By Sarah Collins - 9th November 2007
The EU communications chief, Margot Wallström, has said that the EU is ready to move on from institutional navel-gazing.
“For too long we have blamed one another for the EU’s communication failures. It is time to work together on a shared agenda based on agreed priorities,” she told the Parliament Magazine.
According to the commissioner for communication strategy, negotiations over the new reform treaty have dominated recent debate, but with the text agreed in Lisbon in October, it’s now time to get to the real business of governing. The agreed reform treaty will be signed by member governments in December.
The EU has come under fire this week for being out of touch with its citizens. During a parliamentary conference on Europe’s future, some MEPs, including the UK’s Roger Helmer, criticised the conference, Citizen’s Agora, for being a waste of time and money.
“This debate amounts to little more than the EU institutions talking to themselves,” which, he added, “defies democracy”.
Dutch MEP Sophie In’t Veld said that improved turn-out in the 2009 elections is “essential” to overcome perceptions of the EU’s democratic deficit.
“It is all well and good running communications campaigns and strategies which promote the EU, but there has to be more to it than that. We need to actively engage EU citizens in what we are doing and interact with them.”
In October the commission published an overhaul of its communications strategy, agreeing priorities that, according to Wallström, reflect political as well as citizens’ interests.
The most pressing issues of today, she says, are growth, jobs, climate change, energy, migration and enlargement, all reflected in the work programme for 2008. The commission’s most recent paper proposed an inter-institutional agreement whereby the council, commission and parliament would have a common work plan for communications.
“Cooperation and coherent communication is the way forward. Moreover, we need an agreed framework within which to cooperate.”
She also hopes for a higher turn-out in the 2009 elections than in 2004 is also an important goal to which the communication efforts of all EU institutions should contribute.
But, of course, there is one communications priority that cannot be ignored, and that is the business of deciphering the new treaty.
“We cannot take the new treaty for granted,” says the Swedish EU chief. It will have to go through 27 different ratification procedures. In order to stimulate a debate at European level, I would like to see a degree of coordination among the member states.
“It would be possible, and in my view desirable, for national parliaments – at least for some – to launch the ratification procedures around the same time next spring. I believe this would strengthen awareness of European issues and interest and promote a true European debate on how the new treaty will help address the common challenges and opportunities ahead of us.”
The European ombudsman, Nikiforos Diamandouros, in his annual report, said that EU institutions need to develop a “service culture” in order to bridge the well-documented democratic deficit with European citizens.
He told MEPs that, in the last 12 months, it was necessary for him to issue 41 “critical remarks” against EU institutions, a slight rise on the previous year.
Read the full text of Margot Wallström's article here
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