Future of Europe: asking EU citizens

Serendipity is stumbling across a Facebook presentation of Mathew Lowry’s blog post The limits of public participation in policy. I had tried to explore how the future presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron started presenting and returning to the idea of democratic conventions and if president Macron’s Sorbonne speech had clarified the working of these democratic conventions.

Macron had painted the democratic conventions as an essential tool to relaunch the European project. However, they seemed to boil down to town hall meetings in willing member states, without democratic legitimacy but with potential for some interaction.

Lowry discussed if the participants in the ‘Future of Europe’ process influenced president Juncker’s State of the European Union (SOTEU) speech, as promised. His conclusion was clear: of course not.

The ‘Future of Europe process’ means the physical  Citizens’ Dialogues I described in a blog post, but also the online activities and votes Lowry took a special interest in.

He received no answer even to his one specific question on how the European Commission was processing thousands of contributions into a coherent whole for the promised impact on president Juncker’s State of the Union speech.

The promise was hardly seriously meant. Lowry went on to discuss success criteria for online public participation: specific, transparent, focused audience, resource credibility and institutional credibility.

The three presidents and their advisors have cause to read and reflect on taking EU citizens and ideas like democracy seriously: Emmanuel Macron who invented the democratic conventions, Jean-Claude Juncker who supported the proposal and promised to contribute with the Commission’s experiences from the Citizens’ Dialogues and Donald Tusk who has promised to present a leaders’ agenda [for the Future of Europe] within two weeks.

12 ideas for The Future of Europe

The other happy coincidence on Lowry’s Facebook post came from Richard Medic, who brought to my attention the publication 12 ideas for The Future of Europe - New narrative for Europe communications campaign (June 2017; 64 pages), about getting young people interested in European debates.

Nothing beats ownership for citizens in general, but let us study if the report offers food for thought regarding impact from voters and experts.

Ralf Grahn

Norway almost as deeply integrated in the EU as the UK

When we think about Norway and the European Union, Britain tends to surface. But what is Norway's EU relationship in reality?


Media shortcut

EurActiv alerted me to the publication of the study on future EU relations of Norway. The article presents the current position of Norway as a member of the European Economic Area (and member of the European Free Trade Associaiton EFTA), as well as the main findings and quotes from Norwegian experts.

When Kirsty Hughes offers the main points on BBC News, Britain crops up early on:

"We are almost as deeply integrated as the UK," says report committee chairman Prof Fredrik Sejersted.

Views and News from Norway contribute with an assessment of the opinion climate in the country, and predict that the current relationship will continue with little change.


Official information

The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs offers a press release about the review of Norway's agreements with the European Union. The study forms the basis for a white paper on EU relations to be published later this year, says foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

Chapter 1 (17 pages) of the massive report Outside and Inside – Norway's agreements with the European Union (Official Norwegian Reports 2012:2) is available in English. It offers and introduction, the main messages and an overview.

Readers of Norwegian are able to find the relationship explored in painstaking detail in the original, which runs to 911 pages including the annexes:

Utenfor og innenfor – Norges avtaler med EU (NOU Norges offentlige utredninger 2012:2, 17. januar 2012)


Some thoughts

In the wake of the national leaders' inability to solve the crisis in the eurozone, between seven and eight Norwegians out of ten are now opposed to EU membership. Thus, Norway seems set to continue the necessary ties with a huge democratic deficit.

The EU accession of Norway's EEA companion Iceland (some EU views here) would strain the agreement on the European Economic Area, but I would be astonished if the population of Iceland actually decided to join in the upcoming referendum even if the negotiations lead to an agreement.



Ralf Grahn

P.S. Those of you who are interested in the European online public space, as well the issues of information and propaganda from the institutions of the European Union, should read Mathew Lowry's blog article about an alternative overaching EU communication strategy.

EU social media and online public space

What if the European public sphere owes its existence to social media, asks Michael Malherbe (Décrypter la communciation européenne blog), continuing the interesting presentation by Mathew Lowry on the EU online public space (although reading a Prezi presentation can be a pretty hallucinating experience).


Comments

There is an online European public sphere, available through social media such as Bloggingportal.eu, Twitter and Facebook.

