The reasons behind the lack of public, media and political engagement with the EU and measures that could be taken to improve this
Ms Andrea Pappin, the European Movement
In the earlier session this morning, we discussed who should be communicating Europe and taking an active role in campaigns to promote treaties. We spoke about politicians versus civil society, the credibility issue and to whom the public would listen. Politicians must do a much better job of communicating what is a complex subject to encourage people to support treaties and the European project in a more enthusiastic way.
People, or civil society, will be important because we must accept that many figures and groups have credibility because of what they do or who they are. At a time when we want to convince the public of the value of further European integration, we need representatives of various sectors of Irish society to state that Europe has been good for them and explain how they have benefitted and what is their experience.
The European Movement is an independent group. It is about projecting a positive image of Europe. From its literature it seems to focus on younger people. One of the leaflets is specifically targeted at students and their experience of Europe. That is good because it was of concern that one of the groups which stood out as voting “No” to the Lisbon treaty was young people.
As someone stated recently, many young people have no experience of an Ireland which was not part of the European Union. Often it is easy to take for granted many of the benefits of European membership because the European Union is not so good at promoting itself and its successes. Therefore, it may be easy for some who cannot imagine what life would be like outside the European Union to be critical of it and vote “No”. Targeting the youth and explaining to them what European Union membership has meant to this country and to them as young people is good and I hope the European Movement will continue to do so.
Sometimes, it is difficult for politicians to be taken seriously by young people. We are seen in a particular way. They do not always identify and relate to us and it is important that we continue to target this constituency. An independent authority to establish the accuracy of particular claims being made about European issues or treaties would be important. This committee could put thought into what type of body would have this impartial and independent image with expertise. In the heat of a treaty debate one side makes one set of claims and the other side makes another, and it is difficult for the public to know who is correct. Do the witnesses have suggestions on how to establish on a more permanent basis a body which could adjudicate on and be a source of expertise on European issues?
Communicating Europe to various demographic groups is another challenge and I spoke about young people. Ms Pappin mentioned that politicians concentrate on local issues because they must do so to get elected as they are what exercise their voters. The real challenge is to connect Europe with local matters. That is the only way in which we will make people feel that Europe is relevant to them. That can be done because there are concrete benefits for local areas and people. However, we need to learn how to do it better. We need to examine all demographic groups at local level, such as older people, farmers and trade unionists and we need to be able to target the message about Europe at these groups. I welcome any suggestions the witnesses have on improving communication and I thank them for their presentation.
Mr. Shane Molloy: I thank Senator de Búrca for her comments. I agree that the critical task is to establish better public understanding. That is the key focus of our work. We are deliberately trying to focus on engaging with young people and – I run the risk of insulting gender – women because they are the two groups that stood out as having a degree of scepticism about the European project.
I go along with what Professor Sinnott stated, that it is critical to make contact with working class communities. The more strongly it is investigated, the more data show that major issues exist. I am not certain it is understood why this may be so other than the obvious greater degree of uncertainty about job prospects. There is a sense that the European Union may have had an impact but I personally do not agree. We have to find a means of engaging with these communities. Our organisation is not of sufficient scale to take on such a challenge but we are prepared to work with others. We can be helpful in regard to languages.
Ms Andrea Pappin: All of our projects can be scaled and we can impart information in various ways once people are interested. I agree that it is a matter of using a range of voices to communicate. The team to which I belong is new but since taking on my job I have received a number of communications from people who believe in the project and want to play their part rather than leaving it to the politicians. We want to harness that interest in the search for positive solutions. We can all point to problems but cannot stop the world and get off. Solutions must be provided when problems are identified.
