Regional Policies and European Integration by Julie Anna Braun

Author:Julie Anna Braun
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

4.1.6 Regions’ European Communications: Does European Identity Building Feature Amongst Them?

Unlike the commonalities jointly developed and operationalised in the networked-based Brussels offices, the management of the regions’ European communications follows different pathways. In fact, only Brandenburg has a designated communications team in place to produce and disseminate its European messages to the constituents at large—thus raising European awareness and aiming to cultivate a European mind-set and identity.

The political elite of the South West of England, conscious of the importance of strategic communications, regretted the absence of a dedicated communications team in the region’s European directorate of the RDA. Its communications and outreach efforts were limited to maintaining and updating the region’s website. Beyond that, additional information was generated by an off-site website (the “Convergence Cornwall”) operated out of Cornwall. In all, the political elite appeared to be comfortable with this arrangement at the time as the focus of the South West of England’s EU-oriented engagement involved the procurement and management of both Objective 1 and 2 funding within the Cohesion Policy ; areas that, in the political elites’ eyes, do not necessitate active citizen involvement. It is, however, conceivable, that this would have been a straightforward opportunity to cultivate a European identity in the region, communicating about the development and improvement fostered by European programmes . Yet, the political elites, in the course of the interviews, did not appear overly concerned about the lack of a dedicated communications strategy and team within the RDA’s European directorate. This lack of concern, as Chap. 5 will show, was not shared by the region’s civil servants . They, in fact, saw the benefits in communicating to their constituency and stakeholders on European opportunities, and they criticised the national government for not allowing the region to conduct and implement a pro-active European communications and outreach strategy.

The South West of England’s political elites’ minimalist communication approach and its view that the various media and communication platforms don’t hold much promise in shaping and influencing the region’s Europeanness was in effect shared by the political elite of Nord–Pas-de-Calais. They differed, however, in their perception and critical perspective of their government’s imposed strict limitations in all communication matters. The political elite in Nord–Pas-de-Calais would like to be able to communicate more widely on European opportunities and improvements to the region as she said this would potentially combat some Eurosceptics in the region, cultivate a European identity and support the directorate’s European work (Interviewee 10). Nonetheless, the political elite in the end appeared resigned to the recognition of the political realities on the ground—that the political decision about communications was made at the top of the regional government , and that it was unable to overcome the limitation of its political authority to develop a broad range of communication activities. In shedding additional light on the latter point, the political elite stated: “We communicate fairly little with the citizens about the European programmes because it is not supported politically, unfortunately. […] We also see in the political debates

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