EU drives home its message

Date: 10/04/1997

This time next week, Emma Bonino's fish bus will begin its three-month tour of Europe, encouraging nations to turn sardines and other small-fry fish into gourmet meals.

Next Thursday (17 April), a new kind of EU travelling circus sets out on the road, starting in Brussels and stopping - thousands of miles and more than 1.5 million ecu later - in Cologne.

By then, if Commissioner Bonino is half as good a travelling saleswoman as her performance so far suggests, we will all be dining out on the tiddlers of the sea and spending our evenings in one of dozens of trendy new herring and sprat bars dotted across the Union.

But the by-catch coach, with its fishy emblem emblazoned along its flanks and its Euro-hostesses ready to spread the word that fish is the dish, is about more than just promoting the merits of the less noble species from the deep. It is about a whole new era of Commission self-promotion.

For this jumbo truck, this DGX-on-wheels, marks the dawn of a new era of Euro sales craft.

Why stop at fish? Before long, every directorate-general could have its own mobile communications centre, ready at the drop of a sound bite to gun its engines into life and take the message to whichever part of the Union is languishing in apathy and ignorance.

It is just surprising that it has taken the Commission so long to think of the idea. As the planners of the jumbo fish truck tour point out in their itinerary: “The originality of the truck image will be modern and will be of effect even during the long transfer routes, which become communications events in themselves.”

In other words, the fish bus need never stop. It can just keep on trucking between the member states until the message is literally driven home.

Now Voicebox can reveal that plans are already in the pipeline for at least five more mobile message campaigns to match Bonino's...

The Gridlock Road Show: Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock will be at the head of a convoy of ten electrically-powered micro-cars which will tour motorways and country roads of Europe throughout 1998. The campaign message will be “Small is beautiful”.

The convoy of blue and gold cars will stop at towns and cities and demonstrate how all ten vehicles can park in a space which would just about accommodate European Commission President Jacques Santer's seven-series BMW.

Hostesses will take the public on test-drives and show them how they can squeeze entire families into these micro-cars.

All the cars will be powered by mains electricity and the scope of the campaign will be limited only by the length of electricity cable fitted to each vehicle.

The Single Currency Sideshow: to coincide with the announcement of the first wave of euro-zone nations next spring, Economics Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy will join a Commission motor home decorated to resemble a euro note.

It will travel to non-euro-zone capital cities to the sound of Money, Money, Money by Abba. In each capital, it will open up as a bureau de change for a week, offering competitive rates and then announcing how much money citizens have lost over seven days due to currency fluctuations and their exclusion from the single currency bloc.

All profits will go to the regional and social fund cash coach scheme (see below).

The Seaside-Setaside Jumbo Jamboree Task Force Bandwagon Shakedown: a series of converted cattle trucks will set out next summer, visiting selected farms and seaside resorts dispensing advice on crop rotation and bathing water cleanliness.

The exhaust pipes of the trucks will convert when stationary into sewage outfall pipes, which will deposit unmentionable waste on to pavements and into farmyards to show how we are destroying the environment. The jolly-jamboree crew, in their blue and gold-liveried uniforms, will stage tidy farm contests and clean T-shirt competitions.

The Jumbo Jobs and Working Time-on-Wheels Caravan Party: about 50 cars decorated with the gold stars logo will tow caravans around different parts of the Union, opening up for business as mobile job centres in town squares.

They will be able to place workers in jobs anywhere in the EU through their linked jobs database, offering those prepared to start at once a lift to their destination. A feature of the caravans is that they will stay open for precisely 48 hours each week and no more.

The first 1 million citizens to take up work through the caravan promotion scheme will get free T-shirts bearing the slogan: “I've got a job, I'm no slob.” or “Don't be a jerk, go to work” in one of the several available rhyming languages.

The All-Jive First Pillar Prize 'n' Party Roadrunner Disco Show: a converted coach, registration number IGC 1, will stage 'rave nites' in inner city areas across Europe during July and August this year.

The parties will be preceded by brief talks on sovereignty loss and how to cope with it. During the day, officials from Brussels who have been trained in sovereignty counselling will pass on their skills to franchised carers who can then establish networks of sovereignty bereavement centres which will be part-funded by the EU budget.

The coach will carry the slogan - “Don't be a stupid pillar - join the first!”

The On-the-Spot Regional and Social Fund Pay-As-We-Drive Fresh-Approach Cash Coach: a coach designed like a one-arm bandit will visit deprived areas on a permanent basis.

Its rotating crew will include senior Commission staff with powers to allocate regional fund grants on the spot on the basis of direct assessment.

The coach will take applications for grants, but its primary purpose is to identify needy schemes on the spot and invite the relevant local authorities or deprived citizens to take funds for structural and social regeneration projects. Anything from repairs to an outside toilet to refurbishment of crumbling cathedrals will be considered.

The coach slogan will be “EU funds are fun. No grant project too big or too small!”