Europe: like making cats sing in unison
Here’s the new strategy for communications undertaken by the European Union: a shared agenda and framework, but with an extremely local focus. The innovation? Looks like the EU may pony up the funds to underwrite some of this activity.
For too long we have blamed one another for the EU’s communication failures. It is time to work together on a shared agenda based on agreed priorities.
Cooperation and coherent communication is the way forward. Moreover, we need an agreed framework within which to cooperate. What we proposed in our recent paper is an inter-institutional agreement under which much of the communication work done by the commission, council and parliament would be based on a common annual work plan, reflecting a common set of communication priorities and linked to the annual policy strategy the three institutions have agreed on.
The commission has also proposed to establish management partnerships with individual member states. To put it simply, this means that individual governments – if they so wish – will implement specific communication plans that have been agreed with the commission and are financed by the commission. The action taken under these plans should be as decentralized as possible – with the emphasis on going local.
That’s an excerpt from an article penned by Margot Wallström, the EU Commissioner responsible for communications, in Parliament Magazine.


