Abstract
This article focuses on the phenomenon of conflating the European Court of Human Rights with the European Court of Justice and European Union in British political and media discourse. Scholars of the European Court of Human Rights and Euroscepticism often acknowledge conflation, but rarely specify the forms it takes or its specific effects on British perceptions of the legitimacy of European institutions. This article identifies three main forms of conflation: muddled conflation, ambiguous conflation, and deliberate conflation. It shows that conflation can be both a symptom of deeper Eurosceptic disregard for the roles and purposes of distinct European institutions, and a deliberate rhetorical tool, intended to weaken the legitimacy of separate institutions by tying criticisms of one to the other. The article demonstrates that conflating the different Europes contributes to the persistence of Strasbourgsceptic narratives in the British political sphere by exacerbating pre-existing concerns and providing additional opportunities to raise them in public.
Highlights
Between 2008 and 2016, the British press covered a series of stories about the Government’s efforts to deport foreign criminals and terror suspects being blocked by European law
The first two articles focus on rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), based in Strasbourg and established by the Council of Europe in 1959 to interpret the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)
The conflation of separate institutions is a central feature of discussions of Europe in the United Kingdom
Summary
Between 2008 and 2016, the British press covered a series of stories about the Government’s efforts to deport foreign criminals and terror suspects being blocked by European law. Lieve Gies (2015: 43) emphasises the central role of the British media in blurring the distinctions between different European institutions, noting that the strong Eurosceptic stance of the right-leaning press and the perceived alien nature of human rights have created a climate in which distrust of Europe infects anything that is directly or even indirectly associated with human rights in a European context This echoes similar arguments about the Eurosceptic press’ role in mainstreaming hard-line opposition to the EU and support for a membership referendum (Startin, 2015), highlighting the significant influence of the media over public perceptions of both the EU and ECtHR. Their work stresses the effects of such conflation on domestic media consumers’ impressions of human rights in the United Kingdom, rather than on the consequences it may have for the dynamics of British Euroscepticism and the United Kingdom’s relationships with the ECtHR and EU
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