Abstract
The European Union (EU) has long sought to play a normative role in global energy governance, a role that requires a coherent, comprehensible and memorable image. Yet within its borders, there are divisions and discrepancies on energy, which may have an impact on the external reception of EU actions. France, Germany and the United Kingdom (UK), commonly referred to as ‘the EU’s big 3’, seem to have little in common on issues of energy policy. EU rhetoric on external energy matters places firm emphasis on three key ‘frames’ of understanding: sustainability, competitiveness and security of supply, yet the domestic rhetorics of France, Germany and the UK variously appear to place priority on one or more of these frames. This article explores media representations of the EU’s external energy relations from within the ‘Big 3’ EU member states and asks whether the EU’s normative agenda on external energy drives these media representations, or whether domestic member state interests dominate.
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Notes
Oil, gas, coal, fossil, nuclear, biofuel, solar, wind, hydro, tidal, renewable, thermal, biomass.
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Acknowledgements
The research funded reported in this article is part of a larger project – a Jean Monnet Multilateral Research Group (with Natalia Chaban of the University of Canterbury in the lead, and as partners Michèle Knodt of the Technische Universität Darmstadt and Amy Verdun of the University of Victoria). Project title: ‘External Images of the EU’ (EXIE). The group is grateful for financial support from the European Commission during the two-year project 2012–2014. EXIE came together three times for training purposes and for coordinating the research. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the third workshop held at the University of Pretoria 22–26 April 2014 and prepared for delivery at the EISA Conference in Sicily 23–26 September 2015. The authors thank the participants of the EXIE workshop, the guest editors of this special issue, and the two anonymous reviewers of the journal, for constructive criticism and suggestions on the earlier drafts.
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Bain, J., Greenland, B., Knodt, M. et al. A polyphonic marketplace: Images of EU external energy relations in British, French and German media discourses. Comp Eur Polit 15, 115–134 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2016.16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2016.16