Here comes the hard sell. Fleet Street's finest are being invited to Brussels for a crash course on Europe. The Eurosceptic press is the main target, as well as leading rightwing columnists such as Ann Leslie (Daily Mail), who once wrote a profile of Jean-Luc Dehaene, the Belgian prime minister, which was so xenophobic it almost led to a diplomatic incident.
This sales operation has Sir Leon Brittan's fingerprints all over it. The senior UK commissioner has been fretting for months about the Europhobic tilt in his own Tory party and in the country at large ahead of the general election. But even Sir Leon, with all his stamina and brainpower, cannot stop the sceps alone.
Enter Forum Europe, a Brussels PR/conference outfit which specialises in taking journalists to places other organisations cannot reach. One of their most lucrative clients is the Turkish government. For years Forum Europe has offered access to Turkish ministers and a boat ride on the Aegean to any Brussels based correspondent with an open mind and an interest in a suntan. So why not try the same trick with the European commission which is feeling about as unloved and misunderstood these days as the boys in Ankara.
Forum Europe's two day tour of Brussels gives visiting journalists a chance to talk to top Eurocrats-men such as Sir Stephen Wall, HMG's long suffering ambassador, David Williamson, the no-nonsense and sometimes rather too candid secretary general of the European commission and Julian Priestley, secretary general of the parliament. They're mostly British, but that's the point. Somehow Brussels has to persuade the British media that Britain and Europe can talk the same language, that the EU is not a plot to blow up the palace of Westminster.
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there is a cultural divide between Britain and Europe, no question. Philippe de Schoutheete de Tervarent, the Belgian ambassador to the EU and the doyen of Brussels diplomats, spoke the other day about the "intellectual isolation" of Britain. He was referring to the absence of foreign media, the decline of language learning in English schools, and the preponderance of power exerted by the Murdoch/Black press.
But cultural insularity breaks both ways. Newcomers to Brussels are amazed how little interest Eurocrats show in the world beyond the Berlaymont. Sure they know what the Italian budget deficit was in 1996 and how to define subsidiarity in 12 easy sentences. But ask them about what the EU is doing about Belarus and Ukraine and they are lost for words. A visitation from the real world in the shape of Ann Leslie and other hard-boiled sceptics from London is no bad thing for the smug Eurocrats.
Pascal Lamy, the iron man who ran Jacques Delors's office for nearly a decade, once described how out of touch the European commission became around the time of the Maastricht treaty. It was as if the entire bureaucracy had spent 35 years circling earth in a space capsule while dreaming up the damnedest experiments for the earthlings below. By the time they landed nobody knew who they were.
Europe badly needs to improve its communications skills. We are 20 years behind the Americans. We also need a new message. It's no use Helmut Kohl warning that the EU is about war and peace. It's no good sending out commissioners to Britain with warnings that the sky will fall in if Emu is delayed beyond 1st January 1999. This G?tterd??mmerung talk is worse than a broken record; it's a substitute for lazy thinking.
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thank god for Emma Bonino. The Italian commissioner is the best sales woman Europe's got. The other day, she turned up at the commission's mid-day news briefing with tears in her eyes. She had just returned from Zaire, a journey from hell. A quarter of a million Africans were starving to death and the only people who cared were a handful of aid workers and the EU, which is shelling out millions. By the time Bonino had finished, there weren't many dry eyes in the audience.
Bonino is a star because she is not afraid of public opinion. She seeks out ordinary people such as fishermen and engages them usually by tugging at their sleeves, stroking their knees or looking them dead straight in the eye-this makes her different from her colleagues. They steer clear of the street because they think that's the best way to stay out of trouble. How wrong they are.
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if eurocrats can't sell Europe, somebody else will do the job. Step forward George Soros. The man who made a billion out of selling sterling short in 1992 wants to involve ordinary citizens in the EU. He is talking about a popular assembly for stimulating debate. The other day he popped into town and reportedly offered $19m towards his Euro-project-contingent on matching funds, of course. No fool, our George.
