The record-low turnout for the European Union elections proved, once again, that those in charge of communicating Europe don’t have a clue how to do it beyond protecting their self-interests, at which they are masters of talking to each other. European Commissioner Margot Wallstrom, responsible for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy, could care less because she’s heading home soon and has been led down the primrose path by her staff for years, never really understanding they were undercutting her and were more interested in institutional relations than communications, a good strategy for them, but bad for EU citizens, who’ve been left in the dark on so many issues.

You’d think that, as a former Executive Vice-President of Worldwide Global Media, and coming from a country with a strong record of transparency, that Wallstrom would have been able to see through her own staff, who misled her constantly. The European Commission’s view of communication seems to be user-unfriendly and unfathomable arcane web sites you couldn’t navigate with a GPS. The chief culprit has been her Director General, Claus Sorensen, whose idea of communication is circling the wagons while issuing bureaucratic responses to tough questions from the media, or sidestepping them.

All this is to be expected in a political operation, but the problem is that the failure to have a clear mission idea has led to the rejection of the EU Constitution in 2005 by the French and Dutch, within a three-day span of each other, the humiliating defeat of its replacement, the so-called Lisbon Treaty, by the Irish last year, and now the bottom falling out of the EU elections. That just shows voters don’t care because they don’t understand what’s going on in Brussels, and that Brussels doesn’t let them know why Europe should matter to them.
Europe has not been communicated, and there are colossal failures to prove it, leaving EU residents baffled about the power games played in Brussels and hungry to hear how their daily lives and ordinary concerns can be bettered by political leaders. On May 30, 2005, a year after Wallstrom took office, voters in France - a cornerstone country and founding member of the EU - rejected the mind-boggling bureaucratese language of the EU’s initial Constitution by a margin of 55-45 percent. Then-French president Jacques Chirac campaigned hard for it while EU leaders did the heavy looking-on and their communication strategy was benign neglect. The turnout was 70 percent so this was more than a mandate, it was a kick in the head and proof the EU didn’t know how to communicate the importance of the Constitution, especially since it was arcane and almost unintelligible to anyone but bureaucrats.

To prove there was no interest in communication, even with the most important document in the EU at stake, the Dutch then rejected the Constitution as well, the twin defeats a fatal blow because it had to be ratified by all the then 25 member states of the EU. Then, proving they had not learned a thing, the European Commission let slip away the next best chance for a revised Constitution, the so-called Lisbon Treaty, which was just a rush job rewrite of the original document, but rammed through parliaments instead of being put to voters – except in Ireland, where it was resoundingly dismissed after nobody in the EU campaigned for it. The reaction in the EU was to foist double jeopardy on the Irish and make them vote again in October. If the Irish defeat it again, perhaps the EU  can just keep sending it back until they get it right, because the treaty must be approved and ratified by all the current 27 member states. Now that’s communication.