Girding their loins

The Parliament authorities have been planning for next year's Euro-elections and have asked all the Parliamentary departments to come up with a plan of action. And here it is in all its glory

Background: The main messages identified in the information and communication strategy as adopted by the Bureau in October 2007
Phase I (January 2008 – December 2008):
- Parliament has developed into a key player in the EU.
- Its decisions matter and have profound impact on the European society and add value to the lives of European citizens.
- Parliament is a political institution in which the groups each bring their political vision to bear on political outcomes. Voters have an interest in ensuring their opinions are represented by voting as future decisions will affect them.

Phase II (January 2009 - May 2009):
- There are major policy issues, challenges and even threats facing the EU, its member states and citizens.
- The issues can in fact only be dealt with at that European level.
- The electorate face in June 2009 a choice between different political alternatives to tackle these issues.
- The European parliament is the only democratic institution at European level where policy choices can be discussed and decided on in an open debate.

As you can see it was money worth spending on future strategy.

Parliament is a "key player"... right and most MEPs are well known to their opwn parents.

Its decisions "add value" to the citizens. Now if they were to say "its decision add costs" they might be on to something here. But 'add value' now you know they are deluded. Voters 'have an interest', no they are profoundly un-interested, maybe they should be a little more engaged, just to stop the avalanche of piffle, absolutely. But this is politics for the under fives. This has been drawn up by highly paid people for the use of political anoraks. Maybe they could have come up with something a little less trite?

Wow. There are threats to the EU are there? Well of course the key threat facing the EU is the people. After all they are as Mr Sarkozy puts it,

“They are bloody fools.They have been stuffing their faces at Europe’s expense for years and now they dump us in the s***.”

Decisions can only be made at a European level...tosh.

Anyhow each unit has been asked to come up with proposals for the campaign, under the following titles,

Dossier/Issue/Activity (including both current and future legislature)
1 Possible positive messages
2 Possible negative reactions/risks

These thoughts will then be sent back to the Information/Prerss/Propaganda DG for cogitating and so on. I shall of course keep you updated as to what these messages are.