Europe Today

Very ambitious: Europe Today, a European newspaper not focused on EU institutions or financial issues.

The details are in their fact sheet (PDF) and I wish them good luck.

They were at least clever enough to seize the opportunity of today's European Parliament chat on the role of new media and the European Public Sphere to draw some attention to their project.

What do you think - will they succeed?

Margot Wallström and the future of European Communication

Since still-EU Commissioner Margot Wallström, responsible for Communication, has mentioned me personally in her latest blog post, reacting to a comment I made to her previous post, I'd like to use the opportunity to re-react openly to her full post to show that we can actually have open dialogues between the European level and European citizens.

So let's start with Margot's first point:

- a number of people have asked what will happen to my blog when I leave the Commission and whether other Commissioners will blog during the next mandate. Well, I will write again on this topic before I leave but I will say at this stage that blogging is very much an individual choice and takes a lot of time. I will be recommending to future Commissioners that they should certainly think positively about it.

I think that indeed blogging is a good way for officials to communicate with the public, because it can a) show their human side and they can b) transmit messages and subtexts that might not pass a traditional media filter but that are actually important to understand their point.

But it is true that blogging, if taken seriously, is time consuming, because it actually means interaction both within your blog but also with discussions outside your blog. And knowing the time constraints of top officials I understand if they don't blog (although Carl Bildt is the best example that it is possible). And better not to blog than to let your PR people blog in your name or to use your blog as another means to send out quasi-press releases (which some Commission blogs definitely do).

My compromise proposal would be: Allow the "lower ranks", people working in the Commissioners' cabinets or within the DGs to blog or to use Twitter or other means of web 2.0 communication, and to use them in their own name, with their own personalities, not pretending to actually be the Commission. You still get a personal view on the Commissioner's work, without forcing her or him to engage in all the nerve-wracking activities that come with the use of social media.

- on what will happen to the communication portfolio: President Barroso announced last week that Viviane Reding would be responsible for communication and citizenship as well as justice, fundamental rights and gender equality. Putting communication and citizenship together makes sense, it is something I have argued for before and I am pleased the President acted on it.

In my personal opinion, communication does not need to have a particular portfolio or DG. It is important that communication is seen as a true horizontal task, not something delegated to a specific portfolio.

What the Commission and other EU institutions lack is the ability to communicate among themselves, and you might better employ a communication coordinator than having a bureaucratic structure in the form of a full portfolio. External communication could be coordinated by the Commission President's communication service and executed by the PR people of the individual portfolios or DGs.

- there were a number of comments on the Citizens Initiative, many of which indicate precisely why we are having a public consultation – there are a lot of details to be sorted out. Some of you had very sensible suggestions – please make sure you contribute to the consultation! For the rest, yes the Commission will be obliged to make a proposal which will be put to the Parliament and Council. But no, petitions relating to the location of the seat of the Parliament or the UK leaving the EU are not issues on which the Commission can act.

This a good reminder that we all can contribute to the consultation procedure on the European Citizens' Initiative until the end of January.

- on the so-called ‘climate gate’ affair: I think the best replies came from George Mountbiot and George Marshall in the Guardian:

I leave that to you to judge.

- Finally, Julien Frisch criticises the procedures for choosing top posts in the EU and I agree with him. I think horsetrading behind closed doors does the EU no favours. I see no reason why candidates should not declare themselves publicly and be questioned, whether by the public or by parliament. Why should candidates for the post of Commissioner, for example, not have a public hearing first in their national parliaments?

First, the particular comment Margot is referring to was on the fact that Ashton was not presented earlier, making a public debate on her qualities impossible, and thus damaging the idea of promoting qualified women into top posts. My questions were: If the Socialist leaders had been convinced of her qualities, why not proposing her earlier? If even Ashton was surprised, how can the public be be convinced? And it gets even worse if you read the backgrounds provide by Jean Quatremer.

Second, regarding the proposal to present candidates for EU Commissioner to national parliaments I am not sure. It could be that this raises transparency, but it could also be that it raises national elements to the debate although Commissioners should be chosen according to merit and European orientation and not to internal national criteria. Having the candidates present themselves to the national public might put even more pressure on them to "represent" their nation.

Yet, since this European choice criteria still look like fiction, having national parliament hearings would at least reduce the impression that member states send unqualified Commissioners, people national leaders want to get rid of or that they want to provide with a last top post before retirement. The candidates would at least need to go through a public selection procedure that anyone could comment on, reducing the ability to send "anyone".

Another proposal I have read elsewhere (don't remember where) was that member states could openly propose two or three candidates so that the Commission President could balance her/his Commission according to qualification and gender and also forcing the Commission President to publicly explain why s/he picked certain persons. Now, Barroso can only explain why he put someone into a specific portfolio but he can always say that the person itself was sent to him.

In a choice situation, these choices could be publicly debated, and the European Parliament also had a basis for its deliberations when hearing the Commissioners.

And since democracy is all about choice and about public debate, putting forward candidates for all top posts ahead of their (s)election will be a crucial element in raising awareness for European democracy, a democracy that doesn't just present its results but that confronts the public debate, a debate that will hopefully become transnational and pan-European instead of being limited to a small number of European enthusiasts dancing on the head of a pin.

Well, this has become a long post, but since we don't know whether any new Commissioner will actually blog, we should use these opportunities for an open debate - hoping that this will not remain unheard but will be taken up by the European institutions to make European communication more open, more direct, and with a stronger will to interact.

Euroblogs in the "New Europe" weekly newspaper

I just wanted to use the opportunity to thank the editors of "New Europe" for printing euroblog articles in their weekly newspaper and for linking them on their front page.

I had the pleasure to appear twice over the last two weeks (see page 22 of the issues 559 & 560), first with my post "10 steps to becoming a Euroblogger" and this week with last Friday's article "A European Blog Action against a Commission without gender balance" that became reality quicker than I expected with the campaign for a "Gender Balanced Commission". But it is as much a pleasure to find my own texts published as it is to read the texts of other bloggers, seeing our content distributed in a new way and incorporated into editorial content.

