Gallup's news from Europe
We want clear EU news we want it now!
In October 2007 the Commission issued a document entitled "Communicating Europe in Partnership". This brought together all the initiatives linked to the earlier White Paper on a European Communication Policy. The Commission recommended that responsibilities for communication should be shared amongst all stakeholders including all EU institutions and Member States. That's the decision-makers taken care of but what about the citizens?
Well just after the White Paper was issued Gallup conducted a Flash Eurobarometer survey (Decision Makers General Public) to test the views of those same European policymakers and the general public about the White Paper's main initiatives.
While the policymakers almost uniformly stated that EU news was important there was also encouraging news from the general public with 97% agreeing that "information about the EU should be widely available accessible in the citizens' own language and readily understandable."
But we don't understand!
The problem is that most (62%) Europeans feel that their national media do not provide sufficient information about the EU. Where information is received about two-thirds of European citizens consider it to be useful and only slightly less feel it's interesting. However only half of EU citizens find it easy to understand.
Those figures mask a greater lack of awareness as over three-quarters of citizens are unclear about the EU's structure many do not understand who is making key decisions and two-thirds are not certain who represents them in the European Parliament.
The question therefore is how to identify those responsible for correcting the situation? Well according to three-quarters of citizens the duty lies with national governments to provide better information about the EU and how it impacts their everyday life. As might be expected nationality plays a part here with people living in the larger Member States tending to feel that way the most (France 79% Germany 76% Poland 71%) compared to smaller countries like Ireland and Slovenia (both 38%) and Luxembourg (40%).
The decision-makers weighed-in behind the general public and expressed their own frustration. Just under three-quarters of policymakers agree that their nation's citizens receive an insufficient amount of information about the EU.
Be more professional
To correct this anomaly decision-makers (70%) want the Commission to train a more professional staff - along all the parts of the EU-information chain - in order that the Union's message is communicated more successfully to the public. Over half of those same decision-makers (53%) want the European Commissioners to be more available in their native countries in order to reinforce that same message.
As for reasons why news about the EU is so important decision-makers want to be informed because of the need to adapt to European regulations decisions and policies.
