Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-16-Speech-4-048"
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"en.20061116.3.4-048"2
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"Mr President, according to a popular theory, it was the capacity for speech, that is, for communication, which raised human beings above their environment. Since I am not an ethologist, I do not know whether this is really what happened, or whether other factors also came into play. It is an unquestionable fact, however, that the human being is the most communicative being on earth. In other words, advanced communication is a distinctive natural characteristic of humanity.
The problem is that not only we humans, but the institutions, organisations and groups we create also wish to communicate, something that does not pertain to the essence or nature of these institutions. A study of history leads us to conclude that in the past, the institutions responsible for organising and directing our lives did not always strive for high quality communication, but in fact often explicitly closed themselves off from it. The effort to achieve ever more perfect communication with society is a distinctive feature of democracy, and has been made possible by the 20th century revolution in telecommunications. Without radio, television and the Internet we would not even be able to talk about this question today.
In light of the above, I affirm that the European Union is one of the most open and communicative organisations that we have ever experienced in Europe. Naturally, it is not perfect, far from it, but until now, it is the best. It could use fewer technical terms or abbreviations, its concepts could be clearer and more comprehensible, and so on.
But all this would be worthless if the EU, as a communicator, lacked credibility. Without credibility, even a comprehensible message does not come across. And in this regard something else must be said: the greatest destroyers of the Union’s credibility are none other than the politicians and governments of its Member States. They are the ones in whose statements the EU is presented solely as the cause of difficulties, whereas the positive achievements of the EU are always mentioned as the attainments of the government in question. This White Paper, too, will be successful only if the Member States commit themselves to developing and supporting a new, common European communication policy."@en1
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