What I particularly like with the blog section in New Europe is that it connects the world of blogging with the readers of classical newspapers, that it brings our texts from the widths of the net into the limited space of physical paper.

They, the editors, still keep their editorial control, they make the choices they would like to make for their readers, but we, the bloggers, do not have to change our style or rhythm, we don't have to follow editorial rules: They like it, they take it - if not, it's still online in our blogs...

I appreciate this a lot, and I can only commend the New Europe team for taking this step to link from the "real world" to us, the euroblogosphere - a different kind of hyperlink story.

In the Brussels bubble (4): Blogging and the closeness trap

Being in the Brussels bubble has been a particularly interesting experience as you may have noticed by my coverage - here, here (re-published in this week's "New Europe" (PDF), page 47), and here - and I wanted to reflect on how being in the bubble might affect the blogging process, in particular since I think about moving there next year.

Let me start with a quote from Kristine Lowe's very recommendable article "How blogs transformed and challenged mainstream media coverage of the credit crisis" (found via Benteka on Twitter):

"[T]he vast majority of bloggers are private persons who start blogging for personal reasons. That means there are no time limits, no word limits and rarely any close ties to sources or public relations operators to pay heed to. This may also be a key to why specialist blogs often offer more thorough, in-depth coverage of issues."

One of the the most important characteristics of this blog, I have noticed, is the lack of close ties to sources. The sources I usually use are either original documents, public news sources, or content provided by persons who I mostly know through blogging or the use of Twitter. What is common to all these is that they are inherently public, although they might in many cases not be very visible to a wider audience.

So although some of the sources are based on social ties, they are still based on publicly visible relations, most of which are even grounded on the explicit open exchange of information or discussiosn about issues of joint interest between bloggers or Twitterers. Referring to such kind of information - even in a critical way - is an expected and well-established behaviour that characterises the spirit of the blogosphere/twittersphere.

What I experienced in Brussels is that while talking to people, while entering the "informality sphere", you get access to information that are not or only vaguely public. However, as a blogger used to publish most of what he finds interesting I realised that I lack the grid to classify which kind of information I may regard as public and which have to be kept as background knowledge.

Can you quote sources when you receive information through real-life social relations, and do I have to make it explicit before talking to somebody that anything said could find itself in my blog? Can I publish hearsay, or do I need to cross-check it journalistically? How does talking about what you heard in a not explicitly public meeting influence the future relation to the persons you were talking to?

Let me give you a true example:

I was in a bar speaking with journalists. A Commissioner enters, joins the round, and is then interviewed by one journalist, who is writing down the answers into his notebook. At some point, the journalist asks a question that the Commissioner does not want to answer. The journalists puts away his notebook, and the Commissioner is then answering the question, assuming that it is not quoted then.

The answer to this question would have been quite interesting for readers of this blog, but standing there I was not sure whether the two others were actually aware of the fact that I might have other standards than they assumed. Do I put away the notebook in my brain, too, or can I write it down virtually to make it public later on?

I was not sure whether writing about the situation would in some ways interfere with the work of the journalist, whether it would violate the (assumed) informality of the situation, and whether writing about it would influence the future behaviour of both, the journalist and the Commissioner, regarding third persons or even regarding the exchange of information among themselves.

And there were more situations in which I got to know extremely interesting things that I would like to write about but where I realise that the social nature of the information is somehow making me feel uncomfortable to blog about it.

What I conclude from my days in Brussels is that being in the bubble exposes you to much better information than you might ever find in public sources (including social media). However, getting this kind of information is not necessarily making your blogging better, because it is much more difficult to judge how to publish this kind of information compared to re-publishing what is already public.

I had the impression that blogging feels less transparent when you don't write about interesting things you get to know. But I realised that I still cannot write about everything, especially not as long as it is not absolutely clear that I regard everything I hear as public. And the latter might rather scare off those sources that could provide the most interesting information, reducing the added value of the presence in the bubble, at least for the blogging process.

Altogether, I think that there is a real advantage of not having close social relations to sources, of relying on public documentations, because you cannot spoil these. This seems to contradict what Mathew describes as the added value of the "European Offline Public Space", but being in the bubble and interacting with people in the city incorporates you into the "informality sphere" - and when being a part of it you might quickly lose your distance that is so desperately needed to critically follow the process, because very few people actually seem to do this in Brussels.

In the Brussels bubble (3): Are blogs and social media any useful?

On the long road to a common European Public Sphere, I used my short trip to the Brussels bubble (see my previous posts on this trip here and here) to discuss with different communication professionals about the role of blogs and other social media to advance EU politics.

First, I asked the journalists I met whether they'd find euroblogs helpful for their work and what kind of articles were most interesting for them. There seemed to be an agreement that euroblogs are part of their sources and that they read euroblogs to get new perspectives on certain topics and to find original information presented in an original way. Of most value were those posts that would make them aware of new things they hadn't come across so far. Blogs are seen as a kind of pre-filter for the mass of raw information available. Bloggers that screen, summarise, and discuss original information thus seem to be of most value for journalists.

I think that is a reasonable point, especially one that goes beyond the standard blogger vs. journalist dichotomy.

Others, like the lobbyists/PR consultants, European political party employees and also Commission officials seem to be screening both the euroblogosphere but also Twitter in order to be able to react to new developments, and the information they are getting in both spheres seem to be quite relevant for their work or are at least becoming more important. However, I have the feeling that there is much room for development, and that the use of social media both for information gathering as well as for active communication is in some ways at a very early stage of development, and the main developments are yet to come for these actors.

Thanks to the help of a fellow Twitterer from the European Parliament (thanks a lot again!), I was also able to talk to the European Parliament web editors, a meeting I hadn't foreseen before the trip but that was extremely fruitful, for both sides I hope.

Part of our discussion was on how one could advance the European Parliaments online communication in order to reach out to new audiences.