There are still great opportunities ahead, building bridges within groups with common interests and between national discussions and the ”Brussels bubble”.

Some EU institutions and politicians, as well as civil society groups and business associations have joined social media sites in order to narrowcast their messages, but few of them have advanced to the level of engagement and sharing (with the exception of some frontline individuals within these behemots).

Hordes of academics and teachers, as well as officials in EU institutions and agencies, or engaged in EU co-funded projects at national level are still surprisingly uncommunicative.

Language barriers are an obstacle to cross-border communication, but active and educated Europeans are often able to understand one or more languages in addition to their own. Some of them can build bridges between different language communities.


Social and other media

Malherbe and Lowry did not ponder media in general that much, but it would be well worth a separate discussion.

The EU online public space (Lowry) is broader than its social media sub-group. Malherbe seemed to reject the notion of traditional pan-EU media, perhaps rightly so if we look at the mass market level, but what about the ”movers and shakers”?

Much material from the EU institutions (primary sources) and mainstream media content is available online.

Renowned media offer both traditional editorial material online and social media content across borders, blurring the lines between the two.

Call them ”elite” if you will, but European political and business leaders are consumers of the same sources for news and opinion, de facto promoting the free movement of ideas.

It may hurt linguistic sensitivities, but many of these sources and publications operate in English (partially or wholly): The Financial Times, The Economist, WSJ Europe, BBC, DW-World, Spiegel Online (International), France24, Euronews, EUobserver, EurActiv, Presseurop, EUbusiness etc.

How does today differ from the Enlightenment with regard to the diffusion of ideas?



Ralf Grahn

Should libertarians read quality Euroblogs?

I try to promote quality blogs about European affairs by suggestions to the readers of my blogs and to my friends on Facebook. Mostly they are Euroblogs I follow and listed among the now 698 blogs aggregated by the multilingual Bloggingportal.eu.

Naturally my choices are subjective, but I follow the same rule of thumb with regard to blogs as other media, offline and online:

You are better informed after reading than before.

Many fine blogs have been mentioned earlier, but among later recommendations we find Europe 27etc, Atlantic Community, Bit more complicated, Bloggingportal.eu blog, FT Brussels Blog, Mathew Lowry, Christian Engström, Ciudadano Morante, Comparative Law Blog, Conflict of Laws .net, Charlemagne’s notebook and Bruxelles2.


Libertarianism

Recently Mathew Lowry caught my eye with a post about abusive online pyjama people: In praise of ‘proper’ media (13 November 2010).

According to Lowry, people like that destroy intelligent online conversations.

Let us take a step back to read the Wikipedia article Libertarianism, where the first and general description mentions the advocacy of individual liberty, especially of thought and action. The core beliefs of the US Libertarian Party are also worth noticing, while the Nolan chart classifies personal and economic freedom in an interesting manner.

Superior choices?

My understanding of libertarianism may be incomplete, but if the aim is minimal public intervention and a preference for individual choices, this seems to indicate that the latter are somehow superior.

It may be an aberration to tell libertarians what they should do, but we have to assume that these liberated people are drawn towards quality reading as well.

It would seem to be in the best libertarian tradition for readers to make intelligent choices.

Thus, they can be trusted to be the first to desert abusive and lunatic blogs, can’t they? It is hardly a question of dress code, but an issue of credibility and constructive discourse.



Ralf Grahn



P.S. On Cosmetic Uprise – UK and the EU Mia Välimäki publishes her personal comments on the relationship between the Chunnel Island and the Continent which has fascinated writers since De bello Gallico.

Mathew Lowry and Michael Malherbe improving Mediacafé?

The well intentioned Brussels event Mediacafé “Europe: no medium, no message?” on 18 October 2010 may actually become a better event, if the organisers and panellists take care to read and reflect on the blog post by Mathew Lowry and the comments: Oh, so it’s the media’s fault noone likes the EU … (15 October 2010).



Add a few salient points by Michael Malherbe on Se former à la communication européenne in: Que fait l’UE pour adapter sa communication à l’Internet mobile ? (13 October 2010).

