Frustrating start for Sweden’s presidency

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What a frustrating time this must be for Sweden’s EU presidency! Stockholm’s ambitious plans to demonstrate its dynamic management of the Union are becalmed. Two days after confirming the Council’s candidacy of Barroso, prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt was obliged to announce that the European Parliament had postponed until mid-September its vote on renewing the Commission president’s mandate. Urgent decisions relating to climate change and the economic crisis could well be delayed. No institutional navel-gazing was the Swedish promise, but it’s not turning out like that.

To make matters more complicated, all institutional matters must await the outcome of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon treaty, now scheduled for October 2. “There is no plan B” commented Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt on the possibility of an Irish “no” vote.

All this delay must be especially galling for Bildt, a quintessential man of action who relishes the international stage – and one of the candidates for Lisbon’s new job as Council president.

Still, a pattern is beginning to emerge. On Bastille Day former Polish prime minister Jerzy Buzek is expected to be elected president of the Parliament for the next 2 ½ years on the understanding that the Socialist group will take over for the second half of the five year mandate in the person of Martin Schulz. ALDE’s Graham Watson has withdrawn his candidacy in return for an enquiry into the financial services crisis to be chaired by German liberal Wolf Klinz.

It now seems likely that this package will ensure EPP, Socialist, ALDE and Conservative support for Barroso in September, although the greens and others will seek a further postponement.

The MEPs are keeping up the pressure on Barroso: he must set out his own policy objectives to the Parliament in advance of the EP vote.

However, I see that Barroso is planning to use his spare time between now and mid-September to campaign for a “yes” vote in Ireland. Jerzy Buzek is also planning to go there. This is surely in marked contrast to the previous referendum, when foreign politicians were asked to stay away. The point will no doubt be made that without approval of the Lisbon Treaty, the Nice rules will apply, depriving Ireland of a commissioner, maybe for five years in every 15.

Back in the Parliament, chairs of the committees are being allocated. The Conservatives – that’s to say European Conservatives and Reformists – will be pleased that Malcolm Harbour is slotted to take over as chair of the Internal Market Committee. Harbour is much respected by the Commission, in particular because of the role he played in piloting the services directive through Parliament.

I reckon Harbour is someone in touch with the real world. Having just got a new mobile phone and yet another charger to add to my collection I’m glad to see his involvement in a voluntary scheme for setting a standard for these devices so you don’t get a new charger every time you have a new phone. Practical measures like that are especially welcome in the midst of all this institutional power play, or navel-gazing as they call it.

Michael Berendt

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Public affairs views from around the world

As part of our recent global public affairs practice meeting here at Fleishman-Hillard, we managed to catch a minute or two to camera from some of our colleagues from around the world. Struggling for a place to put the clips, we created a YouTube channel all of our own here.

Amongst those contributing to our discussions on the challenges facing companies around the world was former European Commissioner and current member of our International Advisory Board David Byrne.

A look back at turn of the century Brussels

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Thanks to Aart van Iterson, a former colleague now at Cambre Associates, who points out by email that our current survey of the use of the internet by Members of the European Parliament is not the first time we have undertaken to research how digital tools are being used in Brussels.

Back in 2000 the then GPC (even then an Omnicom company, but at that stage still to become part of Fleishman-Hillard) teamed up once again with Simon Leysen of Morris & Chapman to conduct “a first of its kind survey investigating primarily how the Brussels based international community use email and internet in their work.”

The highlights of the 2000 survey included the following:

• The Brussels based international (EU political) community generally prefer first contact to be established via e-mail rather than by letter.
  Over 90% of respondents directly receive and process their own e-mails.
• For almost half of those surveyed, the Internet has become their main source of information.
• Before dealing with an organisation, over 70% of respondents say they will visit the organisations’ web-site first to obtain background information.
• Close to 50% of survey participants prefer to download large amounts of data as opposed to receiving it in its original format.

Despite being less than ten years old, our findings from 2000 have an air of a different era about them. Almost like finding that more than half of us prefer the car to the horse to get to work.

In looking at the online communication activities of our MEPs, we should therefore not be too harsh. Much has changed in the tools we all use to communicate  in a very short time. At the last European elections the likes of YouTube and Twitter did not exist, google was not a verb and Facebook was only accessible to students at Ivy League schools. With this in mind, the use of any of these tools by MEPs, even just a third of them, is truly impressive. What’s more, I am sure that in another nine years our findings from 2009 will seem so beginning of the century.

James

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Do MEPs tweet, blog and Facebook? We find out.