The point I was making very strong - not just with them but with most people I met - is that in order to make European politics more appealing, we have to leave the black box of EU decision-making and get to a stage where the whole process, not just the final result is more visible and traceable for the "outside world". To get there, we inter alia have to personalise EU policy-making, we have to show who is responsible at what stage, how the debates start and how they end. And social media are particularly able to do this.

But when they - blogs, Twitter, Facebook etc. - are employed, it has to be clear this does not only imply personalisation of one-way communication, but should also include the willingness to interact, to allow for the outside world to provide input that is then taken up by MEPs and others in a recursive process.

This seems to be standard knowledge to anyone involved in social media, but as one can witness from many social media communication efforts of politicians or institutions, the real understanding that this time it is not just a change in means but also in attitudes and behaviours still needs to reach out.

Just not to be mistaken: I saw that the web editors of the Parliament are actually having these discussions among themselves, that they are well aware of all this. But I also realised that changes in the (online) communication always have to be evaluated in the light of the teams responsibility for the communication of a collective organisation in which their impartiality and the balance between the political groups has to be guaranteed - which isn't as easy as it might look from the outside (which won't stop us, the outside, to be demanding... :-)).

But they looked really enthusiastic, interested and willing to get the visibility of the Parliament to a new level - and I can only ask all politically responsible persons within and outside the EP to support them in their endeavour!!

In the same line, I also told that I find their blog (as any open communication from inside institutions) extremely helpful, because you understand better what kind of considerations and thoughts are behind changes or new developments. The blog opens up the black box of the administration - the "bureaucracy" - and shows that there are human beings (with human smells) working together for us. And I hope my comments did not create extra work for some of the human beings...

But not only the institutions have to change, we - citizens willing to make the European Public Sphere a reality - also have to consider how we can actually contribute to bring things forward.

With Mathew, who has already written a number of extremely inspiring posts on the European Online Public Sphere, the added value of blogging, and the role of the EU institutions (e.g. here, here, and here), I intensively discussed how one could develop a European blogosphere that is intelligently specialised along policy areas and also reaches from and into the national blogospheres.

This was the real-life follow-up to what I started with my post on the creation of a "European blog discourse" earlier this year. I think we agreed that such a project is absolutely necessary but will face a number of challenges - who secures the translations, who filters information from the national blogospheres, who could fund necessary support structures, would external financing influence the credibility of the process, and who would administer possible funds - and that we should discuss these more in detail.

We will start doing this in a collective blog uniting interested (euro- and other) bloggers. The blog should be set up in the near future, maybe under the roof of Ideas on Europe, to unite our discussions in one public forum, not to disperse it over to many places and blogs, which makes it hard to follow for outsiders.

But to find an end to this post:

What I could see in all the meetings I had is that social media is changing institutions and actors in Brussels, and that most are trying to adapt, both out of necessity and out of conviction that these developments are actually good - and I think we as citizens can contribute by sharing our thoughts and by demanding that the changes are made in our interest and in the interest of a transparent European democratic system, whatever this might look like.

Where it will lead us is not so clear and will need a definition that won't be definite either, but that there needs to be something more is absolutely sure.

PS.: I realise by the length of this post that I took quite some food for thought from Brussels with me. In the next blog post on the Brussels bubble I will thus share some thoughts that came to my mind during these days on possible problems blogging faces when it goes local in Brussels.

In the Brussels bubble (2): The informality sphere

My trip to Brussels is over, and after my earlier article on my first impressions from Brussels (re-published on page 26 of the latest issue of the New Europe weekly newspaper) let's look at the human side of the bubble.

As I have told before, I wanted to use my first real trip to Brussels to meet a number of people involved in European affairs, in particular in EU communication, and I managed to speak with about three dozens of persons - alone or in groups, shorter or longer - over three working days and the Saturday evening (after the Irish referendum results where out).

I could meet several journalists, lobbyists and PR agency consultants, staff and activists of European parties, officials from the Commission and the Parliament, persons working in European NGOs as well as a number of persons I knew only from the euroblogosphere and eurotwittersphere before (some of the latter overlap with the former).

Surprisingly, and in contrast to what I have described in my first post on the Brussels bubble, the people I met were much more open than the eurodistrict architecture lets expect.

I had extremely interesting talks and discussions with everyone I met - and I am not exaggerating out of politeness - so I am thus extremely thankful for anyone who was willing to meet and was ready to discuss about EU communication issues from different angles.

The main thing I have learned is that, within the Brussels bubble, most information is available on an informal basis by anyone who is (professionally) working to get them. And if a direct contact does not know, he or she will have a contact that knows.

The problem is that much of this information is not sharable or not shared beyond personal relations, meaning that it remains in the hands of a limited audience instead of being spread into a wider public.

This "informality sphere" is probably a specific feature of the political system of Brussels in which human contacts seem to be the main channels to raise awareness; only through them you notice political processes that are actually ongoing but not yet or never covered by national and international media and their EU correspondents.

Different to national public spheres with a fully developed media scene that is able to cover even minor political events or to keep track of longer legislative projects, there is no such pendant in Brussels where most EU correspondents, small in numbers, report for very specific national audiences on anything EU-related. Due to these dispersed audiences and the lack of width and depth in reporting there is enough room for the "informality sphere", filling the gap of public information flows with private information exchanges.

This might not sound surprising for insiders - and maybe not even for outsiders - but talking to many of the people you see that they actually know quite well what is going on around them, that they have information they would like to share, but that there are no means to communicate publicly since there are no mechanisms in place beyond the informal personal meeting.

However, what I have realised by the readiness to meet me and to talk openly about work and EU politics with a blogger, including critical remarks about certain developments within or outside one's own institution, is that there is a lot of room for informed citizen journalism or insider reporting from people working with or within the institutions.

The bubble is ready for this kind of information dispersion, you just need some people who are ready to take on the challenge and do it. Some of the (probably true) rumours that are available in the cafés and bars of the eurodistrict could actually find a wider European audience, pressuring institutional actors to confirm or officially deny them.

In the end, the human face(s) hidden behind the walls of the eurodistrict buildings or behind cups of coffee in the bars of the Place Luxembourg only has to be made visible - and I will use my next post on the Brussels bubble to talk more about blogging and the use of social media to achieve this goal.

