Communicating the European Union to Australia: The EU Information Strategy and Its Reception Down Under

The European Union (EU) has become an important global actor in numerous areas. It is an economic giant, a key actor in global trade and trade negotiations. It leads talks on environment and it is the biggest provider of assistance to the developing world. It is the largest contributor to the United Nations budget and its peacekeeping missions are present in all major conflicts. With such prominent global presence, it would seem that when the EU speaks, the world listens. This paper assesses whether new public communicative spaces are emerging between the European Union and the rest of the world, including Australia. It first argues that supranational developments in the EU have encouraged an important shift in which international political communication is no longer equated with the boundaries of the nation state. It goes on to illustrate how the emergent Euro-polity is developing an important strategy for communication not only with its own Member States and their citizens but also with the world. To test how the new communication environment is received outside the EU, encounters of the Australian media with the European Union are analysed. The results tend to confirm the European Union’s existing fears of being largely unheard.