Image via Wikipedia

Today we launch the results of our European Parliament Digital Trends Survey – www.epdigitaltrends.eu It examines how Members of the European Parliament are using the internet to communicate with their voters as well as how the same MEPs use the internet to inform their daily legislative work. As such, we hope that the results are interesting both for MEPs and for Brussels public affairs practitioners.

In summary MEPs are using the internet to communicate to voters but are not yet for the most part using all the tools available. No doubt MEPs have come a long way since the last elections, but there is still a road to travel.

For public affairs practitioners we believe that our results support the view we espoused when we started this blog 2 years ago. Like all of us MEPs are going online for information to inform their decisions. To be effective, our public affairs strategies need to integrate digital communications into their toolbox of tactics. Digital can not replace traditional tools such as contact programmes and media relations it complements them, rendering our activities more effective.

On the microsite  www.epdigitaltrends.eu you will find the following:

• Our main results with supporting statistics
• An e-brochure
• A full report
• A library of downloads, including graphs and the raw data for you to make your own analysis and graphs
• Commentary from MEPs
• An opportunity for you to post your own thoughts
• The charities we supported in conducting the research
• The methodology we used – sample size etc.

In the coming days we shall be taking time to reflect on what the different parts of our results mean for public affairs practitioners in Brussels on this blog.

Thanks to all MEPs who participated and to the hardworking FH team who made it all possible (everyone in the office played some role but in particular I’d like to thank Mike, Reg, Veronique, Liliana, Julie, Carey, Aurelie, Tim, Michele, Jay, Clara and Rosie)

We look forward to your reactions to the results on the microsite and to having a debate on this blog about what our survey says about digital public affairs.

James

What did Pottering really say?

Pottering’s calm voice may be able to hide his emotions, but we found a nifty digital tool to unmask his true sentiments.

Wordle creates “beautiful word clouds” (their words, not ours) based on a text or website that one inputs. It identifies the most often-used words and makes them larger to show their repetition.

What did Pottering talk to the European Parliament about?

Parliamentarian's favourite conversation topic.

Public Affairs 2.0 should also face up to it’s own obsession. We clearly like the European Parliament as much as Mr Pottering, but the words ‘European’, ‘digital’, ‘public affairs’ are about the same size as Fleishman-Hillard.

FH talks about MEPs, European, Parliament and FH

European Parliament, digital and public affairs will get another tick in the word count next week when we publish a report on the use of digital tools by MEPs.

Rubbish ideas and the future of Europe

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Elections are in the air, as is the Commission, its President and the European economy. So what better way to get a strategic direction for where Europe should focus its efforts than an online survey of citizens. After all, we can’t make more of a meal of it than 20, or for that matter 27, heads of state and government.

A rather Jed Bartlett looking* (hands in pockets, relaxed look about him) President Barroso asks you to tell him what you think at tellbarroso.eu

Undertaking to “tell Barroso” is, I found, a relatively painless experience and could be described more as an online brainstorm than a survey. You are asked to write down the first things that come to mind tp a simple question about what Europe should be concentrating on. Now remember folks, at this first stage in the “ideation” process it’s quantity not quality that matters. Stick to individual words or phrases and keep ‘em coming. As with your traditional brainstorm, you then get the chance to expand upon your ideas in the comments box. Lots of opportunity for the ramblers amongst us to ramble, at length.

Finally and perhaps most pleasurably you get to see other people’s brainwaves and then place those you don’t like in a rubbish bin. Fantastic – there was lots of trash and I was sorting it (for energy recovery, you understand).

Now I’m a little bit of a novice at netiquette, but in normal life one is not allowed to commit such a heresy as binning ideas once they’ve been written on a post-it and placed on the wall. In traditional brainstorms ideas are all good and should be generally built upon, expanded, challenged and improved through debate and discussion. Under no circumstances should one suggest that the idea your colleague has just come up with is infantile rubbish deserving only of the waste paper bin/recycling tray. It got me thinking though, if such a heresy were allowed within the EU institutions wouldn’t our legislation be just a little bit better? Now that’s an idea someone should tell Barroso about.

James

*It occurs to me that Jed Bartlett does this at the end of Series 2 of the West Wing – when he decides to run for re-election. Apologies to all readers who are not addicted to the West Wing. May we suggest picking up the box set of all seven formidable seasons on Amazon for 50 quid, you’ll never be stuck for an evening’s entertainment ever again.

Green Week goes live

Word up to the European Commission’s DG Environment, who launch this year’s Green Week shebang with obligatory webpages on Europa, YouTube channel (featuring as yet a review of 2008), blog (Dimas fittingly recycled) and a Flickr page. It also features handy buttons to download in the press corner.

The event takes place 23-26 June in the Charlemagne building on Rue de la Loi and the topic in this year of Copenhagen is of course climate change.

You can find out more here.