Creating a European Public Sphere: A European blog discourse?

I was eating with a former study colleague of mine yesterday evening, someone deeply acquainted with modern technologies and social media, discussing about life and web.

This person has inspired my early blogging - before "Watching Europe". He is also the one who proved to me the political use of Twitter by reporting about a real-life discussion meeting (where we both participated) on the use of the web for politics live on Twitter and asking questions coming from Twitter followers to the speaker on the panel - this was 1 1/2 years ago. He also knows the German blogger and social media scene pretty well.

One of the things he raised in our discussion about what he would like to see in the Euroblogging scene is a transnational discourse on European topics. He proposed that a group of European bloggers from different European countries should pick a current EU-topic and report about the coverage and opinions in their respective countries, including a personal account.

The articles should be in English, but the summaries could be translated into other EU languages. By cross-linking these articles it might be possible to create bits of European discourses that could be a good read.

He also proposed that we use the BOBs, the Deutsche Welle Blog Awards at next years re:publica conference, to bring together a bunch of active European bloggers to get this thing bigger.

Reflecting on this idea, I was thinking about a possible technical/ organisational solution for this exercise:

It would be a wiki-like blog with a bunch of bloggers from different countries writing collectively. Someone puts up an article on a current EU topic summarising the press and blog discussions in her/his country, using hyperlinks to fill the story with life and to keep the article relatively short. Any other contributor can later edit the post by adding his own country's perspective. Step by step, the article would grow bigger, with every new contribution getting closer to a complete overview.

The advantage would be twofold:

First, this individual starting approach (compared to a collective agreement on which topic to choose) will ease the initiation of new posts. And second, the collective editing of a single post will keep together the discourse on the same topic in a single place, easing it for the reader to get an overview over the actual discourse.

And even if a post on one topic will just encompass the perspective(s) of two different countries on the same issue, this could be an inspiration for further debate or a way to see how different issues are perceived in different (or very similar) ways.

What do you think about it - regarding both the substance of the proposal, and the technical side on how to implement it?

Creating a European Public Sphere: Blogs translated (1)

The creation of a European Public Sphere will need more efforts to bring different linguistic spheres together.

One of the efforts I will undertake in this regard is to translate, from time to time, articles from other blogs into English.

This will mostly relate to blog posts in French, Spanish, or Romanian - the languages I can read well enough besides English (and German for which there is already the category "The EU in German blogs".)

If you are the one I am translating, don't hesitate to tell me if you don't like this or when you find any mistakes in my translation.

Let's start today with a post from the Spanish blog europe@as titled "La ciudadanía europea en un click" which covers one of my favourite topics, that is the creation of a European Public Sphere:

The European cititizenship in one click

On europe@as we like to ask questions, but we are not used that we are questioned. Hence, I was perplex when Robert Rode, from the Europe Direct & Luis Vives Foundation sent me a mail asking me to answer a questionnaire. This was the result:

The abstention at the ballot boxes at the last European elections has marked the disinterest of the citizens for the process of constructing Europe. The "democratic deficit" for which the European institutions are frequently blamed comes together with a "communication deficit". The key to escape from this one-way street would be a communication aiming at the creation of a European Public Sphere. In between the initiatives to get Europe closer to the citizens via communication, europe@as sticks out and has been awarded by the European Commission representation in Spain as the blog with the best European news article (for "The United States of Europe").

Question: Your blog has been recently awarded by the Representation of the European Commission in Spain. What importance do such awards have for a blog like yours?

Answer: In my opinion, there is a double importance. On the one side, this has objectively given more visibility to a European blog which was operating at the margins of visibility and that has seen the number of visits multiplied. If this competition will continue, we will see very interesting things. On the other side, from a more personal, subjective point of view, I thought that the articles published were not followed by anyone who wasn't among the regular visitors coming to this blog. However, I realised that people working in and around the Commission were following the comments with interest, including those critical to the functioning of different aspects of the EU.

Question: Today, the European Union consists of 27 member states, it has 23 official and many regional languages. Is it possible to create a common public space?

Answer: I am sure that it is not only possible but that it is necessary. There were some previous attempts in the written press and in audiovisual media. But it is in the internet where this utopia - a European Public Sphere - is going to be a reality. Here are some examples: Presseurop, Café Babel, etc.

Question: Do you think that without the internet one can reach 500 million Europeans?

Answer: If in Europe at this time there was an effort in the audiovisual field to reach out to all Europeans, we now would have the field covered by the internet. But I don't think that the internet alone can reach out to the 500 million Europeans. Among other reasons, it is necessary not to lose sight of the fact that there is also illiteracy for new technologies in certain parts of the population. Under the present circumstances, there is a need to combine audiovisual media and the internet to reach the majority of the population.

Question: In which way the European institutions will have to engage more and better in order to overcome this so-called "communication deficit"?

Answer: This is the One-Million-Question, and to a large extend this is the question which at that time (2003) I tried to answer with my doctoral thesis titled "The press and education in the process of European integration".

Dr. Nikolas Busse, the FAZ, and quality journalism on EU affairs

For years now, I am a regular and very satisfied reader of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) (in the e-paper version), one of the two major German national daily quality newspapers (the other one is the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ)).

Even during the times when I lived outside Germany I continued reading this newspaper, especially because of its international news which cover even minor events that other newspapers wouldn't even notice.

However, I've always thought that the FAZ wasn't covering EU affairs to the extend it should have been doing, in particular compared to its international and economic news.

A recent scientific publication on the Europeanisation of the national press (which included the FAZ over the years 1982, 1989, 1996 and 2003) supported this personal point of view. And when the newspaper suppressed their weekly page especially dedicated to EU matters some months ago, I was quite disappointed.

But now, in connection with a number of articles by its Brussels correspondent Dr. Nikolas Busse (starting from the one mentioned on Twitter some weeks ago), I have the feeling that there is an upwards trend in the reporting on European and in particular EU affairs.

