Media-political inroads for Europeanising national cultural public spheres: EU-level obstacles and national public service perspectives

This article discusses whether European or national-level media policies are suitable for facilitating a Europeanisation of national cultural public spheres. It is argued that current EU media policy initiatives and the activities of globally operating private corporations (e.g. Netflix and HBO) cannot achieve transnational cultural co-imbrication, strengthen horizontal ties among citizens from different countries, or increase the social inclusivity of public spheres. National public service media (PSM) have a potential to do so, but only to a limited extent, because in many EU countries, they face financial, competitive, managerial and political pressures binding them to nationally delimited roles. Nevertheless, drawing on examples of PSM successes in fostering Europeanisation and normative debates on transnational public spheres, ideals for a network of European PSM are presented, which offer a vision of PSM that (re-)legitimises themselves as key players in the building and accessibility of Europeanised public spheres for EU cohesion.