Challenges of including citizens who feel excluded
First of all, I would like to pay tribute to EurActiv for its unbroken record of daily European news, its ability to package issues round institutional processes, whilst bringing in the stakeholders as well and making sense of an increasingly confusing decision-making process. On countless occasions when planning activities, someone asks “should we contact EurActiv?” The organisation has also been very involved in the debate about how the EU can communicate better and has developed innovative next steps, like the EU community project. No serious EU actor can afford to ignore EurActiv.
How has the practice of EU public affairs by civil society changed since 2000? Good question! One can only reply with brief highlights:
– The agenda and the territory are much more overcrowded with an inflation of lobbying processes, creating a real challenge both for transparency and for distinctive voices to be heard. Before 2000 there was more space for new ideas whilst now, for example, we see that there is no room, even for European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECIs) to make their mark.
-In 2000 there was momentum with European governance on the agenda, enlargement beckoning and a distant prospect of some constitutional settlement. Quo Vadis now? Europe seems behind the curve of events, forced to react to a succession of crises with short term measures, whereas a sense of European solidarity and common purpose can only emerge round longer term perspectives.
-The re- emergence of nationalism across Europe is far more serious than some extreme manifestations and greatly influences the shift since 2000 from the community method to a more intergovernmental approach. But only the more powerful lobbies are able to intervene, as is now necessary, at different geographical level.
-A real danger in this very uncertain and fragmented environment is that the EU Institutions will become increasingly inward-looking, retreating to a comfort zone of “better regulation” and taking the route of listening primarily to the dictates of the market and trade at the expense of listening to citizens. There is the risk of the EU losing the support of idealistic young people. EurActiv should probably reflect the forces of Euroscepticism and more subterranean movements “out there” and is well placed to do so with its different language versions. But the European debate can only be captured with more journalists on the ground –not just translation-so EurActiv becomes a melting pot of the different highly nationalistic interpretations of decisions which are less and less European- ie EurActiv x 28. More attention will also have to be paid not just to “EU actors” but also to “non-actors” and those who feel increasingly excluded; but how such a frontier could be crossed and daily work to reach the unreached resourced, is another question.
Author : EurActiv: Pioneering Values in European Media
