Today, Dr Antonio Vitorino MP, President of the Committee on European Union Affairs of the Portuguese Parliament, gave a public lecture at the University of Hull as part of the annual Jean Monnet Lecture. The Topic: “Europe at a Crossroads - the Future of the European Union”.
Apart from being a very charming man and clearly very seasoned public speaker, Dr Vitorino really is an expert in his field. He has played a significant role in Portuguese politics since the introduction of democracy in Portugal in the mid 1970s and is considered a leading European expert on security issues and home affairs. He was also member of the commission that drafted the European Constitution, which failed to be ratified after negative public votes in France and the Netherlands.
I won’t go into too much detail about his lecture, other than to tell you what I personally identify as the main problem of the EU (a view that existed before the lecture and was only enforced by it): the lack of a proper PR department.
The failure of the European Constitution to be ratified was not a result of its content (I dare put up that a maximum of one percent actually read it), but of its presentation and the public relations failure in the years leading up to it. Ask anyone on the streets of Europe how exactly the EU affects their daily lives, and most won’t be able to give you an answer. And if they are, it’s going to be negative. Dr Vitorino recounted his astonishment at the fact that the vast majority of young people voted against the constitution, although the enormous benefits of the Erasmus program for example should be obvious to everyone, at least to the student population. But everyone just seems to take it for granted. The same goes for the Schengen treaty: everyone accepts the free movement within Europe as a given right.
What the EU has to do is invest into selling itself to its own members. I don’t know about other countries, but why did I as a European Union citizen have to order a printed copy of the constitution myself? Why wasn’t it delivered for free to every single household? And why is there still no public European Union newspaper or even TV station explaining in simple terms the everyday business and decisions reached at EU level? Why, when in so many member countries opinion polls show the majority of citizens opposed to expansion and a common constitution, do we still not see our national politicians giving monthly (or even weekly) personal updates on what they are doing over there in Brussels? The fears against expansion are easily understandable, but in some (if not most) cases unjustified.
The EU is goverened by a private club of elites, and it always will be. But those elites must make it their job to explain and, yes, sell their ideas, visions, and decisions to their non-elite citizens. As long as EU decision makers keep themselves separated from their peoples, crying in disbelief at opinion polls, there will never be a European Union whose members are proud to be part of it. It’s simple business management, really. Your product can be as good as you like - if you don’t advertise it and don’t try to sell it to people, you - along with your product - will vanish into oblivion.
