March 29, 2007
Dane speaking
Communication with its citizens is a key part of the European Commission’s attempt to renew the EU after a subdued 50th birthday.
Jose Manuel Barroso, the president, wants to not only achieve a “Europe of results” but to tell people about them so they will value Brussels, if not love it.
An insight into just how hard this could be comes in a candid interview with Claus Haugaard Sorensen, who runs the EU’s communications directorate, in the latest issue of Communication Director, a European mag for the PR industry.
It is a job from hell, though if every fonctionnaire was a plain-speaking Dane, it would be lot easier.
Every national politician wants to come away from Brussels with a clear-cut victory and has no interest in talking up the careful compromise the Commission is trying to sell, he explains. You also need to tailor a message for 27 different audiences.
And the people employed to do it are not necessarily the right ones. The Commission is finally getting round to hiring communications specialists, in the way it does lawyers and accountants. But Sorensen says some of the commissioners’ spokespeople, the day-to-day link between the institution and the media, are not up to the job.
“Commissioners came in with their own people and some were press/communications-oriented and some were not. Only half of them had any real press experience.
“They have to learn to write press releases and speak to the press,” he adds.
In the internet age, he is also trying to give the EU website a “corporate image”. It is the world’s largest, with 6m pages: small wonder that even those in charge of it resort to Google to find anything.
Sorensen, and his political boss, Margot Wallstrom, the self-styled Mrs PR of Brussels, are trying to rope in the Commission’s delegations in member states to add “local colour” to what the bureaucratic beast is up to. But they are understaffed and “spend a lot of time picking up commissioners from airports or providing protocol”.
And their feedback from the rebellious provinces is also not always appreciated.
“Most people in Brussels know they should listen, but sometimes they get bad news and there is a very natural tendency that we don’t want to listen to bad news," says Sorenson.
“Personally I welcome bad news but there are other people in the system who don’t like to be told that the way they communicate in Brussels doesn’t fit with the local reality.”
Sorensen believes that national governments have to collaborate more in selling Europe but because communication is not enshrined in any treaty they meet only on a very informal basis, fearful of EU mission creep. “It is perfectly idiotic for one communication to be handled in France and another in the UK without any kind of link-up.”
His next move is to hire outside experts to give strategic advice. Perhaps he should just staff the entire place with Scandinavians.
