disagreement to the ways in which
securitisation is creeping up in everyday life, expanding the field of exceptionality across
most areas of human interaction. At a pan-European but also global level, we see the
formations of transborder alliances with the aim to resist the marginalisation of citizens in
policymaking and world governance.
The phenomenon of conditioning the marginalisation of the citizen in EU politics
provides grounds for concern about an all-encompassing assault on earned rights and
liberties, as well as an assault on the very institutions of liberal democracy. Drawing on
Gaye Tuchman’s (1978) concept of symbolic annihilation, the preceding discussion
points to uncomfortable and unanswered questions about the role of the citizen in the
modern polity. Symbolic annihilation has been most productively used by feminist
scholarship to describe the processes of exclusion, trivialisation and marginalisation of
women in media representations. If the media are contemporary story tellers, then the
exclusion of women, and any marginalized group, from them legitimises their exclusion
from the public sphere, while it also denies them the recognition of their social presence
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as equal citizens. The trivializsation of women’s political and cultural claims and
stereotyping of women, when present in the media, contribute to their unequal treatment
in the cultural and political domain, effectively marginalising them further in society. The
media of course provide one version of the public sphere, where public debate on issues
of common concern takes place. However, extending this conceptualiszation to include
the fora and platforms of inclusion in the processes of decision-making and public policy
presents an expanded form of public sphere and recognises the communicative process as
an integral part of democratic politics. Indeed, the same way securitisation is largely a
matter of communicating actions, policies and their legitimisation, so is the public sphere
the connotation for the communicative, decision-making process. The symbolic
annihilation of citizens, as feminist research and theory has shown very vividly, takes
place through a multilevel and multicentred mode of governance that consists of a
combination of systemic and symbolic fields of action. In the case of the EU, these are
located a) in the very institutional organisation of the EU polity b) the function – or
dysfunction- of the assigned Estates c) the processes of decision-making and their level
of inclusivity of citizens d) the manipulation and discursive denial and dismissing of
citizens’ voiced concerns e) the imbalanced representation of citizens and polity or other
authority in mediated public spheres f) the very actions that annihilate civil liberties and
free agency, through the construction and induction of fear and threat and g) through the
destruction of social solidarity through the classification of citizens according to ethnic
origin, migration status, or religious background.
First, the institutional organisation of the EU contributes to the bypassing of citizens’
concerns, in as far the European Parliament is not involved in the measures associated
with the securitisation of Europe. Although, as research has shown the EP is the most
democratic of the European Institutions, providing multiple points of access for the
representation of public interests and in creating communicative spaces for these interests
(Sarikakis 2004, 2005), the work of a political Union, especially when the decisions made
surrounding security are by definition and in substance political, is incomplete, so long
the EP is not authorized to oversee and codecide on matters of civil liberties.
12
Second, the dys-function of the Legislative, Judiciary and Executive powers of the EU
has a detrimental effect for the protection of citizens’ interests vis a vis the polity itself, as
well as the private interests that benefit from the adoption of surveillance and monitoring
technologies that they are paid for by largely public funds. As Freeman (2006) explains,
it is not necessarily simply the extent to which emergency provision are applied, but
‘whether measures themselves undermined the institutional constraints that protected
civil liberties… exceptions are thought to not be as significant, as the measures in place
to not allow the same happening in the future’. The situation underway in the EU does
not offer any guarantees nor does it make good use of the judiciary and legislative
branches to impose conditions upon the exercise of surveillance and securitisation. The
legitimacy of the EU is at stake, perhaps not at a first glance, as decisions of the third
pillar reside with intergovernmental procedures, and by extension with the executive arm
of the polity. Legitimacy of this sort is fragile and questionable. Coutu and Giroux,
discussing the state of emergency in Canada and its effects on immigration policy alert us
to the distinctive value of normative legitimacy, that is the role of the judiciary to
guarantee constitutional protection of civil liberties and laws, versus decisional
legitimacy, the executive’s role in making decisions, just because they can (Coutu and
Giroux 2006). In the latter case, ‘the centre of gravity of State’s legitimation shifts from
the Judiciary to the Executive and Administrative branches of the State (the
parliamentary State, here, being only peripheral)’ (Coutu and Giroux 2006:330). As the
judiciary and legislative arms of the polity are developed to provide citizens with
protection and political representation, their marginalisation or reduction to formal
functions constitutes an assault on citizens’ rights.
