THE EUROPEAN FISCAL COMPACT AND THE EUROPEANIZATION OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION: IS THERE A ROMANIAN PUBLIC SPHERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?

The research draws on political claims analysis in order to identify the different Europeanization patterns of political communication regarding the European Fiscal Compact in the online version of two Romanian newspapers. The main finding of the analysis is that the journalists from Adevarul and Evenimentul Zilei (EVZ) select different claims, which results in opposing attitudes and representations of the two media sources regarding the fiscal treaty. This suggests that, contrary to the findings in Central and Western European member states, in Romania there is no unitary, cohesive national public sphere, but rather that there are multiple, fragmented public spheres. Media generate their own, apparently clashing representations, acting as public spheres isolated from each other. This result seems to bring the debate about the European(ized) public sphere one step back.