Interview: Kommissarin Wallström zur EU-Kommunikationsstrategie[en] 

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Starting with the process of presenting the EU's communications strategy. It has taken quite a long time hasn't it? It will take until June now won't it?

I'm not so worried about that. I am fully willing to defend this, to have a better quality of proposal in the end rather than to rush it. It's more important to get it right than to produce it quickly. It's common knowledge now that there have also been changes made in DG Press and Communication. It has proved difficult to structure the work so in the end we decided not to have the same group that we first set up. So we have changed the whole working method. 

Have you had consultations with outsiders? There were several stakeholders sending you things as early as October weren't there?

We are flooded with views and ideas on how to move this process forward. We definitely read them all and we keep records of everything to make sure that we do not forget anyone's input. But we are going to have to do this is in a more structured way as soon as we have the text in place. But it has been a long process. It is also important to anchor this whole process in the Directorate General with the people who will carry out and implement it, so it is also a matter of changing attitudes and the whole understanding in Europe.

We have been listening very carefully to officers from the [Commission's national representations] because they are central to this process. Either we change the way they work and their priorities or we shouldn't have them at all. We cannot continue like this when more than half of their time and more than half of the people in this DG are working on administrative matters. That is my impression. Ask anyone and they will tell you that the financial regulations today are so heavy that more than fifty percent of working hours are devoted to administration. It is all about checking to make sure that we don't do anything wrong or misappropriate any funds. But in the end, nobody will dare to do anything. So I think that ultimately it has a counterproductive effect. 

I am not saying that we should have lax rules. I believe in maintaining a sound level of checks on where money is going, but there has to be more flexibility and there has to be some accountability. You cannot create that by instilling a bureaucratic mindset in which officials push it from one level to the other and then hope that somebody else will take responsibility. 

Turning to the subject of the Commission offices in member states. It seems to be your intention to at least partially 'regionalise' the EU's communications policy. But is there also thinking along the lines of empowering regional offices to have a high level person in charge? Would you also give them autonomy? 

I would definitely like to go in that direction. They should be able to adapt and regionalise the news. What does this mean, for example, in Sweden? How will this affect the debate in Slovenia? What effect does something have on a particular country? We need to break down news from the EU into national or regional facts, figures and stories. But you need to have professionals to do that as well, so there is the matter of finding the right people and resources for the representation offices. Otherwise, we should just rethink the whole idea. If we are unable to change it as it is now, is it even worth having it? If we cannot change the way they work today, then we must rethink their whole role. 

They are currently being led by more junior people. Could you not put people in charge who are the same level as the director generals? 

But that is not the most important factor. It has to be the right people. We think too much in terms of, is this an A, B or C position? So we must select the right people. 

It's not about the rank but more about who can make decisions isn't it? There are all kinds of messages coming out from Brussels on the same day. They should be able to make a choice and say, "For my country, this message is more important than that one so I will concentrate on this point and tailor it to my local political concerns."

That I do not think is a problem. We will have people who can do that. What is missing today is people with communication skills. In many sections they do not even have a real press officer or someone who knows about good communications and that should be a quality. So one of the things that we discussed is to have a concours [EU competition] with this particular profile of people with communications skills. That has never been done before. People with communications skills have not been approached in the past. 

The hot issue these days is the directive on services that has provoked strong reactions between Paris and Brussels. If we think along those lines and imagine the Paris Commission office being given more independence and ability to 'regionalise' the information, could this situation have been dealt with differently?

I think that it illustrates another problem. It illustrates the fact that you have to integrate the communications aspect into each and every proposal. Sorry to keep reiterating my point, but this will be very much my line. That is, when you start to prepare a proposal - especially one that is as high in importance as this one - you have to integrate this aspect when you are preparing a consultation. These cannot have been unknown problems that occurred. The truth is, in the Commission, this was not a controversial subject at all. When we discussed this in the Prodi Commission it was not controversial.

What does it mean to integrate communication aspects from the very beginning? What should have been done differently?

They should have had a communications dossier in which they outlined the groups, explained how to consult with these groups and made preparations with them. And they should have highlighted in which ways member states would oppose this and what different member states would see as a problem? What do we want to name it? Do we continue to call it the 'Bolkestein directive'? How many people know what that is? Give it a name that nobody will understand and you will be sure to lose it. So we have done everything wrong. It was simply not well prepared, and looking back you can clearly state that. You don't need to discuss it in any further detail to see that it was under-prepared from that point of view. We were told that it was not controversial and there was no real debate in the Commission. But when it came to interpreting it and starting to think how to implement it; this proved to be highly controversial. So something had not been prepared enough. Maybe they thought that this had been sufficiently prepared, but apparently it was not, and you can never repair something by trying to paste on a type of communication strategy. 

