The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment ‘Ten Flag­ship Pro­pos­als for Citizen-Centred Infor­ma­tion on Europe’ was pre­sented to a panel of MEPs and Euro­pean federations/NGOs on Novem­ber 8th, in the EP Bel­gian Infor­ma­tion Office.

These pro­pos­als rep­re­sent one step of a longer and wider process of reflec­tion which aims at cre­at­ing con­di­tions to enable jour­nal­ists to seize Euro­pean mat­ters in close con­nec­tion with local real­i­ties, in order to polit­i­cally empower cit­i­zens and involve them in Euro­pean pub­lic debates.

The Novem­ber 8^th par­tic­i­pants gen­er­ally approved the ten pro­pos­als in their present state but stressed the neces­sity to go fur­ther with their con­tent. Accord­ing to the Green MEP Isabelle Durant, this set of pro­pos­als is ‘a good struc­ture (‘belle tuyau­terie’) but its effi­ciency will depend on what we put inside’. EFJ codi­rec­tor, Marc Gru­ber, pointed out ‘the need to have a closer look on the details of their imple­men­ta­tion’.

We firstly offer to bet­ter define plu­ral­ism and include a right to infor­ma­tion on Europe on the EU Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal Rights. Although its legal scope is lim­ited, we put for­ward its sym­bolic and polit­i­cal strength.

Accord­ing to Marc Gru­ber, we should not over­es­ti­mate this strength. The IFJ and many other organ­i­sa­tions put for­ward the 11th arti­cle to denounce the Hun­gar­ian media law. In vain. The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion low­ered the text to a sta­tus of sim­ple dec­la­ra­tion of prin­ci­ple. As inter­est­ing as it is, we should ask what will be the real impact of such a provision.

EP Press Ser­vice offi­cial, Michel Plum­ley, inter­vened in the con­tent of the pro­posal and brought a pre­ci­sion con­cern­ing the right to infor­ma­tion on Europe, which has ‘two com­ple­men­tary sides: the right to be informed, but also the right to inform’.

The sec­ond pro­posal, which offers to make “the infor­ma­tion for cit­i­zen” (all kinds of media and not only broad­cast­ing) a Euro­pean Ser­vice of Gen­eral Inter­est (SGI) was greatly sup­ported. But Euro­pean cor­re­spon­dent and for­mer IPA Pres­i­dent, Michael Stabenow, expressed more wor­ries. In his opin­ion, such a pro­vi­sion could threaten the press and the web’s edi­to­r­ial inde­pen­dence. For MEP Bernadette Vergnaud (S&D), it depends on pub­lic ser­vices financ­ing modal­i­ties: ‘They need more finan­cial means’.

The par­tic­i­pants encour­aged us to carry on with the new employ­ment statute for Euro­pean cor­re­spon­dents, but apply­ing social secu­rity schemes and pay­roll charges of the coun­try of ori­gin is maybe not the only pos­si­bil­ity and we have to search for alter­na­tives. Marc Gru­ber also alerted us: this statute would arrive too late, if we take into account that most Euro­pean jour­nal­ists are today self-employed, and no longer wage earners.

The sug­ges­tion to cre­ate a net­work of regional Euro­pean news agen­cies was well greeted by the par­tic­i­pants. Cre­ate a new statute for Euro­pean cor­re­spon­dents is nec­es­sary but not suf­fi­cient if we don’t find the way of recon­nect­ing them to their local news­rooms, stressed Bernadette Vergnaud, who is sorry Europe remains ‘another galaxy’ for local staffs. She cited the Medi­a­tor affair as an exam­ple. At this time, she had very early alerted jour­nal­ists from her region (Poitiers-France) on the Euro­pean Med­i­cines Agency’ s lack of trans­parency and on the influ­ence of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal lob­bies on Euro­pean insti­tu­tions. Local media refused to cover it, argu­ing that it was a Euro­pean sub­ject, which wouldn’t inter­est local audi­ences. They finally under­stood its local stakes with the Medi­a­tor affair, but belatedly.

Isabelle Durant reminded us that the ‘bot­tle effect’ (com­part­men­tal­i­sa­tion of Euro­pean infor­ma­tion) also occurs for Bel­gian cor­re­spon­dents and MEPs. They stay in Bel­gium at their same address, but are said to be ‘gone to Europe’. Mobil­is­ing local jour­nal­ists is for her an essen­tial point and she invited us to strongly stress our ‘trans­ver­sal, transna­tional and rooted in ter­ri­to­ries’ approach.

Marie-Christine Ver­giat (GUE) under­lined the com­ple­men­tar­ity between cor­re­spon­dents and local jour­nal­ists’ work. Their ‘good col­lab­o­ra­tion is nec­es­sary if we don’t want to lose cit­i­zens in a too large mass of infor­ma­tion’. Michael Stabenow said that regional media has ‘a great part to play in the ped­a­gogy on Europe because cor­re­spon­dents don’t know as well as them how to reveal the impact of Euro­pean deci­sions on the ground’. 

The role of other local social actors, to whom the regional agen­cies are also ded­i­cated, was high­lighted. For the par­tic­i­pants, the local polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives, for­got­ten in the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, have also an impor­tant role to take to link Euro­pean issues and local affairs.

AEDE-France’s Pres­i­dent, Marie-France Mail­hos, and Isabelle Durant, approved the pro­posal for a stronger Euro­pean dimen­sion in edu­ca­tional pro­grammes. But accord­ing to them, we must be vig­i­lant on its imple­men­ta­tion, to not lock up Europe again, as it is now in civics classes. For the MEP, ‘if teach­ing Europe means elab­o­rate a course on what is comi­tol­ogy, or what is the dif­fer­ence between the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment and the Coun­cil of EU, etc., it’s bet­ter to do noth­ing. We need to speak about our com­mon past, our com­mon future, in a trans­ver­sal approach and in all the dis­ci­plines’.

Con­cern­ing the links between jour­nal­ists and NGOs and our pro­posal of a com­mon Inter­net plat­form to facil­i­tate meet­ings, Marc Gru­ber stressed the fact that ‘due to a lack of means and avail­able time, jour­nal­ists now always stay seated behind their com­puter, wait­ing for press releases’. So we need to cre­ate con­di­tions for them to go out and meet NGOs, if we want this plat­form to be used and useful.

Michel Plum­ley finally opened the debate about the Euro­pean Cit­i­zen Ini­tia­tives. Accord­ing to him, they could be a pre­cious source of Euro­pean infor­ma­tion, both polit­i­cal and con­crete, for jour­nal­ists and cit­i­zens. But for the moment, noth­ing is really done to gather and pro­mote them. This pro­posal was strongly sup­ported by par­tic­i­pants. An avenue to be pursued…

Please find all the dis­cussed pro­pos­als in the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion or, one by one, in Socialeuropeanjournalism.com’s ‘Flag­ship pro­pos­als’ field. Join us and com­ment them! A sum­mary of all your com­ments will be reg­u­larly pub­lished, aim­ing at either cre­at­ing and pro­gress­ing pro­pos­als or aban­don­ing them.

Related posts:

1. La syn­thèse du 8 novem­bre et la pour­suite du débat sur Socialeuropeanjournalism.com
2. Ten flag­ship pro­pos­als in sup­port of citizen-centred Euro­pean jour­nal­ism will be dis­cussed with MEPs
3. Defend­ing media plu­ral­ism by mon­i­tor­ing threats in the Mem­ber States
4. Cit­i­zen ini­tia­tive for Media Plu­ral­ism: from Brus­sels to Bologna
5. How to recon­nect jour­nal­ists to Strasbourg?