Massaging The Message

What do you do when you are working for the good of the people and they cannot understand that? You improve the message of course.

"We have not been efficient enough in communicating the EU. We have not invested in listening," said Margot Wallström, communications commissioner.

Of course it would be fairly easy for Margot to listen to some of the commenters on her Blog, but that not the way the EU works.

Among the measures are plain-language summaries of the benefits of European policies and a rapid rebuttal unit to counter false claims.

So Spin and Counter Spin.

However, despite the pledge to cut back on the sometimes baffling eurojargon, old habits clearly die hard. The plans include phrases such as "horizontal issues," "policy outcome" and "evaluation function."

It’s a lot worse than that as EU Rota has noticed. As he says:

One can argue the clarity and conciseness of a communication strategy which consists of 50 different elements as being a bit lengthy.

And

Out of approximately 5,400 words spread-out over 21 pages, the word "listening" appears a grand total of 2 times.

So no change then.