New information strategy aims to sell Parliament to the public

Date: 03/07/1997

By Rory Watson

THE European Parliament is implementing a new five-point plan as it attempts to improve its information policy in the run-up to the 1999 Euro-elections.

Senior MEPs have given the go-ahead for a strategy which will be more aggressive in emphasising the institution's achievements and swifter in responding to adverse criticism.

“If we do not try to explain in more acceptable terms what the Parliament has achieved by using its co-decision role to change the law and by its budgetary powers, for instance, then it will be seen as negative. This is a difficult exercise as it is very technical. The trick is to put it into a language people can understand,” explained one senior official.

The new strategy, which follows two highly critical television reports on the institution's activities, is expected to stress the Parliament's role in fighting for the environment, human rights and institutional reform, and in tackling fraud.

“Unfortunately, the citizens of Europe remain largely ignorant of these achievements. Our main duty is to let them know about them in order that Parliament can be judged on its merits,” said Vice-President and Greek New Democracy MEP Georgios Anastassopoulos, who helped draft the new approach to information policy.

The institution's Secretary-General Julian Priestley has been instructed to review the range of existing parliamentary publications, establish an editorial committee to set guidelines for information going out on the Internet, develop staff mobility and draft a mission statement for the Parliament's offices in the member states.

The new policy is expected to emphasise the need to focus on media located outside national capitals and will explore the possibility of creating information branches in different regions.

The overhaul of current practice is taking place against the backdrop of the 1999 elections and the ratification of the new Treaty of Amsterdam.

“We have a specific target in view: the next elections. This is a permanent effort to provide more and better information, but it takes on special significance in the next two years,” argued Anastassopoulos.

The strategy will also build on the cooperation which has begun to emerge between the Parliament and the European Commission in projecting EU activities.

The most recent example of this occurred just hours after the end of last month's Amsterdam summit, when Anastassopoulos and Institutional Affairs Commissioner Marcelino Oreja went on to the Internet to reply to several hundred questions from the public about the new treaty.

“In just two hours we answered more questions about the new treaty than anyone could have handled in a press conference. It showed our readiness to face the public and to answer their questions in the most direct way,” said Anastassopoulos.