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Quarterly Theme: Europe in the National Media
At present Europe is constantly in the pages, websites, and broadcasts of Bulgarian media. This presence is so massive, that it would probably take a professional to follow and analyze it comprehensively. So what follows is a necessarily limited observation, based on several of the major electronic, press, and internet media in the country.
It has been 17 months since Bulgaria became a member of the EU. This was the result of a 17 year effort on the part of the Bulgarian state and society to fulfill the criteria and convince its European partners of the worthiness of the country to join. So all the enthusiasm and emotions related to the effort to join are still holding, and almost every issue is also considered from the point of view of the EU. Another aspect of this mood is that as a rule EU and Europe mean the same thing for the Bulgarian media – it seems that for them the European Commission, the European Council, the Council of Europe, and UEFA are basically the same place.
Almost one and a half years since Romania’s accession to the European Union, its interest in EU matters is not what it used to be. The time when comments about EU matters were largely reflected and discussed in Romanian media, due to the fact that they could have given hints on whether they will result in Romania’s acceptance to join the EU in due time or not, is gone. EU’s last two sticks, the special safeguard clauses on justice and agriculture, seem to still raise some interest, although most journalists understood that it is unlikely that something would really happen.
According to TripAdvisor travellers, Brussels is the most boring city of Europe. East European labour migrants have found a temporary home in a former British air force base in Germany. Lobbyists have a great deal of influence over members of the European Parliament. Three random reports concerning Europe that cannot be indicated as hot items. Nevertheless, they could be found recently in different editions of NRC Handelsblad, one of the Dutch quality newspapers. The intention of this kind of reporting is clear: Europe is much more than an abstraction or the domain of government officials – it is also a citizen’s domain, our domain, about which we have to be informed properly.
History is hot in Holland, excuse me, the Netherlands. Our prime-minister Balkenende appealed recently for a ‘VOC-mentality’ in his country (VOC = United East-Indian Company, the trade company that made Holland rich in the 17th century). Two years ago an officially appointed committee of historians agreed on a canon of national history. Ever since every self-respecting region or municipality is trying to establish its own canon of local history.
Although there are at least fifteen museums for (aspects of) national history in the Netherlands, Parliament decided last year that this country needs a new Museum for National History. This ‘historicitis’ is one of the results of a public debate on Dutch national identity. ‘Does it exist at all ? And if so, what does it look like?’ This debate is in turn of course a result of globalisation (however defined) and problems with integration of non-western immigrants in Dutch society.
When it comes to the media in Croatia, one can certainly say that EU is very much present in reports, shows and analyses. But when it comes to the content of this coverage, most of it has to do with Croatia itself.
Being a candidate member of the EU, Croatia is very much interested in EU developments, as these might effect its own date of accession to the EU which still has not been fixed. Therefore, almost every day you can find one article in the newspaper with a statement from some prominent EU official on Croatian perspective for joining the EU. Even the important EU developments, such as the future of the Lisbon Treaty, are looked through the perspective of how these affect Croatian membership. The last few days, for example, you would hear or read about how the Irish “no” to the Lisbon Treaty does not have to worry the Croatians as it will not affect the Croatian accession process.
A new initiative to bring Europe closer to its citizens is ‘Euranet’, a network of 16 radio-stations from 13 EU-countries. Among these are stations the Dutch ‘Wereldomroep’, the German ‘Deutsche Welle’ and ‘Radio France International’. But also radio stations from new member states, for example, the Slovenian ‘Radio International’ and the Polish ‘Radio Polskie’. In February of this year, Margot Wallström, the Vice-president of the European Commission launched this new initiative, the broadcasting started in April and the new website (www.euranet.eu) will be launched at the end of June.
Euroscepticism in the British press
(Source: wikipedia)
In the UK, many newspapers, notably the Daily Mail and the Rupert Murdoch newspapers (The Sun, the News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times), are eurosceptic along with the broadsheet Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, and have published many stories highly critical of the European Union and its policies. The accuracy or otherwise of these stories is hotly disputed, and in some cases the actions of international bodies with no connection to the EU have been attributed to it. Examples include headlines such as "Ludicrous EU officials ready to ban yogurt", The Daily Telegraph, 10 November 2003, where there were simply proposals on standard labelling and these proposals were initiated by the UK government, and reports in several UK papers in March 2000 that the EU planned to 'reduce' UK condoms to European sizes, when it was in fact the European Standardisation Committee (CEN) which proposed labelling changes, an organisation with no connection to the EU. In response, the European Commission has created a website dedicated to explaining its point of view.[2]