eurealist.co.uk

The Friends of Europe (is it the whole of Europe or just the EU one wonders)

Have issued a 35 page report http://www.friendsofeurope.org/pdfs/Can_EU_hear_me-FINAL-A5.pdf

Can EU hear me?

How to get the EU’s message out

According to the report itself

“It takes a very original approach to the familiar problem of how the EU and its institutions can better connect with Europe’s citizens. It is part opinion poll, part survey of political leaders and opinion makers, and part study group findings.

The ideas that have emerged from this year-long project have been distilled into 10 overall recommendations, each of which is backed by three sub-recommendations. These 30 practical ideas are presented at the beginning of this report in the form of an Open Letter to Margot Wallström, the incoming Vice-President of the European Commission whose task will be to improve the EU’s Information and Communications. (If not vetoed by the EU Parliament first)

Dr Richard North EU Referendum commented

“However, as to the question on how the EU could improve its image, it clearly did not appreciate my response, which was along the lines of “abolish itself”.

We can clearly see how very important and fully inclusive the Gallop poll was and how openly it was conducted when we have a look at the professions of the people it questioned (I assume Dr North was one of the 19% unknown)

Respondents’ professions

For the first Gallup Survey, 12% of respondents worked directly for EU bodies

(European Commission, European Parliament and other institutions), 10% for EU

governments at different levels, 8% for media. Around 18% were from NGOs, 18% from

the corporate sector and 15% from the education and research sectors (19% unknown).

So there was obviously a clear attempt by the “Friends” to ask the views of ordinary people.

The recommendations of the report for Margot Wallström were (with my own interpretations)

During your first six months visit each EU Member State,

In each country, hold public forums to hear what people have to say about

the EU.

• Use local third party endorsers – groups of beneficiaries or supporters – to

describe how the EU has helped them.

• Meet the most important national media editors and the leading politicians.

Rush around all twenty five EU states only meeting those people who agree with the “Friends” and gain an insight of what those people want, and then tell everybody else us that this is the same as we all want.

Promote the benefits of EU Membership

Carry out surveys in each Member State to find out the impact of the EU on people’s lives and the losses they would suffer if their country withdrew from the EU. Then Publicise the results widely by engaging a professional communication agency with a pan-European network to devise a tailormade strategy in each country.

Or on the other hand keep very quite about it when you realise that we would all be a lot better off if we did leave the EU.

Make the EU news message more interesting

Don’t turn people off with too much detail – keep the message down to three

key points at most.

Adapt your message to your audience. Always give specific examples of how new policies affect ‘the person in the street’. If you can, have such a person on hand to talk about their experience

To much detail will expose the faults with the system and we do not want that now do we and any way the people out there are too stupid to understand what is going on.

Tell different lies in each of the states In Britain for example you could say everything is going their way, and the other states are going along with us and what is good for Britain. In Germany you could tell the workers that Germany in an industry leader only because of the EU and not because they are much better at it than everybody else and would be world leaders in any case.

React faster to news

Set up a ‘rapid response’ unit to react quickly to events – have press releases

out within 4 hours after something important happens in a Member State.

Make sure that the EU Spin machine is up to speed and only good news gets out, and also claim EU responsibility for all the good and blame something else for all the bad.

Adapt the media channels to the story and the Member State

• Carry out a media survey in each Member State to find out the relative size,

popularity and penetration of each national and regional media channel (TV,

radio, press or internet) for the different audiences you may need to reach.

• Set-up “Reporting the EU” scholarships to bring young journalists to

Brussels for intensive training courses on how the Union’s political

machinery works, and on the major issues confronting the EU.

• Before you release a story, decide which medium in each country is the most

appropriate – TV, radio, press or internet, or a combination thereof.

Find out which media outlet can be relied upon to report the EU line favourably, and then bribe the reporters of those outlets with freebies, or offer the outlets bribes which you can describe as loans or grants. Then feed these EU outlets with the EU line so that they then will disseminate it in a favourable manner, and will not allow inconvenient questions to arise, or will ignore those questions as being the outpourings of a ranting Xenophobic association of misfits.

