While the powers of the European institutions continue to grow, influencing much of national legislation and thus the daily lives of some 500 million Europeans, during elections these Europeans express a growing sense of alienation from their Community representatives.

European institutions have repeatedly expressed their concern at the gap between themselves and citizens. But as long as they continue to analyse this separation as being down to a lack of institutional communication (which is essentially top down and overly centralised), Europe will stay in this deadlock. This process of communication, seen as a means of creating acceptance of European policies, is essential certainly, but not sufficient. It cannot replace the work of genuine, independent journalism, which analyses the institutional messages in a critical way, in connection with local social realities. Moreover, this institutional communication is often well out of date, usually emerging once a decision has already been taken.

Unless there is better information provided in advance of decisions, there is a great risk that the European Union will be hijacked forever by experts and technocrats… and that the gap between it and its citizens will keep on growing.

Journalists, particularly those who work at the local and regional levels and who are therefore closest to people, have a vital role to play in linking local affairs with European challenges, explaining in a simple but rigorous way the decision-making processes and their impact on our daily lives.

How to help them? Three facts…three requisites:

Fact #1: the unequal access to European information tallies with a generally unequal access to good political coverage in the media. The growing submission of media organisations to the ratings law; the normalisation of casual labour within the sector; the inadequate funding for public services and community media: all of this has seriously attacked political and cultural pluralism within the media. Requisite #1: we urgently need to create the legal and economic conditions capable of protecting content pluralism.

Fact #2: very few journalists have received training on how to cover information about Europe. And Europe as a subject is also hugely lacking in primary and secondary school programmes. Requisite #2: efforts have to be made in the field of education.

Fact #3: journalists who want to cover European questions at the local level have difficulty finding any concrete sources of information besides the institutional ones. The current aim of many citizen organisations throughout Europe is precisely to humanise and open the debate about European policies. Requisite #3: create better links between the media and the lives of citizens in order to stimulate public debate.

Analysing and bringing together  different points of view (journalists, students, NGO representatives, media specialists) led us (IHECS and its partners) to select six challenges and ten flagship proposals, to take to the Members of the European Parliament.

For a legal guarantee of information pluralism

1) We need to define the notion of pluralism and include the Right to ...

For the recognition of the essential role played by a broad range of media in spreading  independent, pluralist and high quality information on Europe

2) We need to make 'information for citizens' a Service of General Int...

3) We need to create a balance between public service media, commercia...

4) We need to make Information about Europe an essential part of publi...

5) We need to allocate a new mission to the European Audiovisual Obser... 

For information on Europe that is rooted in the regions, closer to people

6) We need to create a new employment statute for Europe correspondents

7) We need to create a network of regional European news agencies 

8) We need to create a European network for training in European journ...

10) We need to create an independent Internet platform for journalists ...

What do you think about them?

To see first comments about those proposals