How the EU uses education/academia to sell integration

[TonyGosling]

Propaganda: How the EU uses education and academia to sell integration

Propaganda and the European Union
The EU itself believes that it has a mission to educate the public. Helpfully, senior representatives of the European Commission have not been shy in claiming a role in a campaign to 'educate' the public as to the advantages of EU membership. In an interview on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost the former EC President Jacques Santer said: "We have as politicians to inform the population and train them in this direction". More importantly, those who would doubt our claim that the EU is engaged in a long term project to shift the public's loyalties from the nation-state to the EU's institutions and underpin the newly emerging European State should consider the following details from the many treaties, reports and plans to foster 'European consciousness':

* The Adonnino Report 1985, where Pietro Adonnino MEP proposed numerous methods to promote the integration of Europe.
* The ambitions of the EU culturalists were also set out in the Maastricht Treaty 1992, which enshrined such goals as "the dissemination of the culture and history of the European peoples". Funding was made available for such activities so long as the recipients could demonstrate the activity had a European dimension.
* The EU's de Clercq Report 1993 devised initiatives to ensure that:

"...European identity must be 'ingrained in people's minds' as a 'good product' using marketing techniques and that certain social categories, particularly 'women and youth', should become 'priority target groups'. More controversially, it suggested that newscasters and reporters must themselves be targeted, they must themselves be persuaded about European Union...so that they subsequently become enthusiastic supporters of the cause."

This ties in with a parallel report by the Commission's Media and Culture Directorate, which showed that money has been made available for the media to promote "a more positive line towards Europe".

* The Pex Report 1998 called for measures to "increase awareness of the achievements and advantages of the Union and foster public support for the forthcoming stages of the integration process". In particular it proposed targeting of the "least favoured" elements of society to persuade them of the glory of the EU. Later that year, a report on the Commission's Euro communication and information strategy stated that acceptance of the Euro will be decisive for pursuing European construction. It demanded extra funding, some of which was directed to campaigns in the UK. It established 'Euro mediators' for disadvantaged sections of society, while the role of children as information multipliers was acknowledged. Women were to be targeted because "they manage the finances of the family, go shopping, etc."
* The inclusion in The Amsterdam Treaty 1998 of provisions relating to cultural matters demonstrated the determination of the EU to "deepen the solidarity between their peoples" by establishing "a citizenship common to nationals" of all member states. Cultural integration lies at the heart of the drive towards "ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe". Key to this process is the provision that the EU must take cultural aspects into account in all other policies.
* Agenda 2000 observed that "the consent and support of European public opinion to enlargement is a clear pre-requisite for the realisation of the project. This will require, during the pre-accession period, a substantial public information effort in both the present and the acceding member states".....................

http://www.brugesgroup.com/eurorebuttal/propaganda.live?article=172