Change the prevailing culture towards communications in the EU

institutions

Force through more integration of the EU media operations.

• Get rid of the administrative hurdles between different EU Institutions that

prevent them from collaborating on media campaigns and cut down on the

bureaucracy that stifles the freedom of press departments to do their job.

• Bring in more professionally trained staff to the EU press offices, both

journalists and other media specialists and give proper media and

communications training to Commissioners and EU officials.

Control all media outlets and train everybody to stick to the same lines and sing from the same hymn sheet Spin Spin Spin. Remove any inconvenient clauses in law which could have the effect of ensuring that news paper reporters can keep their informants details private, n.b. Eurojust can be relied upon to help in this regard. At the same time remove any necessity to comply with any laws which could inhibit the free reporting of the EU in a favourable light.

Use business and events media to reach specialised audiences

• Motivate business and events media to get involved in promoting EU ideas,

policies and benefits.

• Further use independent audiovisual and internet companies to strengthen

news distribution and increase the number of co-productions with TV

stations.

• Set up a database of specialist and national media in each country, that may

be called upon to publicise EU events.

Offer big business anything to get them on side and then use their own media outlets to promote the EU. Set up a database of all the media outlets that will only report the EU line (see the previous two recommendations).

Get the message out to people in Member Sates

Give Member States more responsibility for publicising new policies, which have an effect in

their country. Evaluate and compare countries’ communications performance annually.

Make EU officials and Commissioners more responsible for telling their own country nationals

about the benefits of the EU. As Commissioner for Communications Strategy, you should visit

each EU Member State as often as possible – this will greatly help to increase Europe’s

visibility in each country

Set up a ‘Communications Task Force’ in each Member State to bring together EU officials,

politicians and journalists to discuss how to get the EU message out nationally. This Task

Force should report regularly with concrete recommendations.

Continue the process of spinning the EU line by spending more money on various institutions which will help when given large grants but ensure that each country shares in the costs of advertising the EU.

Use ‘CCC’ – Citizens Convince Citizens – to transmit the EU message

Use people who have benefited from EU policies as EU ambassadors, and provide them with

the relevant communications tools to do this.

Oblige organisations and people who have benefited from EU support, for example Erasmus

scholars or researchers, to spread the word in their own countries.

Use local business and civil society organisations to promote the benefits of EU Membership.

Provide them with EU materials in their national language or encourage them to adapt the

texts themselves.

Insist that all organisations who gain by being given EU money, must then pay back in kind by unreservedly promoting the EU, do not give any grants to any organisation which is not prepared to promote the EU. Bombard these EU supported organisations with EU propaganda material.

Make a special effort to reach young people

Push for every country to include EU-related material in the secondary school curricula.

Use new technologies (MMS, SMS, etc) and young people’s media like the internet or TV

stations like MTV or MCM to pass on the message.

Concentrate on reaching young people when a new programme that particularly affects them

is set up.

Continue the process the ongoing policy of bombarding all schools with propaganda material, insist that teachers use this material and offer them bribes or freebies to assist in brainwashing the young in their charge. Oblige/ force member states governments to allow time within the school curriculum for the teachers to fully implement these brainwashing techniques. It might be a good idea to replace history and or geography lessons with brainwashing periods for the very young. Of course these periods would include the history of the great EU and its revered saintly founders and the geography of Europe which will extend as more people in more countries see the light.

Note to Ms Wallström; It does not matter if a member state, as is the case in Britain, have laws against this sort of thing, EU law takes precedence in these matters, so inconvenient local laws may safely be ignored. Further; legality does not matter in your case, because you will have immunity from prosecution should some upstart local government have the temerity to ask you to answer for your actions at some later date.

Bribe TV stations like the BBC to carry programming to enhance the young persons feeling toward the EU as an intuition and EVENTUALLY AS THEIR COUNTRY, and also bribe these stations with extra grants to make programs with a cross border dimension and play down any nasty nationalistic aspects of such things as sporting events.