The articles Busse writes are written from a Brussels perspective, covering EU-related news in the most natural way, quoting new German MEPs like Jan Philipp Albrecht without creating big personality stories, mentioning little details that go beyond the standard reporting on large summits, and discussing issues that are of current relevance both from a national and an EU perspective.

I also have the impression that Busse gets more space for his articles, and I hope this is not just because of the summer break (although seeing the German parliamentary elections approach, he might have harder times very soon), but that this will continue in the future.

To make a long story short: I wanted to write my first article after returning from blogging holidays about the fact that I didn't notice anything EU relevant over the last two weeks - but this wouldn't be true thanks to Dr. Busse.

Read also: Kosmopolit on EU news in regional newspapers

Creating the European Public Sphere: Some remarks on the European Court of Justice Blog by Allard Knook

Allard Knook is writing a blog in which he summarises European Court of Justice rulings and on which I would like to briefly comment.

I intended to write these comments on his blog, but there the function is deactivated and a contact address is not to be found, either. So I'll comment here.

First, as a representative example, take a look at the latest post on the Court judgement Case C‑558/07, S.P.C.M. and others.

The first thing you will notice is that there is no link to the original judgement, so if you want to read the full text on your own, you have to go to the Court's website and research on your own. [Overlooked the link at the end of the posts; JF]

The second thing is that the introductory clause summarising the judgement is really short while the post is rather long and written in a very juridical style.

So while going through my RSS feeds, I usually go through Allard's posts just reading the first sentence, which always feels very unsatisfactory because I think it would be worth following the ECJ's decisions more closely.

But Allard is apparently writing for a distinct legally interested audience, focussing on "broadcasting" and passive consume of his texts with the comment function deactivated.

This is a pity, because he is doing an important work which could have a much broader effect outside the judicial world.

For comparison, look at this article on the European Court of Human Rights blog and the final paragraphs of the post:

" [...] Although again the Court does not formulate a general right to access to documents, what it does clarify is that once access on the national level is ordered (in this case by a court), such access should be effective and be given within a reasonable time. In this case, the authories had been so obstructive, that the European Court did not shy away from calling their behavior arbitrary.

A case for the history books - and for Court watchers too, of course!"

This puts into understandable words how important/ relevant/ interesting this judgement is in a wider context, and the whole article is rather written with the intention to explain the ruling than to produce a judicial summary.

In fact, the ECJblog would not have to change much. There is no need to change in style if this is what the main audience needs and wants.

But with a slightly longer "citizens' summary" (2-3 sentences) at the beginning, shortly explaining the importance and range of a judgement for the Union as a whole or for a certain policy area (e.g. in comparison to previous judgements), Allard's blog could have enormous effects into the wider European public.

I hope Allard will read these comments - my interest is in raising public awareness for European policy-making and law-shaping, and we should combine sources and resources to come closer to this goal!

Dear newly elected MEPs,

the coming week, with its first plenary session of this term, will be the visible start of a new life for many of you, and I applaud you for having taken this path into a European institution.

You are part of the tiny flame of European democracy that burns for 30 years now, ever stronger but still tiny. You carry the heavy load of being responsible for this little flame, and be sure that you will be held accountable for that over the next five years.

As a citizen, I expect that you bring in your local, regional, and national knowledge to shape European decisions in a way that respects the needs of your constituencies while having in mind the overall good of all EU citizens.

I expect that you are absolutely transparent about what you think, what you earn, and what you do in the name of your function as co-legislator and representative of European citizens.

I don't accept any excuses for intransparency: A modern representative democracy has to be built on the credo that elected officials are responsible to the public not only during elections but at any moment of their term.

I don't mind if you are absent in plenary sessions if you have more important work to do. I don't mind if you earn extra money if you make this extra income public, and if this doesn't negatively influence your work as an MEP. I don't mind if you don't know something, if you don't have an opinion on another thing, or if you let your assistants do a part of the work you would be supposed to do if you are ready to take the responsibility for the outcomes.

As a European citizen I expect that you fully devote your time and energy to the task of making the European democracy better.

I expect that you put aside prejudices, personal conflicts, and old habits and replace them with openness, geniality, and new ways of thinking. The Union needs change, because the way it has been working in the past is not satisfactory anymore, and you are responsible to push for this change.

As a blogger, that is a citizen who makes his voice heard through this blog, I hope that part of this change will be a new way of communicating.

You have to understand that more and more citizens are ready to interact among themselves but also with you as elected officials. You have to understand that in order to make the step towards us citizens, not just during visits to towns and meetings, but also in between and publicly visible for everyone on the continent, you cannot simply work as MEPs used to work in the past.

Use all the possibilities of modern communication - in a mix that suits you best - and open your door(s) for all European citizens who are interested to take a look.

We want to know who you are, what you think, what you do. We want to discuss with you, challenge you, see whether your opinion is grounded on conviction and facts or on false assumptions and back room deals. Using modern means of communications is a way to interact personally while remaining public.

Yes, writing and commenting online demands more attention than a quick press release that you send out in the widths of the European media landscape (where it gets lost in the hands of a journalist who thinks you are unimportant).

But the investment in time, if it includes a change in mindset, too, will bring about trust and public recognition for you while fostering European public debates, debates in which you can set positions and standards if you are willing to take the risk.

Dear MEPs,

in the end you have been elected to take your own, sovereign, and well-reflected decisions. You represent us citizens, you should be accountable to us, and you should take into account that we have justified interest in knowing what you do and why you do it. But you are free to decide!

Even this little letter is nothing but a hint about what is expected from you from an individual citizen who can do nothing but speak in his own name. I am not elected by anybody, so I also don't expect to be taken more seriously than as a single voice of a possible 500 million.

What you do with it, depends on you alone - and I am glad about that!

Respectfully yours,

Julien Frisch, an EU citizen

Getting lulled and distracted: PR strategies in the European Web 2.0

Yesterday, The Lobby, a blog run by the PR agency Grayling (Brussels), lobbied for better strategies of European PR and communications agencies:

"PR is not about ‘pushing’ news, rather it is about creating relationships “with the greater communities of influencers and users who can help extend a story, intentions, value, and sentiment as a means of driving awareness, building communities, and empowering advocates over time”. [...]

