Prior to the official adoption of the Commission's White Paper on EU communication, the founder of EURACTIV, Christophe Leclercq, has presented Commission Vice-President Wallström with ideas on how to improve the EU's communication strategy, in the form of a draft 'Yellow Paper'.
The draft Yellow Paper consists of twelve recommendations:
On the targets of EU communication [Diversify!]:
- focus not on "the citizens" or the "EU specialists" but on intermediaries and especially national sectoral audiences, leveraging their professional networks
- involve – early on – companies and trade unions, as well as NGOs
- no centralising or "streamlining" but light co-ordination between institutions and DGs
On the methods and channels [Decentralise and Disseminate!]:
- decentralise radically by nationalising EU debates, empowering representations and enriching careers
- include communication in all EU programmes and policies
- train officials, journalists… and politicians
- complement policy-making with independent debate moderators
- provide localised multilingual internet content, not just conferences, print and TV
- optimise and increase communication resources
On the implementation and timeline [Decide!]:
- decentralise the debate right away in addition to the inter-institutional negotiations
- implement recent Commission decisions such as the 2005 July Action Plan as soon as possible
- achieve impact before the 2009 elections
[Editors' note: euractiv.com does not take positions on policies, except with regard to its baseline 'faciliter l'efficacité et transparence des acteurs européens']