Better communication of EU issues is crucial for European democracy, stresses the Committee on Culture and Education of the European Parliament in a draft resolution adopted on Wednesday. Public service broadcasters should cover EU matters, while governments, parties and politicians need to contribute more to explaining them to citizens, say MEPs. They also suggest incorporating EU studies into school curricula.

Although the Lisbon Treaty has given Parliament more power in EU decision-making, citizens still "see Europe as still being too distant and having too little influence in solving their real problems". According to MEPs, declining voter turnout "highlights the need to continue efforts to overcome the distance between the EU and European citizens", and this should primarily be done through better communication aimed at creating a "European public sphere".

Public service broadcasters should cover the EU

While "the member states should ensure the independence of public service broadcasters", the latter "have a responsibility to cover the EU", stress MEPs. They "encourage the member States to include EU coverage when determining the remit of public service broadcasters". At the same time the committee underlines that "public broadcasters need to look critically, with full editorial independence, at their own EU coverage and set ambitious targets". Moreover, the EU "should foster the establishment of trans-national media [...], while tightening up the rules intended to safeguard pluralism and combat concentration of media ownership".

Social media: huge potential, yet with underlying dangers

MEPs in the committee "point out that social media have immense potential for reaching young people and therefore encourage the Commission and Parliament to further strengthen their activities in this area". At the same time they stress that "their reliability as sources cannot always be sufficiently guaranteed and they cannot be considered to be professional media". Moreover, "the way in which data is handled on social network platforms can in many cases be dangerous and give rise to serious breaches of journalistic ethics", therefore "caution is required when taking up these new tools". MEPs also "emphasise the importance of drawing up a code of ethics applicable to new media".

Governments, parties and politicians to play their role

MEPs underline the need for the Member States to have a specialised European affairs office, with a person responsible for explaining the local, regional and national implications of European policies and for acting as a point of reference to whom citizens can direct their attention on EU matters.

The committee also stresses the important role played by political parties in shaping public opinion on European issues, and "take the view that they should give European issues a more prominent position in their programmes".

EU and journalism should be studied at school

According to MEPs, "improving citizens’ knowledge of the EU requires EU studies to be incorporated into the school curricula". They call for "covering the EU more extensively, focusing on the historical background, purpose and workings of the EU, in all education curricula". At the same time they encourage the member states to "incorporate courses in journalism using new media into their school curricula".

EU institutional communication to be improved

Finding the recent decrease in the number of accredited journalists in Brussels "extremely worrying", MEPs suggest "supporting those currently in Brussels".  The committee would like to see a group formed from among the Brussels press corps to help improve coverage of EU news.

MEPs welcome the Commission’s and Parliament’s training schemes for journalists on EU matters and call for them to be extended. At the same time they propose giving larger budgets and greater independence to the EP information offices in member states in the field of communication.

MEPs believe that the EP internet television channel EuroparlTV "should be made more effective" while ensuring its editorial independence, and "making its content as widely available as possible for TV channels and online media who wish to use it".