Brussels, 06/10/2005 (Agence Europe) -Developing the Commission's "ears", reinforcing the political dimension of communication to the citizens, and adapting the content to the target audience, are the principles underlying the three initiatives to be taken at the same time by the vice-president of the Commission in charge of the communication strategy, Margot Wallström, which are: the "action plan" which was adopted on 20 July (EUROPE 8995), the White Paper on communication, which will be presented by the end of the year, the communication on the "Plan D", which is planned for 12 October. An exchange of views with the committee on culture and education of the European Parliament on Tuesday allowed Commissioner Wallström to bring further clarity to the action the Commission hopes to launch in order to boost the citizens' confidence "modestly and humbly" (see EUROPE 9041 for more about Ms Wallström's meeting with the constitutional committee). The White Paper on communication intends to establish a policy on its own right and subscribes to the objectives of reinforcing democracy, Ms Wallström stated, adding that the Commission was to launch a broad consultation with the Member States, civil society, the Community institutions, and national and regional experts and media. The role of the Commission and the European Parliament must be to support the Member States in carrying out the hoped-for reflection after the process of ratification of the Constitution was interrupted, and the communication on "plan D" should provide the tools needed to feed into dialogue on the future of Europe, but "a greater commitment on the part of the Member States will be required, and it would be counter productive to lead the debate from Brussels", Ms Wallström warned. The Commission also hopes that budgetary problems can be overcome rapidly, in order to provide resources for this policy.
Most of all, the MEPs stressed the need for mutual information between the governments and the citizens, as the action plan is based on work carried out by bureaux of the Commission in the Member States, but also for contact between the Commission and the citizens, "because we must not use the antenna of the Member States for nothing more than transmitting information back ", as Manolis Mavrommatis (EPP-ED, Greece) put it. We needed to define the message we hope to send out ("is the EU part of the problem or part of the solution?", wondered German Green Helga Trüpel), but we must also see what becomes of the messages sent to us by the citizens. Various MEPs stressed the importance of the communication for women, mainly because the majority of women voted "no" in the referendum in the Netherlands, which, they feel, shows that the stakes have not been properly explained.