Fears are growing that the European Union’s unpopularity will undermine its survival. Assailed by Euroskeptic politicians and riven internally by disagreements between member governments, the EU’s tarnished image needs vigorous polishing, and the Commission is certainly not up to the job. The EU needs a thorough communications revolution if it wants to highlight its achievements and its worth.
Here’s an idea: Let’s take communications out of their hands.
First, the EU will have to abandon the fiction that Europeans are somehow at fault for failing to appreciate the value of 60 years of economic and political integration. The truth is that Brussels has failed to explain these benefits to Europeans.
Next, the Commission should fire its legions of spokespersons and disband the cumbersome teams tasked with promotion and publicity. Instead, it should hire independent journalists whose role would be to write and broadcast the stories readers and viewers genuinely care about — not the stories EU officials wish to promote.
Called “Newsroom Europe,” this body of independent reporters would not be given special access or privileges, but would be paid and equipped by the Commission.
This new team of journalists wouldn’t replace the accredited press corps that reports from Brussels, but would strongly complement it. Its members would be drawn from Europe’s regional media, and their function would be to report EU-related news from specifically regional angles, aiming their stories at local newspapers and broadcasters.
Called “Newsroom Europe,” this body of independent reporters would not be given special access or privileges, but would be paid and equipped by the Commission.
The Commission’s bean-counters will faint over the expense; its control freaks lose sleep over the idea of independence. But its mission will be to dispel the damaging myths that surround the EU by presenting stories that answer citizens’ real concerns.
The Commission has mishandled the press since its earliest days. It has been content with the notion that the size and diversity of its accredited press corps was enough to disseminate news about what the EU really does.
Austerity-driven cutbacks and the digital revolution have shrunk the Brussels press corps since its heyday in the late 1990s, when it claimed close to 1,000 journalists. It is nevertheless still second only to that of Washington, D.C., with “La grande presse” — heavyweights like Le Monde or the BBC — on one end, and part-time “stringers” for narrowly specialist publications on the other.
So what’s wrong with that? Well, just about everything. The current setup is unable to cope with today’s increasingly hostile political climate. Voters don’t like what they can’t understand, and that dearth of understanding now threatens the EU’s future.
The Commission is its own worst enemy here. Its officials decide what they want to tell the press. Their mediums of choice are turgid press releases and midday briefings where spokespeople deliver prepared statements and field (or dodge) questions. Occasionally a commissioner will mount the podium to give a policy greater weight, or defend it if it’s in hot water.
Widespread public ignorance about the EU’s activities has had devastating results: Brexit and the rise of Euroskeptic populism.
None of this increases the average citizen’s understanding of the issues. EU officials ruefully concede that only the “Boris Johnson school of straight banana stories” has the common touch.
Widespread public ignorance about the EU’s activities has had devastating results: Brexit and the rise of Euroskeptic populism. Blow-by-blow reporting of the EU’s political intricacies or its tortuous policymaking process is of value to Europe’s political and business elites, but fails to capture the attention and respect of the average voter.
The Commission has not adapted to this new climate, and is already under strain from the communications challenge created by EU enlargement. In all fairness, the Commission is an institution whose responsibilities demand strict confidentiality, ill-suited to developing a media-savvy PR culture. It tends to recruit lawyers and economists, professions that place scant value on outreach.
But we must acknowledge the Commission is out of its depth on communications and hasn’t given sufficient thought to how it will win the information battle against growing Euroskepticism. The European Parliament, by contrast, has in recent years responded to falling voter turnouts with more imaginative communications tools like its own EuroparlTV channel.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker being interviewed outside the European Council in Brussels | Thierry Charlier/AFP via Getty Images
Newsroom Europe could help fix this. About 200 journalists, drawn from a cross-section of regional cultures, would report on stories that are locally relevant to constituents across the Continent. Crucially, their reporting would not limit itself to what is happening in Brussels or Strasbourg, but would extend to reports from their patch.
Newspapers everywhere are under pressure, but regional and local papers are proving resilient and have remained many Europeans’ chief source of information. Too small to afford a Brussels correspondent, they rarely carry stories about the EU.
Presenting European integration as a faith to which right-minded people should adhere has plainly failed. Few people can deny the EU has made a hash of its communications. Reporting Europe from the grassroots is far more valuable than from the Berlaymont’s 13th floor.
Giles Merritt is the founder and chairman of the Friends of Europe think-tank and author of “Slippery Slope: Europe’s Troubled Future” (Oxford University Press, 2016). He previously reported for the Financial Times as a foreign correspondent and was the International Herald Tribune op-ed columnist on EU affairs.