Row erupts over EU website plans

THE launch of a debate on how the EU could best communicate with citizens turned into a debacle yesterday with a row over what the commissioner meant to say.

Commissioner Margot Wallstrom’s plan proposes five areas where Brussels and member states should work together to raise awareness about the EU.

“The EU has grown up as a political project but has not found a place in people’s hearts and minds,” she told a press conference.

One of her proposals was to get out good news stories and she suggested beefing up the commission’s website to help with this.

This would include hiring a managing editor, more staff, ensuring it had better quality material and making it more user friendly.

But after a journalists’ organisation said it was not the commission’s job to run a news agency, spokespeople insisted Ms Wallstrom had been misinterpreted.

“There was no intention to create a news agency”, spokesperson Johannes Laitenberger insisted yesterday.

“Sometimes we use the same words but they do not have the same meaning.

“The commission has no intention to cross the line between information on one hand and journalism on the other.”

However the idea had been included in the French and German versions of the document, but removed from later editions of it.

Ms Wallstrom has the task of communicating the EU to European citizens.

However, sources confirmed she faces hostility from fellow commissioners and from member states that would prefer to control the Brussels story themselves.