Taking the EEAS for a spin…
Civitas, 9 March 2011
It has recently emerged that the EU’s foreign policy arm is to get a PR facelift. Catherine Ashton, the designated architect and builder of the EU’s External Action Service (EEAS), is to use £8.5 million to sharpen its image.
Allocating a chunk of taxpayers’ money to PR specialists is, rather ironically, a bit of a bad PR move. Firstly, singling out Catherine Ashton as the recipient of a substantial PR fund underlines just how unpopular she is in EU and member state circles, especially as she is already well-buoyed in the PR stakes; the Telegraph lists 4 personal spin doctors as well as access to the EU’s executive communication unit, which has 1000 members of staff. Secondly, detailing the need for a PR group that will organise a ‘VIP reception with champagne and top-of-the-range appetisers’, while undoubtedly customary in diplomatic circles, will not to reside well with a public tightening its belt in the face of swingeing austerity measures.
Catherine Ashton is almost unique in the level of bad press she has faced. Although other EU leaders seem to receive some positive coverage intertwined with their bad press, it seems the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs has fared rather badly all along. There is a level of unprecedented animosity towards her; partly for having never held an elected position and yet somehow trumping the ace card of EU chief positions and partly for being one of the unpopular new positions created by the Lisbon Treaty (the other being the EU Council President, Herman van Rompuy). A recent opinion poll awarded the commissioner a rating of E; the lowest of all the Barroso II Commission.
Unfortunately, the EU remains oblivious to the fact that it has created an impossible mandate for the chief of foreign affairs, blending some of the most challenging roles into one position, and upping the ante by making her a vice-president of the Commission as well. To make matters worse, this jumble of overlapping and demanding responsibilities has then been given to someone who lacks the experience with her previous portfolios and the media pizazz needed to win over a largely disillusioned audience. As the EEAS (and Catherine Ashton in particular) continues to provoke discordance rather than the harmonious EU diplomatic corps envisaged, it appears the EU has resorted to throwing money at spin doctors to try and make everything ‘look good’. Yet, for the EU, this is business as usual – it’s not that there is anything wrong with the EEAS or Catherine Ashton’s handling of the role, it is simply that the European citizen ‘doesn’t understand’! This insistence towards ‘educating’ us in the wonders of the EU results in the saturation of many of the EU’s policies with PR and spin.
Indeed Catherine Ashton’s £8.5 million is just the tip of the iceberg in money spent pasting a good face on the EU. In 2008, an Open Europe report put the total cost of the EU’s spin at €2.4 billion, with the UK covering €240 million of this. The authors found: ‘the 2005 French and the Dutch ‘no’ votes to the EU Constitution proved a catalyst for a new era of propaganda … Europe’s politicians decided that the problem was simply that citizens didn’t know enough about the EU and didn’t feel ‘European’ enough.’ And so it continues. The EU’s internal motto must run along the lines of ‘if it’s broke… don’t fix it, put a good spin on it’.