A few more blog entries to peruse on both blogs, for those with the time and inclination, and some constructive thoughts might start to surface, possibly even a few with relevance for 501 million EU citizens, most of them mentally and geographically far from the “Brussels Bubble”.

It is never too late to start imagining a better life, but online media, social media, mobile media and professional journalism are all part of it, even with regard to communication by the EU institutions.




Ralf Grahn

Mathew Lowry and the European online public sphere

Martin on Europaeum launched the Twitter hash tag #bkaeb for Better Know A EuroBlog, for blog posts giving reasons for reading a specific Euroblog.



Mathew Lowry’s Tagsmanian Devil has been mentioned frequently on Grahnlaw, because Mathew has spent a lot of time and effort thinking aloud about the European online public space.

Please, take the time to read a number of older blog entries to get acquainted with the state of the Eurosphere.

In this #bkaeb post I am going to refer to the two latest posts only.



Mathew presents his starting points on group blogs, ethics and group inertia, inspired by the long but important blog post where Bora Zivkovic says farewell to Scienceblogs.



Mathew’s latest post Bloggingportal2: What, Why, How … and When? acknowledges that Bloggingportal.eu (BP) helps people find out what people are saying about the EU in social media.

However, according to Mathew, more is desirable and possible:

Human curation is essential to overcome the barriers of language and national political contexts. And that curation is what BP’s model offers.

So I would want to see BP remain focused, laserlike, on this aim. It doesn’t need to become an intranet for bloggers, or (another) blogging platform, or (another) group blog. People should blog wherever they like, with BloggingPortal doing better what it already does.

He then discusses the need for resources, curated policy sections and finding the necessary funds for development, before he invites ideas from readers.

By reading Mathew’s entries, you do not only get to know one Euroblog, but the state of the Euroblogosphere.



Mathew is the engine for SWOT analysis in the European online public sphere: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Please, join the conversation.




Ralf Grahn



P.S. Multilingual comment policy: In order to facilitate interaction in the Euroblogosphere, I do my best to read comments in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish or Swedish, even if the Grahnlaw blog and my possible replies are in English.

Missing policy expert Eurobloggers: Motivation and rewards?

Sometimes we go over board when we try to explain things through clear contrasts. I did, when I described “business as usual” blogging on the European Union as petty, limited and low road, despite my intention to explore the need for subject specialists blogging on EU policies in later posts.



Online communications specialist Mathew Lowry had painted the existing Euroblogosphere as a tiny hyperspecialised bubble, talking about EU arcana no one else understands.



In a comment to my previous blog post, Lowry accepted that EU specialists and policy specialists are complementary, not mutually exclusive.

Despite appearances, Lowry and I seem to agree on the absence of subject specialists focused on EU policies.


The influential policy blogger



Mathew Lowry referred to the description of an influential policy blogger put forward by Steffen on Public Affairs 2.0:

An influential policy blogger is an authority on a policy area who has a professional interest in it. They represent an organisation – be it a single issue pressure group or a global corporation – that is one of many stakeholders on a set of policy areas and present that organisation’s positions in blog format. The level of expertise and relevance of the blog is such that it is read by all or at least most other relevant stakeholders including policy makers and key influencers. At this point, the blog can arguably be called an “influential policy blog” ...

In my view Steffen’s description is a good starting point, but too narrow. Advocacy organisations should use the opportunity to engage openly and long term on the battlefields of EU policy debate, but expert academics, journalists or citizens without the need to toe the corporate line are not to be forgotten as potential influentials.


Building bridges?



According to Lowry, it is up to the Brussels Bubble to build bridges outwards if we want to create a European online public space, but specialists blogging intelligently about specific subjects are still notable by their absence.



In a way, I think, bridges have already been built, although it is less clear if the builders can be described as (part of) the Brussels Bubble. EurActiv has created the blog platform Blogactiv, which is open for new bloggers on EU affairs. Citizen bloggers have launched Bloggingportal.eu, which already aggregates the posts of 630 blogs related to EU affairs (Euroblogs).

You can offer a policy expert a bridge, but you can’t make him cross it.




Motivation?

Lowry was right to open the discussion on the motivation for a specialist to blog.