Digital Tools in Public Affairs – presentation and links

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Last week I presented at the inaugural European Public Affairs Summit on digital public affairs. What was billed as a workshop quickly became an empassioned plea for more consideration of the use of digital tools in Brussels based public affairs.

Thanks in any case to all those souls who attended, engaged in questions and answers and gave feedback to me or other FHers. All much appreciated. Any questions that have arisen since, please feel free to post in the comments section and we shall do our best to answer.

In the session, I promised that I would upload the presentation on the blog, instead I put it on SlideShare. You can find it at this link:Digital Tools in Public Affairs Presentation

For those not at the event, I apologise that reading the presentation makes little sense without me speaking to it. It is also not the most beautiful presentation ever created. This said, please check out the article I wrote that sums up in prose some of what I said in person. Alternatively, pass by for a coffee if you are in the area.

The links to the sites referred to during the discussions.

US introductory bit:

• Obama website
• Obama transition website
• Fight the Smears website
• Design for Obama – more chances to see visually creative works
• Our own post on the “Yes we can” pop video
• TubeMogul – extremely useful tool for uploading and tracking videos online across platforms

Statistics on internet usage:

• European Commission figures on EU Member States
• Post and link to FH Digital survey on the power of the internet in Europe
• Our post on recent Ofcom survey on communications environment in UK and key European markets and link to the report itself
• Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008
• Survey on social media by Universal McCann

European Union references:

• MEP bloggers list
• Commissioner bloggers
• European Commission howling sex video shocker

Tools for tracking:

• Technorati and Google Blog search
• Tracking Wikipedia
• Check out Steffen’s post here for other ideas

EU campaigns:

• Our post on grassroots in Brussels
• enviro.aero campaign about aviation and climate change on Twitter
• Pesticides Information – revision of Directive 91/414 – and an interview with the great lady behind it
• Award winning oneseat.eu campaign, our post (1) and post (2)
• Vattenfall campaign post and link
• 50/50 Campaign post and link
• Quadrature du Net post and link

James

We have a winner: digital communications sweeps Brussels awards ceremony

Last night saw the inaugural European Agenda Public Affairs Summit Gala Award ceremony, the second award ceremony of the season. Held in the (prestigious?) Renaissance Hotel’s Ball Room complete with US style oscar night voice overs (could they not find a European?) and Eurovision-esque compere, at least three of the awards recognised the role of the digital communications in Brussels.

Worthy winner of the Commissioner of the Year, Miglena Kuneva, talked about the importance of digital communications in reaching out to citizens. As did Parliament President Hans-Gert Pottering, winner of the politician of the year. The journalist of the year went to Cafe Babel – an online news platform established as the result of a year in Strasbourg as Erasmus students. Worth checking out here. And campaign of the year went to the oneseat.eu campaign, which we have written about in the past.

Finally, little old Fleishman-Hillard won Agency of the Year against some other worthy nominees (e.g. sister Omnicom company GPlus, Interel Cabinet Stewart, Blueprint). This blog and our work in the field of digital public affairs were cited by the 20 man jury as reasons for the win. It actually surprised that we weren’t told in advance. No really, we weren’t.

We also ran a workshop on digital public affairs as part of the event – slides and links to follow in a separate post for the twenty or so souls who stuck it out until the end of the day and participated.

Next stop, the European Excellence Awards in Budapest, where colleague Nick Andrews and the ATAG team are up for an award for their enviro.aero online campaign. Some stiff competition, but fingers crossed.

James

Digitization of cultural content – Commission enters into unknown territory

In ancient times, the library of Alexandria was said to contain up to 70% of all human knowledge. Aiming to reap the benefits of the digital age, the European Commission wants to do even better than that.
It was against this background that the Commission launched the EU’s digital libraries initiative in 2006 aiming to make Europe’s cultural resources and scientific records digitally accessible to all. This project saw daylight on 20 November 2008 with the launch of the Europeana.eu website.  During the official launch ceremony in Brussels Commissioner Viviane Reding stated that Europeana offers a journey through time, across borders, and into new ideas of what our culture is. However, Europeana seems also have offered the European Commission a lesson in web-page management.

One the first day of its launch, with more than 10 million hits an hour, Europeana simply crashed and the European Commission had to shut it down. The Commission is now working on to reopen the site in a more solid version hoping to reactivate it before the end of 2008.

Despite these intial problems the Digital team at Fleishman Hillard would of course like congratulate the Commission for this initative. The idea of combining multimedia library, museum and archive into one digital website combined with Web 2.0 features is just fantastic and we are eager to see how it will work in practice. It remains to be seen if the Commission will achieve its objective to digitalize and make available ten million objectives on the website by 2010.

Magnus

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