Do you think that in the first six months, this Commission compared to the previous Commission is doing a better job communicating? Have there been lessons learned in the meantime? Have you managed to get any of your ideas through in the communications efforts made by this Commission? 

I think that there was exactly the same shaky start for the Prodi Commission if we think back. But we had more clearly defined tasks. For example, the Euro was an excellent example of communication. But it was an easier thing to communicate. You had a piece of Europe in your pocket. And of course enlargement. A bit trickier, but still it was very concrete and it was something that could be done here. We had a difficult start with the whole credibility of the Commission being called into question with the Buttiglione affair. What we have are, at least, very good intentions. But things do not change from one day to another. Not in a hundred days either. We just have to be realistic.

Lots of journalists are under the impression that this Commission is sending out contradicting signals. One week, you present the mid-term review in the Parliament. Barroso used imagery from one of your fellow commissioners that there were only three sons and one of them is ill etc. Then one or two weeks later you have the social agenda being presented, saying that the three dimensions have more or less the same value. So, in a way, journalists just don't know anymore. Is this a neo-liberal Commission or not?

 This is a political fight. This will go on. We will be seeking to strike the right balance [between the different elements of the Lisbon Strategy]. I counted and looked in the work program. I found 19 proposals on the environment. Since I know the portfolio, I could see that none of them had been scrapped. So what has been prepared will also be pursued. I think journalists did not fully read the part that was most important - Barroso's real message. He said: "Yes, you will have to care for the one who needs help the most, because he is sick or struggling with his homework - but this does not mean that you rank your children. They are all equally loved by you." But you must continue to work on other areas as well. It is not that you scrap one of them or two of them and focus solely on one. We will not do that, because it would not be the European way of making policy. But that debate will continue. I think we should just try to move on to delivery and implementation. 

So you are suggesting that either the journalists got it wrong or Barroso failed to communicate the message well enough? Or is it just the way of the world that sometimes journalists will pick up on the wrong end of the stick and put the spotlight on that? 

I think there are basically different political views in the background. But then you are left free to discuss this balance [between the different elements of the Lisbon Strategy] before too. If you ask me, I think that the Lisbon strategy has always been about creating jobs and goals. The economic pillar has been the strongest from the very beginning. Who can deny that? There has always been a focus on the economic pillar in everything that we have done because we are mostly used to that. This is what we know from creating the internal market and economic integration in Europe. This is well known territory. It is much more difficult working on the social field because we do not have competence there. The same applies for the environmental field. It is something new, compared to issues on trade or the internal market. So I do not see a big difference. In the end, the resolution from Parliament made it clear that you cannot present it as only one pillar but that we will continue to work on the three pillars. 

I have read the three proposals. The mid-term review, as well as the social agenda and the mid-term review for sustainable development that you are doing. There seems to be indeed a balance to be struck, but in some way you are not able to communicate that and you are sending some signals which are sometimes read by business: "OK, now we are going completely for the economic." And then a few weeks later, Barroso is speaking to the NGOs and they think that environment must be at least as important as economic growth and jobs. 

I do not think that we will ever solve this. It reflects a real political debate. 

And do you think that the Commission can be open about it, and admit to having differences? 

Yes. I try to be open. I try to reinforce the fact that this Commission reflects a political reality and a change in the political reality and composition in Europe. This is clear. So of course there will be more of those who want to pursue the economic side. However, we are a Commission for the whole of the European Union, and that is why we cannot say that this will be a purely business thing and that nothing else matters. That is not possible. That is not how we make policy. But we can also say that we are lagging behind in certain areas. 

We have not been able to create as many jobs as we need to do. We have not been able to create growth at the rate that we would wish for in Europe. So we also have to look at what we can do in these areas, and how we can combine it so that the other pillars reinforce that. This is also a point they have. If you have 162 or more agendas in the Lisbon Strategy and claim that everything is of equal importance, nobody would care. This is the first time that the Lisbon agenda has been controversial. 

Doesn't the confusion also become part of the communications problem? People are asking, what does the Commission really mean? 