[...] Brussels agencies are keen and the tools are all around us, but it remains to be seen whether Brussels and its opaque institutions are ready for them.

I challenge you to name a single senior Brussels PR executive who has 6 influential bloggers and 4 prolific Twitter users on speed-dial rather than 10 members of the Brusssels press corps (and who is willing to take his or her story to them rather than to the press)?"

This approach has to be seen in the wider context of the adaptation of public relations management that professional PR companies are going through these days. If I may summarise their tactics in two simple words: "Lull & Distract".

The first step is to become part of the community, if there is something like a "community":

PR companies establish blogs, like The Lobby (by Grayling), Public Affairs 2.0 (by Fleishman-Hillard) and Hyperthinker (by ZN) or at least react to blog posts written by others, like you could recently witness with the Hill & Knowlton CEO reaction to one of my blog posts.

More refined seems to be the strategic positioning of Burston-Marsteller:

Through the establishment of The New EP, a website informing about everything around the new European Parliament, including a blog-like front page that can be easily subscribed via RSS, as well as through the support of political debates, including the coverage on Twitter, they are apparently trying to build

• public attention,
• an image of competence in EP matters, and
• trust and relationship through targeted interaction with the euroblogosphere and the eurotwittersphere.

As far as these activities are directed towards the Web 2.0, they are meant to lull "us", bloggers and twitterers. We are supposed to get used of their presence, their knowledge, their arguments. We are supposed to see their contributions as "equal", happy that more people participate in our discussions.

But what one has to remember is that these companies want sell their services to well-paying customers.

All their activities are part of a strategy, either to position themselves as established players to get clients or to use their position to influence political actors for their clients. They are in competition with each other, competing about attention, about money, about influence.

Their interest is not to contribute to political and social debates because they have convictions that they like to defend. They don't socialise, inform, and discuss because they have so much fun doing this. They need to do this as part of their job, a job where they are not the actors but the advisors or the executors of whatever they are asked by their clients.

As soon as everyone around is lulled, accepting their activities as natural intervention of well-informed and competent actors, they will start using their position.

They will be bought (if they aren't already) by clients who are happy to get trusted and already embedded players to distract the general attention and to steer it towards the topics that their clients want to see discussed, at best going into the political direction the client would like them to go.

One of the "best" examples are GPlus and Aspect Consulting, which got nominated for the Worst Lobbying Award, supporting the Russian war propaganda, even though the strategy was still rather classical.

Altogether, I am watching the activities of the European PR agencies with interest but with caution - because they know what they do, and they do it for money.

PS.: And by the way, PR agencies are one of the most frequent recognisable groups of visitors to my blog.

Creating a European Public Sphere: The Hyperlink Story

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Inspired by a must-read article on Ribbonfarm titled "The Rhetoric of the Hyperlink" and following my recent critique of Jean Quatremer's way of "zero-link blogging", I would like to share some thoughts on the active creation of a European public sphere through hyperlinks.

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Let's start with the obvious: The creation of a genuine European public sphere would be the basis of a genuine European democracy, independent of the legal basis of the Union.

Yet, the lack of communicative links between national and European discussion threads and the lack of shared background knowledge, both across national borders and across groups on the European level, is impeding its emergence.

Because their method of story-telling is not based on links, traditional media cannot really contribute to a development that overcomes the divide of different national and policy-related public spheres. Their closed presentation of news usually does not foster cross-checking of facts and backgrounds, and they do not invite to participate in the debates around a particular topic.

The reason is that they miss the core element of virtual interaction: The hyperlink.

I think I had understood this before, but only after reading Venkatesh Rao's article on Ribbonfarm yesterday it really made sense.

So far, I thought of hyperlinks in EU-related articles more in the sense of a possibility to create connections between information, discussions, and people: They hold together what would be atomised thoughts, they tie in with what has been said before, and they are thus constructing the intertemporal and interpersonal reality of (still limited) European debates.

If their only function would be to be the glue between those who are writing, a system of reference and reverence, they would already fulfil an important function, one that I consider to be one of the main elements of blogging.

But in fact, the use of hyperlinks is not only a way to create connections to others. Hyperlinking allows completely new forms of writing about European politics, and those who understand this can actively contribute to the creation of a European public sphere, both within the institutions and in the wider public.

If hyperlinks become an active part of the language we speak when we write online, we can help to build bridges between those who are already inside the debate and those who want to join. And thanks to the inspiration from Venkatesh, I can give you a simple example.

Imagine the following sentence in a newspaper article (or anywhere else):

• "After long discussions in COREPER that have been echoed in the European blogosphere, a compromise proposal has been made that satisfies even the strongest critics."

And now the same sentence with hyperlinks (exemplified!):

• "After long discussions in COREPER that have been echoed in the European blogosphere, a compromise proposal has been made that satisfies even the strongest critics."

The first version of the sentence expects from the reader that she or he knows everything, from the abbreviation COREPER to past discussions, from the idea of a European blogosphere to a mysterious compromise proposal.

If you have the perfect reader, this sentence is read with delight.

But the same reader could also read the same sentence with hyperlinks, with the same delight. For her/him, there is no need to follow these hyperlinks.

However, anyone who has never heard about COREPER or who didn't know that there was a European blogosphere, someone who didn't follow the discussions in the past or who wasn't aware of positive reactions in the present, can read the sentence in combination with everything s/he finds through the hyperlinks, in accordance with her/his interests and knowledge.

In principal, this is very similar to what you know from Wikipedia, but there the links are more related to word-concept-relations while we can use them more actively, more creatively, mixing explanation and provocation, allusion and confusion, guiding the reader while interacting with other writers.

Hyperlinks in this sense are an interaction between the writer and other writers as well as an interaction between the writer and the reader(s), one that goes beyond the unidirectional sending of thoughts.

