Brussels, 11/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - The EU's new information strategy (outlined by the European Commission on 2 July 2002 (see Europe of 3 July, p.5) was given a very warm welcome on 10 September at an exchange of views between the European Commissioner responsible for this issue, Antonio Vitorino, and the European Parliament Vice-President Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca (EPP-ED, Spain) before the EP's Culture, Education, Media and Sports Committee. Vidal-Quadras Roca did, however, emphasise the active role the European Parliament is intending to play in improving the information provided for European citizens.
Antonio Vitorino explained the approach recommended by the Commission, namely improving coordination between European institutions themselves and creating genuine partnership between EU institutions and Member States to make the provision of information, its wording and dissemination on priority issues like enlargement, justice and home affairs, the future of Europe and the EU's role in the world more coherent and reach the broad European public. The Commissioner laid particular emphasis on the need for other institutions and the Member States to create a common reference framework based on values characterising the European model in terms of information and communication. Welcoming the strategy proposed by the Commission, Vidal-Quadras Roca did, however, warn about the need to avoid drawing up "sanitised information, far removed from reality", which means that it is necessary to settle the problem of the gap between the EU's rhetoric and the EU's reality and people have to get down to it and transmit a certain image of the EU. In this connection, he felt that the creation of a common reference framework was a challenge for the institutions in that it is necessary for citizens to be able to take up this framework for themselves. He pointed out that to this end, public broadcasting had to take up the common reference framework. Pointing out the success of information campaigns on the euro in Member States, he stressed the value of the precedent campaign, confirming that Member States can and must contribute to the EU's information policy on other themes. Finally, speaking about preparing messages and using a culinary flavour, Vidal-Quadras Roca basically said that whatever the quality of the dish (the message) concocted by the Commission, the other institutions have to be able to bring their ingredients. A message in the form of a reminder, since inter-institutional cooperation in terms of information was endorsed both by the European Parliament and the Belgian and Spanish Presidencies of the Council in the past.
Taking the floor after this exchange of views, Renzo Imbene (PES, Italy) and Ole Andreasen (ELDR, Denmark) stressed the need to provide additional budget resources from 2003 onwards to carry out this information campaign. Andreasen also stressed the importance of broadcasting in terms of reaching the citizens of Europe. Finally, Ulpu Ivari (PES, Finland) recalled the importance of respecting cultural and linguistic diversity if one wants to hit target groups.