Pigs might fly - or play with toys

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By Paavo Rautio
     
      Did you know, by the way, that the European Union is going to oblige rescue services in all member-states to paint their ambulances yellow? And that the European Commission has ordained that every egg sold within the Union must have its home address ink-jetted on it, with details of the hen that laid it? Yes, and new Union regulations also decree that farmers will henceforth only be allowed to drive their tractors for short periods at a time.
      And that’s only the half of it, because there is also the fact that those mad clowns in Brussels are going to bring in a directive to ban British yoghurt unless it is sold as "fermented milk", and that from now on tight-rope walkers in circuses will have to wear protective hard hats.
      But then you would know all this if you just read the British newspapers. Specifically those newspapers that are not customarily described as "quality papers".
     
The European Union has got - to put it mildly - a communications headache. The most bizarre snippets of information exist about its decisions and intentions. Usually the most profoundly off-the-wall rumours about what Brussels plans to do to us surface in the British press. For instance, those claims in the first two paragraphs above, all of which are classic "Euromyths" and nowhere near the truth.
      But why on earth does the EU give rise to these rumours?
      The most important reason is that people’s knowledge about the EU is overshadowed by an enormous sense of mistrust towards the Union as a whole.
     
After the European Parliament elections last year, when those who stayed at home were asked why it was that they had chosen not to vote, the responses fell into two groups. The most significant reason - right across the EU region - was that politics in general does not interest them in the slightest. Another reason was that they felt they did not know enough about EU matters, or that they do not trust the Union. This latter group included a surprisingly large share of the citizens of the Nordic countries.
     
A slightly similar state of affairs was in evidence late last year, when the EU published its barometer study on what people in different parts of Europe think about the Union. According to the report, a positive attitude was enjoying modest growth, but the differences between individual countries were colossal. It came as no particularly great surprise to learn that the Brits had quite the most negative mindset about the Union. Finland, too, showed up in the critical camp.
      In that same study, when people were asked whether they trusted the Commission and the European Parliament, only just over one in three British respondents said they did. The situation in Finland showed a little more confidence in the two bodies.
     
When attitudes are like that, the listener or the reader is only too willing to take on board negative items of "information" about the EU. The British tabloid press has no difficulty churning out half-truths and common lies, because people want to believe them. Oh, but of course the EU is out to dish the British "God Save the Queen" with its new pan-European anthem, replete with suspiciously Nazi-sounding or Soviet imperialist references to "a bigger motherland" (The Sun, 3.2.2004).
      And of course it is quite natural that those interfering Brussels eurocrats would advocate a ban on life sentences for murderers (Daily Express, 14.10.2004).
      It would have been very easy to check out these claims and find them wanting, but then that would have been letting facts get in the way of a good news-item that nurtured the prevailing prejudices.
     
But now Britain and its attitudes could be putting the entire EU into something of a bind. When a referendum is held in the UK on the new European Constitution, the result is more than likely going to be a No.
      The climate of public opinion has been so well pre-poisoned with anti-EU toxins that the constitutional document will probably get the thumbs-down. In order to ensure this outcome, it will not require much more than a story such as that proffered by The Times a while back (20.1.2003): the EU is to order the provision of toys for pigs. Any farmer refusing to provide his porkers with pigsty playthings will be risking a three-month jail sentence.
      The problem lies in that there could be a domino-effect: the British opinion would guide and encourage other EU countries to reject the Constitution. To my mind at least, it would be very sad if the EU were to slip into an unprecedented crisis over a bogus story about toys for pigs.
     
To be completely fair, sometimes the EU itself does its level best to look stupid. The European Parliament became alarmed at the quality of what passed for discussion in Britain and formed its own rapid deployment force to torpedo the misleading news items concerning the constitution.
      A rumour-debunking unit comprising eight dynamic MEPs promises to go on search and destroy missions to dispose of even the most hairy-handed lunatic ideas inside 24 hours.
     
The plot resembles the 1984 movie Ghostbusters ("Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!"), in which a trio of weird professors of parapsychology set up a hit-team to rid the world of ghosts, ectoplasms, and poltergeists for payment.
      Whereas in the movie Profs. Venkman, Stantz, and Spengler succeeded ("We came, we saw, we kicked it!"), this platoon of MEPs will probably fail.
      The standard operating procedure for lie-busters will probably be that the Euro-MPs draft denials for the media and responses to columns that contain disinformation. In Britain, however, these harbingers of truth arriving from Brussels may fall into the trap that the late radical journalist Claud Cockburn (1904-81) set with his deliciously cynical quote: "Never believe anything until it has been officially denied".
     
The new Commission led by Jose Barroso has taken the information problem rather more seriously: it has moved up its Swede into the communications front line.
      The Commissioner for Institutional Relations and Communication Margo Wallström’s brief is to improve the way "Europe" is communicated to its citizens. Wallström is supposed to listen to the voice of the Eurocitizens and to tell them what the EU is really doing and what it is not doing.
      This kind of broad and pre-emptive information work is considerably more valuable than going round shooting down rumours after the fact.
     
Although Ms. Wallström is recognised as competent and she has the right image for the job, her task is a challenging one - perhaps even doomed to failure in advance. The Union, you see, is always either too removed or too much in people’s faces.
      More often than not it is far too remote to impinge on people’s normal lives even to the point where it might prompt some interest. Then again, it is too up close and personal when it finally does succeed in impinging on their normal lives.
     
When the EU was stirred to criticise the hunting down of wolves in Finland, reindeer herder Auvo Merinen from Suomussalmi, on the southern fringes of Lapland, succinctly described the situation on Monday’s TV news: "It [the EU] ought to do the sensible thing and come and see for itself, and not sit down there a couple of thousand kilometres away blabbering on about matters it doesn’t know jack-sh*t about."
      Full speed ahead to Suomussalmi, Commissioner Wallström, to Suomussalmi!
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 27.1.2005


Links:
  Euromyths - a collection assembled by the European Commission Representation in the U.K.
  European Commission UK Representation: Press Watch

PAAVO RAUTIO / Helsingin Sanomat
paavo.rautio@hs.fi