Choose your future

The Parliament prepares for 2019 elections

“Damn. We only have one and a half year left till the next elections.” “No, buddy. It can’t be true.” “It is. We have to draw a proposal!” Then, the guys responsible for the EP’s communication strategy went on a two-hour lunch break to digest this frightening discovery. When there was no more excuse, they put themselves into work and came out with this 10-page long miracle, leaked exclusively to Politico. Or at least, I imagine the working process this way.

I don’t want to be too mean with those buddies facing short deadlines and overwhelming administrative tasks, but this strategy reminds me of the good old days at university, when we started to work on a project the day before the deadline, inserting as many clichés as possible by the help of a good bullshit-generator site.

What I truly appreciate in the current proposal is that they didn’t write down the magic term of “EU’s democratic deficit”. Either it was too outdated according to the EU bullshit generator 3.0, or they felt they could add two more pages by describing the problem itself. But all in all, the outcome lacks this keyword, so one might feel they would come up with something new.

And the proposal does indeed! My personal favorite is the expression of “networked ground-game effort”. It sounds so fancy that you have no idea what it is about. The good news is that the authors didn’t have an idea either, because they mentioned cost-free media coverage as an example. But a couple of pages later, they suggest to organize seminars for 3000 journalists to raise their awareness of the importance of the upcoming European elections.

Well, in my previous life, I was a journalist and took part in a couple of media seminars organized by the Parliament. I don’t know what cost-effectiveness means in the EP jargon, but for us, it was a joyride. Many of us travelled the first time by an expensive (aka not Ryanair or Easyjet) airlines. Once in Strasbourg my awareness of the EU’s merits and the Alsatian kitchen was raised so successfully that I was sick for days after having eaten too much. If the guys at the Parliament have developed a different tool to make journalists happy, I am afraid it won’t be as effective as over-feeding them. But who knows.

Thankfully, the paper continues to be very inspiring. “Following an analysis of data available from a range of related Eurobarometer surveys, three target groups who maintained a pro-EU attitude throughout the years can be identified: opinion-makers, young voters (15-24) and students (who intersect with the young target to some degree, but also reach beyond it, i.e. many students are above the age of 24).” Just to see how they prove their scientific approach by citing the Eurostat and setting up categories. But the comment in brackets is definitely pure gold, reflecting the added value of their own research.

“In developing and implementing the European Election Strategy, the Parliament must bear in mind that 2019 will be a far cry from 2014. (…) International terrorism, increasingly unpredictable international relations with important powers such as Russia, the United States and China, the impeding shadow of Brexit negotiations, the phenomenon of » fake news « and the influx of refugees barely figured in most Europeans’ minds when they went to polls in 2014.” Thank you, guys. Without you, we would have never known that.

Buddies at the Parliament have wasted years observing how Europe and the world changes, but quite possibly spent only an afternoon on drawing a communication strategy for the upcoming elections. They answer those challenges by the good old clichés of media seminars, promoting the Spitzenkandidaten system, while hoping to reach the younger generations by Twitter through using simple and catchy slogans like “Choose your future!”.

“It’s a D! You can sit down”, I would say if it was a university project. But this proposal was indeed about our common European future. And it is very sad.