This article examines the European Commission’s information policy during the heavily politicised Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. Through the methodologically innovative use of Freedom of Information requests, it moves beyond official discourse to reveal how internal deliberation among Commission officials is preoccupied with monitoring and containing civil society mobilisation against the deal. Underpinned by elitist conceptions of democracy, public opinion emerges as a problem to be solved through strategic public relations, despite the Commission’s discursive commitments to greater transparency and political dialogue with citizens. The findings challenge the widely-held notion that a ‘communication deficit’ between European Union institutions and their publics is at the root of the perennially elusive formation of a European public sphere. Instead, approaching TTIP as a key frontline in the struggle over post-democracy, I conclude that antipublic ideas encoded in the Commission’s information policy are reflective of historically engrained institutional ambivalence towards public-political participation.

本文研究了在经过严格政治化的跨大西洋贸易和投资伙伴关系（TTIP）谈判期间的欧盟委员会的信息政策。通过对信息自由要求的方法创新的使用，它超越了官方讨论的范围，揭示了委员会官员内部的审议如何集中在监视和遏制针对该协议的民间社会动员。尽管委员会对提高透明度和与公民进行政治对话作出了谨慎的承诺，但在以精英主义民主观念为基础的情况下，舆论仍然是通过战略公共关系解决的问题。该发现挑战了人们普遍认为的观点，即欧洲联盟机构与其公众之间的“沟通赤字”是欧洲公共领域长期难以捉摸的形成的根源。相反，我把TTIP视为后民主斗争中的关键前线，我得出的结论是，委员会信息政策中包含的反公共思想反映了历史上根深蒂固的机构对公共政治参与的矛盾。