An Irish MEP yesterday criticised the Commission for running an information campaign in Ireland targeted at young people below thirty years of age.
Irish anti-Lisbon MEP Mary Lou MacDonald described the timing of the campaign as a Commission "propaganda" exercise to help the Irish government ratify Lisbon in a re-run of the failed June 2008 referendum, due to take place in the autumn.
But Joe Hennon, spokesperson for EU Communications Commissioner Margot Wallström, denied the accusations. Speaking to EurActiv, he said the campaign "has nothing to do with any second referendum – it's a longer term thing, aiming to tackle the problem of lack of knowledge about the EU in Ireland".
The campaign, argues Joe Hennon, is "a reaction in some ways to a November 2008 report, drafted by the Irish Parliament's subcommittee on Ireland's future in the European Union, which was quite critical of EU information".
The report, says Hennon, "acknowledged that we put a lot of information out there, but it's in a language that people can't understand".
To be more accessible for people, the campaign will use online official and social media, cinema advertising and so-called 'listening' exercises, sounding out target groups at seminars, meetings and lectures.
Hennon said "it stands to reason that you would want to communicate with young people, and women and lower-paid workers – these are the groups that know less about the EU. This is part of our communications strategy and we've been doing it for four years".
Libertas in the eye of the storm again
Meanwhile, controversial Irish anti-Lisbon Treaty platform Libertas is back in the spotlight, following a bizarre 24 hours of speculation, accusations and counter-accusations in the European Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg.
Yesterday morning (February 4), Irish newspapers broke the story that Estonian MP Igor Grazin, who Libertas presented as one of their seven national or European signators required to be granted European party status (and thus secure 200,000 euro in funding for June's European elections; see EurActiv 03/02/09), denied having signed in support of the new party.
Grazin, whose Estonian Reform Party is affiliated to the Liberal (ALDE) Group in the European Parliament, is believed to have come under intense pressure from ALDE leaders to remove his name from the signatures list.
In an affidavit presented to Parliament President Hans-Gert Pottering, Grazin said: "I have never signed any papers asking for recognition of Libertas as a political party in the EU and all corresponding claims are utterly untrue."
Libertas immediately hit back, saying that it had the original signature in its possession. A spokesperson told EurActiv that "he signed the document, and was quite happy to do so, in October last year".
It now seems likely that Grazin may have misunderstood what he was attaching his name to, and while broadly supportive of Libertas's anti-Lisbon stance, failed to realise that he was backing them to become a recognised pan-European party. Leading Liberal MEP Andrew Duff told EurActiv that Grazin "wasn't fully seized of the importance of his actions".
Duff denied that Grazin was "clobbered by tremendous pressure" from the ALDE leadership to retract his signature, though he did admit that "we put it to him that his support for Ganley had been misconstrued, and he quickly saw the point".
A Parliament source said that the authenticity of the signatures will now be investigated to ensure that all parties "knew what they were signing up to".
Libertas claims this is not a massive issue, as the party will just find somebody else as a seventh signator. "This is very clever politics by the Liberals, who are basically trying to embarrass us," a party spokesperson told EurActiv.
However, Andrew Duff claimed the issue reflects Libertas's failure to establish itself on the European political scene. "Declan Ganley [Libertas leader] set off on this campaign to recruit thousands of people to support his cause, and he has been trying hard – he's been scurrying around the 27 states – and has only found six parliamentarians who support him. That's not a great sign of support or success on his part, is it?"
The matter will be discussed at the next meeting of the Parliament Bureau in Brussels later this month.