Third, deriving from that, there is a need for the involvement of the public in the
decision-making process of the EU, especially when such sensitive areas such as privacy,
liberty and transparency of the political system are concerned. Most importantly, the need
for public’s involvement in definition of ‘emergency’ and exceptionality, definition of
‘security’ and process of securitisation has not been fulfilled or adequately addressed. In
fact, most such decisions have been and are being taken in secrecy, away form public
debate and without due consultation. Scrutinising the power holders is an integral part of
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a healthy functioning of democratic governance and this can be done through a
functioning press, through citizens’ councils and the support of the judiciary and
parliament.
However, alone ‘enhancing transparency or generating public debate on global
governance is only a necessary but not a sufficient precondition for its democratization’.
(Nanz and Steffek 2004: 323). Participation in policy making should be part and parcel of
a set of criteria that aim to empower marginalized groups, as well as providing formal
and substantive access to meaningful participation in public policy.
Fourth, the respect for citizens’ concerns and attentive listening to their experience as
well as claims is paramount for good governance and again relies on the level of citizens’
involvement. At the same time, for the polity to make effective claims of legitimacy, it
has to adhere to the specific moral values (Samhat and Payne) governed by human
rights but most importantly also to adhere to the values declared by the polity itself, as
they are expressed in the Charter for Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Especially, for
the EU, an international- hegemonic- power next to the USA, any policies and state of
affairs within its own territory reflects its cultural image to the world. Even more so,
countries outside Europe look to the EU for two reasons: as a counter-set of human and
social values towards the US, governed by a commitment to welfare state, human rights,
as well as respect for UN system of world governance.
Fifth, alongside the legislature and judiciary, the press has a very important role to play:
their incapacitation leaves the door open to the abuse of civil liberties. However, the
political economy of the press (electronic and print) as well as a set of news values that
are detrimental in the inclusion of explanatory parts next to the facts, events-driven
sound-bite news disallows in depth investigation of complex issues, such as the process
of securitisation. Moreover, the hostility of some national presses towards the idea of the
EU contributes to more biased coverage of such questions that are not helpful for the
empowerment of the citizen. Often, the citizen takes the backseat. As Kellner asserts
‘once the corporate media have surrendered their responsibilities to serve the public and
provide a forum for democratic debate and addressing significant issues of common
14
concern, they have largely promoted the growth of corporate and state power and
undermined democracy. (2004: 32)
Concluding remarks
This paper has explored the changing conditions of EU governance and has discussed the
implications for its relationship with European citizens in the era of securitisation. It has
argued that we are facing a set of paradoxical conditions that marginalise the role of the
citizen, while at the same time the polity has attempted to bring the citizen at the
forefront of political action. The marginalisation of the citizen is taking place through a
set of policies that police and process citizens’ thoughts, invade their privacy and
disallow their meaningful participation in policymaking, assembly and debate. The need
for a functioning public sphere that extends beyond the mediated public sphere, offered
by the mass media, is closely related to the legitimacy of the polity. Nevertheless, the
culture of secrecy and exceptionality that accompanies claims for a ‘state of emergency’
as is currently the case in the EU and European nations is prohibitive towards the
functioning of such public domain. This combination of these policy trends contributes to
the ‘symbolic annihilation’ of EU citizen, by rendering this newly established legal entity
effectively secondary to a militarising and policing discourse machine.
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