I'm not so worried. I think that it is good for the Lisbon Strategy. The risk of political controversy surrounding the strategy is excellent. For the first time, the Lisbon agenda is creating some controversy. In Parliament and in member states, the issue has suddenly become interesting. As a result, it will be placed higher up on the political agenda. I think that the political clashes are good for the European Union. 

So you think the old regime of bad news is better than no news? 

It's not bad news. It's good that people see that there are political conflicts. 

One of the key players there is the national member states and the national parliaments plus, as regards the press, national editors. How are you going to approach these people? Do you have any particular plans to talk more to national parliaments and get editors in the national media more interested in European politics? 

I have a very concrete ten point program on this, which we have already begun to implement. In the transfer of information between the Commission and the parliaments we want to make sure they receive our proposals at an early stage in order to get a good opportunity to look at them. We have identified a number of areas in which we can already cooperate. There is also talk of developing a pilot project on the transport package, using it to test the new provision in the Constitution which allows national parliaments to show a 'yellow card' to the Commission if there are concerns about going against the principles of subsidiary. 

Does that mean in the next five years you will often visit the national parliaments to explain? 

I promised to go within my first eighteen months to visit all national parliaments so I have already started. I was in Ireland to meet with the Parliament and I will meet with every national parliament to explain. I have already been to COSAC meetings and this initiative has started off in a very positive way. 

So you will be flying around a lot in Europe, won't you? 

My theory is also that we will never be able to explain this whole project of European Union better unless it is anchored within the national and even regional political traditions and party systems. If they don't feel that this is a concern of theirs, that this is something that matters to them, I don't think that we will ever succeed. It has to trickle down in the party systems and the local political traditions of every member state. That is where the national parliaments come in. They are very important and they also have to change the way they work on EU matters. Now there is often a European affairs committee that engages in EU issues and none of the others committees take an interest. Now many parliaments have changed that. They put it to the sectoral committees and let them work on it, creating a totally different understanding of what is going on. 

It sounds like you will invest yourself personally quite strongly. I saw the speech you gave in Ireland the other day, when you were quoting Seamus Heaney. But will we see a different Margot Wallstrom presenting the EU in Sweden and another one in Slovenia and Portugal - each time being regionalised and taking into account local sensitivities? 

I think any speaker will have to understand that in order to reach out and to get people to listen, you will have to learn how to reach out to them. They will have to feel that there is something which appeals to them on a personal level - give them a description in which it is possible to recognise their country's own situation. So you have to be able to listen yourself. But it was striking to see the number of similarities between, for example, the Irish and the Swedish. They have very much the same understanding and share similar fears about the 'superstate' and militarisation. They have very much the same outlook.

I'd like to come to a question on financial means. I've been trying to find out for a while how much money is actually spent by the EU on communicating and nobody can give me an answer. 

Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, Commission spokesperson for Communications and Institutional Relations, joins the discussion: 
From the Commission I can give you an answer. If you look at the budget of DG Press and communications, about 65 million euros is spent in this sector. In 2005 it was spent on various communication tools and communication initiatives. That does not include human costs.

And how much percentage-wise is that of the overall budget? 

Of the total DG budget, it is about 30%. The overall budget is approximately 200 million euros. Most of this, you must remember is representations, and there is the huge cost of people posted at foreign representations. So there is sizeable expenditure on personnel. We don't have a global figure for the other institutions.

Commissioner Wallström, I find it strange that at the beginning of your mandate, that was not your first question. Do you not think the question of finances is relevant? 

It is always relevant, but the basic problem is neither the lack of resources nor the lack of staff. We have over 800 people in total working in this DG, including both those in the representational offices and those in-house. There is no lack of resources - the problem is we are not always able to use them fully, due to the complicated financial regulations. There is an example I use on many occasions. In one project, the city of Toulouse in France was asked to prove that it was a city. That suggests that something is fundamentally wrong with either our regulations or how we interpret them. 

The system of the press spokesperson in the Commission has changed a few times historically. Once they were more connected to the DG's, then at some point they became more connected to Prodi at that time. Do you intend to make other changes or will things stay as they are now? 

We will have to discuss this matter. At least the issue of how to co-operate better than we do today. Now it is up to the president's service so to speak. Administratively speaking, it is under my remit and DG press, but the main responsibility lies with the president. I think it is important to identify how we can work together in order to avoid doing double work. They do forward planning and so does the DG. So maybe there is some co-ordination work to be done.