In the Euroblogosphere and in the overlapping Eurotwittersphere as well as in the European online news service EurActiv, the use of hyperlinks - although different in style and scope - is a widely accepted standard and a more or less natural practice in the creation of European discussions.

Links are used both as reverence mechanism between peers but also as cognitive bridges for those who would not understand the full extend of an article without this relational guidance by the author, without forcing the latter to (re)write what has already been written before.

Despite the many shortcomings one could list for the Euroblogosphere, and probably also for EurActiv, this is definitely a crucial plus one should not underestimate.

Ultimately, everyone who is writing about European politics has to understand that the audience we speak to is very diverse, in terms of nationality, involvement in EU-related matters, knowledge of technical details etc.

If we want to create a European public sphere, we have to be aware of this diversity, and address it with the possibilities digital writing offers. In particular, since usually people tend to blame the many official languages for the failure of the EU to create common debates and to become a common polity.

Yet, it is not so much the number of languages as it is the inability of newcomers to easily follow and join European debates, debates which are basically held between EU experts using the language of EU experts - not because they want to keep others out but because this language is the most efficient to discuss EU-related matters.

The conclusion is that we may write texts that are full of implicit references, EU-specific language and filled with technical details and abbreviations.

But if we have an interest in involving not only those already heavily involved, we have to be creative and effective in the use of meaningful, text-based hyperlinks, making the implicit explicit and the technical easily comprehensible for the wider audience we want to reach out to without losing our immediate target group(s).

Creating a European public sphere is thus absolutely possible - we just need to use the right hyperlinks!

Why the "Coulisses de Bruxelles" is not a really good blog

Something that is always striking me at Jean Quatremer's Coulisses de Bruxelles is that he almost never quotes other blogs.

In fact, over the last 30 "blog" posts (that is three weeks) he doesn't link almost anybody beside himself and sometimes La Tribune (see for example his latest post). How can you write a "blog" and not even quote others (which necessarily would be accompanied by links)?

If even Charlemagne is able to quote a blogger from time to time, why shouldn't it be possible in the "Coulisses de Bruxelles"?!

Blogging is about creating debates, about interaction, and without really reacting to others, writing remains a simple, one-dimensional activity as we are used in print.

In fact, the Coulisses are registered on Technorati, which ranks blogs according to their in-links, and it is pretty highly ranked. This means that other bloggers often consider what Jean is writing by giving him credit for that - while he is extremely hesitant to do the same.

I cannot remember that I ever became aware of interesting blog discussions in France through the Coulisses. It never makes me interested in others. It never seems to be aware of what is going on around itself. It might be a journalistic activity, but it lacks the spirit that fills the blogosphere.

This makes "Les Coulisses de Bruxelles" a well-read and appreciated website, but not a really good blog.

Update: See the follow-up post to this article on the importance of hyperlinks for the creation of a European public sphere.

EU politics, Twitter, and the human smell of Brussels

This is not a blog post trying to jump on the hype wagon of Twitter - I just want to say some words on the relevance of Twitter for EU politics (after Jon recently posted about Twitter for politics more generally).

Let's start with history: My first tweet ever (on 26 January 2009) was

[Julien Frisch] [h]as just entered the twittersphere - you have to do what everyone else does, right?

and the reason I joined was that I started to get serious traffic coming from Twitter, as far as I could see this traffic came from feeds of other eurobloggers like Kosmopolit.

This is why I tweeted "you have to do what everyone else does". Getting targeted traffic from Twitter accounts of fellow bloggers meant that the medium I was aware of for a good year but wasn't really interested in at that time started to become relevant for me and my blogging.

I started very slowly, because Twitter is a medium that is hard to follow in a simple browser.

Only after I started using TweetDeck and then Nambu I became fully aware of the functionality of Twitter as a true complementary tool to my blog and the wider euroblogosphere, both in writing and in reading.

With regard to blogging, it has freed me from thinking about whether it is worth writing about a little detail or a minor site I found. Now I tweet it, and those who follow me can decide on their own whether they look at it or not.

Twitter is also quicker and more responsive than blogging.

During the European Parliament election evening, for example, I focused on Twitter, letting myself direct to different websites, videos, streams while following the talk of a European public discussing results, coverage, and general politics in an open and very refreshing way. But there is a more important change going on:

My perception of EU politics starts to become more dynamic thanks to Twitter.

I am following a number of MEPs, Commission officials, Swedish Presidency persons, PR people, journalists, and other involved people (like most of the Eurobloggers). But I also follow a number of hashtags (like #eu) to see what people I don't follow are saying about things I am interested in. And I get into discussion with them, whenever I think I should do so. And usually there is also a reaction.

This quadruple perspective on people actually doing EU politics, influencing EU politics, covering EU politics, and those discussing EU politics transforms EU politics into a dynamic political process. And since all Tweets are generally equal, their mixture creates an awareness-sphere compounding diverse talk into a consistent mass of political reality.

This is significant, since so far, the EU never appeared to be a real-time polity.

Things move slowly, diplomatically, administratively. And everything the machine spits out makes you feel this heavy slowness. Movement might have been within the Brussels bubble, but it appeared like movement for the sake of movement, as if many important people were pedalling without getting the bike to move. Almost nothing of that was felt outside the city.

And although this might still not change, the eurotwittersphere is making it more interesting to follow.

The heavy smell of paper files is slowly replaced by the body-odour of real people. Yes, you can also smell them stink, but at least it is not just imagination as it was before.

Content is one thing, but real people and tangible dynamics are the spices in the soup of life in general and of politics in particular.

In this regard, Twitter is a chance for real persons working in and for the EU to make the "black box" become transparent - which will not just be helpful for a more open and democratic process, but it will also help to show to the continent the human face(s) behind the diplomatic-administrative talk.

If EU politicians, officials, and administrators realise this opportunity, the EU has a little chance of becoming a better polity. But probably somebody will invent some stupid regulation to never make that happen...

Update (24 June 2009): Just found a short discussion on the use of Twitter by the Commission.

