Are Spanish concerns reaching Brussels? The speeches of the Spanish presidencies of the Council (2002-2023)

Abstract

The political agenda and discourse are closely linked to the citizen priorities that set up the public agenda. These agendas do not always coincide at the national and supranational levels, so we ask how the Spanish public agenda has been transferred to the European dimension through the last three presidencies of the Council of the European Union. We analyze whether Spanish citizen concerns—articulated through opinion polls such as the CIS and Eurobarometers—reached the European political agenda during the rotating presidencies of the Council of the European Union in 2002, 2010, and 2023 (quantitative methodology), and how the three highest political representatives framed these issues in their public interventions (qualitative methodology). We approached the study of political discourse using the discourse framing methodology. The results show that the problems that Spaniards face have remained relatively stable over the years, since unemployment being the most consistent issue on the public agenda. Furthermore, successive presidents have taken the concerns of the Spanish people into account and incorporated them into their own agendas, although sometimes this Spanish public agenda has been displaced by other European priorities. Despite the ideological differences that particularly separate the presidents of 2002 and of 2010 and 2023, all three have projected an institutional image in their speeches and identified enemies within and outside the EU.