Maybe we can turn to a subject that is a bit more Swedish but also of European value. Sweden like Denmark went through a traumatising experience, at least for the political class, of getting a 'No' vote in the Euro referendum. The Swedish population is well educated and well informed by average European standards. I imagine you, as a social democrat, must have been involved in the process of evaluating what went wrong. Was it a communication error? 

We are still stuck in the 'yes' and 'no' debate. It shows that very often in referenda you get an answer to a question that you did not put to the voters. And the experience of several member states has been that people will use this as an opportunity to protest against the government or against something else because they feel it is possible to do that. That is the downside of using a referendum, which for others is seen as the ultimate democracy - which isn't necessarily the case. I also think that very few Swedes feel truly European. A lot of Swedes feel that Sweden does not need the European Union. Even if there is a basic agreement about the benefits of co-operation in Europe, if push comes to shove, the population feels they could live without it. 

If you wanted to change that feeling, how would you address that? 

I think again it is all about heading the examples of how it affects everyday life, because at the same time, Swedes travel a lot and generally know a lot about the world. So this is also important. 
One of the things that you have always said is that listening is very important. 

One of the instruments that you use now to evaluate the opinions of Europe is the Eurobarometer. Isn't there a need for more Eurobarometers that are a bit more targeted instead of having the general ones? 

Absolutely. We have started to do it with Eurobarometers on the Constitution being targeted for each member state at member state level. So we will do more of that. I totally agree. The whole way of working with Eurobarometer is something that we have to look at again. So this is one of the elements of the new communications strategy. It is important for each and every member state and the representation officers.

Going back to what you said about Sweden, and the Swedish people feeling that they don't need the EU. Have you, or someone else in your DG, also gone to lengths to look into the attitudes and get the feelings of people, how they actually feel and what are their strong and weak attachments to Europe? 

We have done that through focus groups. So we have done that also at member state level, with the Constitution as being a sort of case study for this. We are moving in that direction to look at every relevant viewpoint and there are differences between member states. You couldn't, for example, compare the debate on the Constitution in Spain with the one in Ireland. They are totally different with completely contrasting sentiments. So you have to adapt and have one strategy in Spain and another in Ireland. It does not work with 'one size fits all' policies. 

Isn't there a danger that if one of the referenda goes wrong, you will be blamed for it? People may say you didn't communicate well enough? 

No. I try to avoid that by explaining very openly and with total transparency exactly what the role of the Commission will be - exactly what we will do. Again, this is in the ten points that I have explained. I think people realise. Like I have said all along, this is the member states responsibility first and foremost. What we can do is explained in my ten point program. We can help by providing translations of the Constitution into all the different member states languages. We can help by providing packages to universities. That's how we will use our resources, but it has to build on the member states' strategies. And we will not intervene in any member states who say they do not want us there,  who do not want the involvement of any commissioners. And there is a distinction between what you can do as the Commission as an institution, and what you can do as an individual commissioner. Of course, I expect all of us to be in the debate, but we would not go to the UK, for example, if they said it wouldn't be a good idea. Or to Denmark. They do not want any interference. 

In five years, how will you evaluate yourself to see if you have succeeded or not? Are you setting yourself some benchmarks? 

That is absolutely what we have to do. I tried to move in that direction in the [European Parliament] hearing I had. I said that I had five points on my program, but they needed to be broken down into something that can be measured. A lot of it, of course, cannot be clearly measured. But we are looking into that and I want to say that this is a change that will be implemented within the next five years. 

What will be your benchmark? 

Maybe by improving the figures of the number of people who claim to have heard of the European Union? To see that it is going upwards, not downwards. 

A few weeks ago you raised an interesting point about the need for another narrative. You say that World War II and making peace through co-operation is not appealing to the younger European generation. What is your proposal for a new narrative? 

This is actually an achievement. If young people in Europe today think that it is no longer necessary to keep mentioning the peace project because the idea of war in Europe is unimaginable - this is an achievement. So we could say that this is a success. In many countries, such as Denmark, it is a solemn speech that does not really appeal to them. I think that we have to provide young people in Europe today with a mission. Something they feel it is meaningful to do in order to build a Europe that can demonstrate a way forward. To do it through economic, social and environmental integration, or even to promote or boost this idea of having a modern voluntary core that can be used for humanitarian aid or environmental clean-up or something else that is very practical. These are the things that young people should feel. They are part of the European culture and there is something to be proud of. We have a catalogue of fundamental human right here in Europe, and this is what the Constitution could help to bring about. We have something in common. We are very different, but at the same time there are similarities.

Read the shorter version of this interview