Shooting the messenger

Date: 31/10/1996

AS Europe's political leaders repeatedly stress the need to bring the Union closer to its citizens, it is somewhat ironic that the European Commission's information policy is once again under fire.

The task of getting the institution's message across is split between the Spokesman's Service, which deals primarily with Brussels-based journalists, and the Directorate-General for communications, culture and audio-visual policy (DGX), which is in charge of 'spreading the word' further afield.

A recent report by the European Parliament's budget committee slammed the directorate-general's internal organisation and proposed that half of its funds for 1997 be frozen pending radical restructuring.

The report argued that DGX was failing in its primary role of coordinating information policy, resulting in wasted resources, the duplication of tasks and scrambled signals being sent out from Brussels. The committee was told, for example, of a German newspaper which recently ran two almost identical advertisements for an EU information campaign, one placed by DGX and the other by the directorate-general directly concerned with the programme.

“We are not convinced that DGX is working effectively. There is no clear structure in the service and it is not adequately coordinating information policy,” says budget committee chairman and socialist MEP Detlev Samland.

The report's author, Dutch liberal MEP Laurens Brinkhorst, has called for a number of fundamental changes in the service.

To start with, he says, DGX's co-ordinating role within the Commission should be clarified.

This sort of re-structuring was theoretically carried out during Commissioner João de Deus Pinheiro's reign at DGX in the early Nineties. The plan was to operate a decentralised system, with each of the Commission's directorates-general planning their own information campaigns and DGX playing a co-ordinating role.

In reality, the system seems to have broken down as confidence in DGX's competence and ability to get the job done effectively has been systematically eroded. The general feeling within most directorates-general now appears to be that 'if you want something doing, do it yourself'.

Examples of this attitude in action can be seen in the current PRINCE (information programme for European citizens) initiative - the Union's flagship campaign aimed at avoiding the sort of mass incomprehension at grass-roots level which surrounded the Maastricht Treaty negotiations.

The programme has three key strands, with information campaigns on the euro; Citizens First (an initiative dealing with single market issues which matter to ordinary people); and Building Europe Together (which aims to ensure the public is aware of the key issues being discussed at the Intergovernmental Conference).

The third of these initiatives is not due to come on stream fully until next year, but it is already clear that the Directorate-General for economics (DGII) rules the roost on the euro campaign, while Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti's DGXV is very much in the driving seat for Citizens First.

The multi-million-ecu programmes are being coordinated in cooperation with the European Parliament. They will take the form of public debates, newsletters, brochures, specially-produced video tapes and CD-Roms explaining the main themes.

In addition, the Commission intends to work closely with broadcast, written and electronic media in all 15 EU member states.

At a meeting in late October, European Parliament Vice-President Georgios Anastassopoulos noted that PRINCE was already having an effect in member states, with agreements on information priorities on the verge of being concluded with the German, French and Belgian governments, and others in the pipeline.

Among the other areas where Brinkhorst says DGX “could do better” is in improving its relations with the Commission's Spokesman's Service, the official voice of the institution.

Formally, the spokesman's group and DGX are in close contact, but in reality the situation is somewhat different.

“The two are on different wavelengths, they have different concerns and audiences and operate at different speeds. The spokesman's group has to meet the demands of journalists daily. DGX tends to speak with less urgency to a wider audience outside Brussels,” said one insider.

Some feel the Commission's information policy, particularly towards the media, could be sharpened if elements of DGX - especially its audio-visual service and press offices in the Commission delegations in the different member states - came under the auspices of the Spokesman's Service.

“The spokesmen should do more with the audio-visual media and the Commission should be speaking more to the media in member states, and the only way to do that is to have a proper information service which is also decentralised,” suggested one senior official.

The ultimate aim of Brinkhorst's report is to transform DGX into an inter-institutional information agency to be set up by the year 2000.

The idea is to combine the information services of the Parliament and the Commission as far as possible. This would include merging the national offices of the Parliament and Commission to create so-called 'Europe houses'.

Officials who have followed the negotiations between the Parliament and the Commission on this particular issue closely believe many earlier misunderstandings have now been cleared up.

“We had a very good meeting in Strasbourg at the end of October and the atmosphere was much better than when we last met in May. There is a better understanding of what the various Commission offices in member states do, and in the majority of cases the Commission and Parliament delegations are already under one roof,” explained one senior official.

But while agreeing on the need for greater cooperation, the Commission insists that it has its own distinctive information policy to run as well.

“We have a more vocational role. We have something to sell,” claimed one Commission source.

Indeed, by no means all members of the European Parliament are in favour of the two institutions merging their services completely. Culture committee chairwoman and non-attached MEP Luciana Castellina is among those who have strongly attacked Brinkhorst's recommendations.

“MEPs and the Commission have two very different and distinct roles in the legislative process as parliament and executive. It would have serious implications for democracy if the two information services were totally merged. We have formally protested at the budget committee's report. Money cannot be allowed to be the only consideration in this case,” she said.

Many argue that there are ulterior motives behind the Parliament's current attacks on DGX.

Cynics suspect that MEPs are using any weapons at their disposal to increase the institution's powers and ensure it is not left on the sidelines in the PRINCE initiative.

Indeed the inter-institutional approach adopted for the scheme stems from Parliament's demands. When PRINCE was first mooted by British Conservative MEP James Elles in 1995, the Parliament approved the necessary funding for the Commission and then insisted on establishing an inter-institutional consultative group to oversee the programmes.

In Strasbourg last week, MEPs voted provisionally to put half of the 1997 funds for the three PRINCE schemes into reserves.

If this approach is formally adopted at the second reading on the budget in mid-December, the Commission will be obliged to obtain Parliament's permission before spending any of the blocked money, ensuring MEPs are not left out of the loop as PRINCE progresses.

“The Parliament is now turning to its budgetary powers to increase its influence. Some suspect that the Parliament's budget committee is looking for hostages in the Commission and DGX and also DGXXIII (tourism and small and medium-sized enterprises) present themselves as very tasty targets,” said one official.

In early October, Commissioner Marcelino Oreja surprised his DGX colleagues by announcing to the budget committee that he would reorganise the directorate-general. MEPs are insisting this be done by the time of the second reading - an almost impossible deadline. But one official stressed: “There is now an obligation to restructure DGX and this will have to be done in a hurry and the Parliament's budget committee will effectively vet that reorganisation.”

What form that restructuring will take is unclear but, given the almost perpetual reorganisations in DGX, whatever is decided on this occasion will almost certainly not be the last word.