Euro campaign off to slow start

Date: 18/04/1996

By Thomas Klau

THE Commission's clarion call sounded oft, loud and clear.

It was high time, Commission President Jacques Santer and Economics Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy tirelessly repeated throughout 1995, for EU governments finally to agree on a name for their planned European currency.

A public awareness campaign, seen as the essential tool to sell the Ecu's successor to Europe's citizens, would have to be launched by 1996 at the latest, they argued, if the public was to be properly prepared for the biggest single step in European integration so far.

The size of the task facing member states committed to swallowing the tough financial medicine needed to prepare their countries for EMU in 1999 - but having trouble convincing their populations of the benefits of doing so - was underlined in a Eurobarometer survey conducted as EU leaders met in Madrid in December to discuss details of the single currency plan. It showed that in seven member states, less than half the population were in favour of monetary union.

Once the Madrid summit had settled the long contentious issue of the name, with Germany goading its Union partners into accepting the blandly bureaucratic Euro, the Commission moved swiftly.

Just a few weeks later, it staged a high-profile round table which brought together a plethora of participants from all EU countries and nearly all walks of life in Brussels' late January gloom.

For three days, association delegates, senior civil servants, politicians, bankers and other businessmen and women publicly pondered how best to extol the future currency's expected virtues and blessings.

Nearly three months later, however, expectant observers are still waiting for 'Euro' billboards to go up next to Europe's motorways and 'Euro' flyers to be stuffed into letter boxes.

The resounding announcements and forceful statements that emanated from the Commission earlier in the year have become much more muted.

The Commission's own publicity blitz has been grounded by a dispute with the European Parliament, which has frozen two-thirds of a 50-million-ecu fund intended to finance three public information campaigns in an attempt to force the Commission to take MEPs' criticisms of its strategy on board.

In most member states, meanwhile, preparations have not even started.

With very few exceptions, even those member states whose preparations are relatively advanced - such as the Netherlands - have barely finished setting up their national 'Euro forums', coordinating boards and other advisory committees.

Even Germany - undoubtedly the member state with the tallest public relations order in terms of making the Euro popular - has yet to finalise its strategy, most details of which are to be worked out by the advertising agency running the campaign in conjunction with the Federal press office overseeing it.

A number of member states, such as Spain, have not even chosen an agency to devise their campaign strategy. Others are still undecided as to whether they should entrust the publicity work to hired professionals or rely on committees of experts, in addition to the usual channels of government communication.

And although officials entrusted with preparing national campaigns almost unanimously stress that nothing firm has been decided yet, there seems to be a consensus in most member states not to start targeting the general public before 1997 or even, as in the case of Ireland, the second half of 1998.

In practically all member states, the initial public relations effort is to be directed almost exclusively at businesses, banks, journalists and other professions deemed to have a crucial role to play in explaining monetary union to the population.

“We are not planning an active campaign towards the people until 1998,” said a Dutch official working for the national forum coordinating the Euro campaign in the Netherlands. “Until then, the Dutch public can ask questions but, for the time being, we are directing our main activity towards business.”

Among the plans being discussed in the finance ministry in The Hague is the installation of a telephone hotline, which anybody with questions about the Euro would be able to call. But suggestions that the currency should be advertised through an emotional 'pro-Europe' campaign with a clear political impact, which have already been discussed by the national forum working group, are almost certain to be rejected, according to the official.

She pointed out that a recent poll conducted by the Dutch central bank showed 70&percent; of people in the Netherlands already supported monetary union, and added: “An emotional campaign might end up antagonising some supporters, so we have decided to concentrate on factual information once the time is ripe.”

Compared to the situation in Germany, the Dutch decision not to interfere with the general goodwill already being extended towards the single currency plan throws a vivid light on the enormously varied challenges advertisers face in the different member states.

While a formal decision is still outstanding, the campaign run by the government press office in Germany will almost certainly stress the key role which European integration - of which monetary union is the latest step - has played in preserving peace in Europe in the latter half of the century.

“Our arguments for the Euro will not be only economic,” insisted the German official in charge of preparations. “Federal President Roman Herzog and Chancellor Helmut Kohl have often stressed that monetary union is also about strengthening peace in Europe.”

In their uphill battle to bolster support for EMU among a German population that is extremely loath to let the deutschemark vanish into the black hole of monetary union, the press office's experts are determined to muster every possible argument.

In their eagerness to woo their populations with tailor-made arguments, governments see little need to liaise intensely with each other or, indeed, with the Commission. “The last thing we want is a big, centrally-run Euro campaign,” said one official.

The strong suspicion that a publicity campaign coordinated in Brussels and splashing similar slogans on television screens and poster sites from Sweden to Sicily might well backfire is one of the reasons why MEPs have so far withheld their approval of the Commission's budget for the single currency campaign.

“What we want is an information strategy creating opportunities for dialogue and not an advertising campaign. This strategy must also take regional specificities into account,” says German MEP Detlev Samland.

In response to the Parliament's criticism, the Commission has come up with a revised proposal, outlined in 74 of the 350 pages of a document dealing with the planned information blast on the Intergovernmental Conference, monetary union and a 'Citizens First' campaign to inform the public of their rights under EU legislation.

The proposal is due to be discussed today (18 April) at a joint meeting of MEPs and Commission officials. Speaking before the meeting, Samland said he expected “significant progress”, but added: “We won't have a deal yet.”

Meanwhile, finance ministers and central bank governors who gathered in Verona last weekend finally answered another key question which has been the subject of months of speculation by announcing the name of the coin that is to be monetary union's petty cash unit.

The coin is to be called the 'cent', with an optional 'euro' possibly attached to it as a prefix, ministers explained.

And, as British Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke hastened to add in a message to the folks back home, the 'euro-cent' will be a safe haven for the Queen. Should the UK ever decide to join monetary union, the royal profile will be allowed to grace one side of it.