The EU in German blogs - New series

One of the lessons I have learned over the last twelve months and through these European Parliament elections:

We will have to foster transnational communication on European issues in order to create a European public sphere!

I will therefore start monitoring German blogs to see if and how they treat European issues. This will become a new series on Julien Frisch - Watching Europe titled

"The EU in German blogs"

As far as possible, I will also comment on those issues in German blogs in order to create argumentative links to European discussions or realities.

The Euroblogosphere has to become a hub for the wider European blogosphere instead of being a separate group of bloggers - and if we manage to do so, we will win as much the national blogospheres!

The Financial Times Europe: Serving the European elite sphere?

I have come across a scientific article covering the role of the Financial Times (FT) Europe in the EUsphere.

In the freely accessible and primarily descriptive - but not less interesting - article titled

"Exploring the European elite sphere: The role of the Financial Times"

written by Farrel Corcoran & Declan Fahy and published in Journalism Studies (Volume 10, Issue 1; 2009), the FT is depicted as the central press organ in Brussels.

Its journalists receive privileged access to low-, mid-, and high-level officials, leaving their jealous colleagues working for national newspapers behind.

Its news coverage also encompasses seemingly unimportant details of EU law-making, because these details are particularly interesting for the specific audience of the Financial Times: European political and business elites, those who care for bureaucratic details for a living.

The authors conclude that the role of the FT Europe is not that of a contributor to a general European public sphere. Precisely spoken, the FT is part of the European "elite sphere", the unaccountable network of EU administrators, specialists, and lobbyists.

Its exposed position in the wider Brussels system is grounded on this particular role and on the particular interests of its readers.

Based on these findings, Corcoran & Fahy come to much wider conclusions:

European identity may develop along two very separate tracks. One is a continuation of the ‘‘banal nationalism’’ [...] [t]he other track is towards a cosmopolitanism embedded in the transnational culture of European elites, whose material interests stretch beyond national boundaries and whose social imaginary is nourished by elite media such as the FT.

This is, to a large extend, also a theme of this blog.

The question for me is, whether we are able to find a middle way, a communicative bridge between our individual elitist cosmopolitanism and the wider public, or whether there is no choice: We either have to be part of the EU elite sphere or to remain in the lows of the "banal nationalism".

I am afraid I know the answer, but I am still looking for another on.

European marketing via European blogs: The artist's approach

Writing a blog on European issues seems to attract quite different audiences with very diverse interests.

Today I was contacted by a French artists named Martin Le Chevallier who asked me whether I would be be willing to advertise a piece of art called "The Holy Flag".

Since one of the goals of this blog is to understand the dynamics of the European public sphere, if such a thing exists, and since I was wondering why this blog was regarded as a possible means to promote art, I have asked Martin some questions that were of interest to me.

And he was ready to answer.

Julien: Martin Le Chevallier, we had never spoken or met before, but earlier today you contacted me via email asking whether I would be ready to publicise your latest piece of art, "The Holy Flag". How did you find my blog, why did you decide to contact me, and what were your expectations?

Martin Le Chevallier: "The Holy Flag" is the story of a miracle: the apparition of a Christ face on an european flag. A procession brought this relic to the european institutions in Brussels, as a divine sign of the christian identity of Europe. My will was to bring this parodic story out of the artistic circle, to bring it to a more political circle. So I tried to submit it to people involved in the European debate. And going around on the web, I found your blog.

Julien: Is this part of a true marketing strategy? Did you also contact other bloggers? Which further means do you use to make yourself and your art known, and what has proven to be the most effective way?

Martin Le Chevallier: I send it to several bloggers. Maybe, it's a kind of marketing. But I'm not sure that putting bottles in the ocean is really efficient! I made a piece about the success strategies: an artistic performance audit. The consulting firm gave me some advices concerning the commercial, mediatic or relational strategies... This can be consulted here: http://www.martinlechevallier.net/english/A_audit.html

It seems that the most effective way is to be lucky once in your life. Meeting the right person at the right moment...

Julien: When I saw "The Holy Flag", I wasn't really sure whether this was the ironic comment of a critical artist or the provocative presentation of religious ideology. Is confusion intended or do you actually want to transport a clear message? What kind of reactions did you get so far? Any surprises?

Martin Le Chevallier: According to me, it is clearly parodic. But, obviously, it's not! I thought that a such idolatrous approach would the idea of a christian Europe in a quite ridiculous way... But anyone can make up his mind looking at it:
http://www.martinlechevallier.net/TheHolyJourney.html

Just a clarification regarding the last question:

I really had some doubts on the intention behind this piece of art before I researched a little bit on Martin. I have seen enough bizarre things around Europe and the blogosphere that appear ironic but that are actually dead serious, especially when it comes to religion...

But as Martin said: Take a look yourself and comment on this piece of art. And afterwards, don't miss the chance to inform yourself about the atheist bus campaign!

Interlude (2): Digging deeper

Now that I am four weeks among those who blog about Europe and the European Union I am still figuring out how to dig deeper.

What added value - apart from the personal pleasure I have in blogging - can I, can we offer to ourselves and to the non-blogging readers in writing about European issues?

I have been blogging before, in a different context, but with very clear political intentions. The issues at that time were much more limited; blogging was part of a very specific political activity, it had a purpose and I knew who were my adversaries and who were my addressees. The field that is spread in front of me now is quite different.

Here, I do not have so clear-cut goals. What I feel is missing, is a European public sphere. I am dissatisfied that there is no good European media and only very few pan-European public discourses.

I am always looking for some more depth, for stories and analyses that keep up with the complexities that this continent offers. And with depth, I do not refer to scientific meticulousness. I am referring to stories and enquiries that stop scratching the surface or that look at everything European from a national angle, even though quite nicely disguised from time to time.

By blogging and reading a multitude of blogs I am trying to find this depth, this complexity, this dive below the surface.

And so, between the more spontaneous, "non-strategic" articles that reflect more my immediate need to tell and talk about something I have just read, I would therefore like to write (and also read from you, fellow bloggers!) a different level of articles that add more precisely to what I am looking for:

An all-European story.