Corporations and associations may open their eyes to the opportunities in terms of advocacy goals. Some citizen Eurobloggers may steer from EU institutional coverage towards policy and issue expertise. The growth of the Euroblogosphere leads to more issues being covered, but something still seems to be missing for a major breakthrough.

Expert knowledge and blogging require hard work. Is it a question of motivation and rewards?

Where are the missing links?




Ralf Grahn




P.S. Multilingual comment policy: For easier interaction in the Euroblogosphere, feel free to comment in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish or Swedish, even if the Grahnlaw blog and my possible replies are in English.

Eurobloggers: EU or policy specialists?

Our Summer cruise in the Euroblogosphere has taken us to eight destinations, resulting in as many blog entries, but the tour is far from over.



The lack of specialists in EU-oriented blogs is impeding the development of the European online public space, wrote European online communications expert Mathew Lowry.



Waggener Edstrom and Fleishman-Hillard had noted what can be summed up as the lack of influential sector-specific policy bloggers, leading Lowry to explicate that all Eurobloggers are experts, but their specialisation is the EU, with dire results:

Which makes us a tiny, hyperspecialised bubble, talking about EU arcana noone else understands - and, increasingly, talking about ourselves. With barely any bridges connecting us to other online conversations.

According to Lowry, it’s up to the Brussels Bubble to build those bridges outwards if we want to create a European online public space, and if that’s what we want, then these connections are going to be built on specialist subjects.


Comment



Let us stop here for a while. I have recently tried to argue how the EU is an unfinished project, drifting without an agreed “manifest destiny”.

Fundamental choices (telos), the structure, politics and (mal)functioning of the European Union, even the Euroblogosphere are in need of constant discussion.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the early medieval monasteries kept some sort of learning and culture alive.

Today, almost any effort to describe and to evaluate the EU conscientiously and independently is a cultural achievement in a sea of ignorance.

Few of us would be content with medieval standards of learning, but we do not have to discard the nave of the wheel in order to create the spokes.

In my view, EU specialists and policy specialists are complementary, not mutually exclusive.

Actually, any serious policy blogger on EU affairs needs to know the difference between the Commission and the Parliament, President Herman van Rompuy and the rotating Presidency, and much more.



The rapidly growing Euroblogosphere will, in my view, supply a part of the demand for policy area and issue specialists:

In a natural way, growth leads to coverage of more policy areas and variety of views being expressed, including national angles on EU issues.

What more is needed? Let us play the Advocate (advocates diaboli or advocatus Dei) to the Tagsmanian Devil in a future post.




Ralf Grahn



P.S. Multilingual comment policy: In order to facilitate interaction in the Euroblogosphere, feel free to comment in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish or Swedish, even if the Grahnlaw blog and my possible replies are in English.

Manneken Pis wants you? Pillow talk on “Brussels”?

Uncle Sam wants you, is one of the famous slogans worldwide. Everyone knows that Uncle Sam is the personification of the United States.

If you try to invent something equally hard hitting for the other great union, the EU, perhaps a sense of creeping despair affects you too.



The member states chucked out the official symbols of the European Union from the Lisbon Treaty (but leaving customary use), and for most of the EU’s 500 million population the union feels as personal and personable as a complicated chemical formula.

Brussels – in 23 official languages – has become the closest thing to the de facto capital and the main symbol of the European Union.

The use of “Brussels”, or “Brussels Bubble”, tends to be far from affectionate. The whipping-boy of Europe has an image problem, if we use a mild expression. Deservedly so, many would add.

To complicate matters further, Brussels is the official capital of Belgium (a country almost as complex and ungovernable as the European Union).



If and when “Brussels” wants to find a more engaging and cuddly symbol for citizens, the best known tourist attraction of Brussels is a statue of a peeing boy, Manneken Pis.

Despite the overabundant online offer of (fake) organ-enhancement and potency pills, Manneken Pis remains the symbol of Belgian Brussels, without growth potential to reach European stature.



Dear readers, before you turn to Mathew Lowry’s recruitment drive for subject specialist Euroblogs on EU issues, I invite you to think about the image of the European Union and the lack of official and unofficial symbols.



Does the European Union need and does it deserve more pillow talk?




Ralf Grahn