Introduction
The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) marked the first concrete step in the European integration process. The competences of the newly-founded ECSC institutions – the European Court of Justice, the Common Assembly and the High Authority – were limited to the coal and steel industry. However, attendant upon this was the introduction of European citizens’ rights for qualified coal and steel workers, namely the right to free movement and establishment, which were themselves combined with certain social provisions which extended to the workers’ family. These social provisions included housing projects, holidays, social security and the schooling of the workers’ children (among other things). Karlheinz NeunreitherFootnote 2 and Espen Olsen argue that these citizens’ rights were introduced for pragmatic reasons in order to ensure the smooth running of the common coal and steel market and the immediate economic self-interest of the ECSC.Footnote 3
This view is too narrow and neglects the fact that the ECSC, and later the European Economic Community (EEC), never conceived of European integration as a purely economic undertaking. The Community also had civil aims, and these two sets of aims co-existed in a symbiotic relationship. Walter Hallstein alluded to as much in 1958 when he argued that ‘the danger . . . exists . . . that what we have been pursuing with so much energy and perseverance since the end of the second world war may be misinterpreted as being no more than a material, or economic, exercise. [These economic aims] are in all truth essential aims, but they are not the only aims’Footnote 4. The ECSC and EEC were consistently concerned with facilitating a European civil consciousnessFootnote 5 that would provide the basis for a European way of thinkingFootnote 6, European citizenshipFootnote 7 and, with that, the acceptance of European citizens’ rightsFootnote 8 and a sui generis European identityFootnote 9. We argue that the CommunityFootnote 10 realised the importance of a European civil consciousness for European integration and attempted to facilitate its emergence through its early public communication policy. This fact has too often been overlooked, and this analysis attempts to rectify this and, in doing so, correct four distinct but related arguments on the nature of the Community's early public communication policy. These four arguments are:
First, European integration was undertaken by ‘proponent[s] of arcane policy’Footnote 11 or ‘spin-doctors’Footnote 12 with a purely ‘technocratic mindset’Footnote 13 and that the early bureaucrats, such as Monnet, Rabier and Schuman, were primarily concerned with stifling debate.Footnote 14 They intended to avoid the reporting of European affairsFootnote 15 so that integration could proceed in silence.Footnote 16 This started ‘a vicious circle of (non-) communication’.Footnote 17 Alternately expressed, early European public communication policy was nothing other than an ‘information obstruction policy’,Footnote 18 dominated by a distant anti-democratic technocratic or a hypocritically democraticFootnote 19 elite and statements such as ‘nous sommes les serviteurs de la grande idée de l’Unité Européen [sic]’Footnote 20 were only used as rhetorical flourishes.
Second, the Community's early public communication policy was dominated by a concern for persuading elites of the benefits of European integration. Kevin FeatherstoneFootnote 21 argues that Monnet's ‘strategy for the ECSC clearly involved setting his attention on persuading elites, rather than the mass publics’. Bo Petersson and Anders Hellström insist that the Community addressed predominantly elite audiences’,Footnote 22 and Ana Lúcia Terra emphasises that the ‘sphere of action’ of the Press and Information Service consisted of ‘disseminating information amongst designated ‘multipliers’ drawn from the political, academic, economic and media elites’.Footnote 23
Third, the importance of an effective public communication policy only became recognised by the Community in its response to either the Maastricht crisis (1992/1993) or the Santer Commission resignation crisis (1999). Thus, Michael Brüggemann argues that ‘information policy became really important for the first time with the ratification problems attached to the Maastricht Treaty [1992]’.Footnote 24 Cristiano Bee notes that the idea of promoting Europe through information and communication campaigns emerged only at the beginning of the 1990s.Footnote 25 And Chiara Valentini and Giorgia Nesti add that the importance of information and communication policy started with the Maastricht crisis but became ‘a binding institutional priority’Footnote 26 from 2005. In a similar vein Christoph MeyerFootnote 27 argues that the disastrous handling of media attention during the resignation crisis of the Santer Commission acted as a ‘wake-up’ call for the Community with regard to the importance of media relations.
Fourth, the Community had, in the first two decades of European integration, neither a systematic or organised public communication policy nor a regard for communicating and explaining itself to a general European public. Nesti argues that in the 1950s and 1960s, ‘no specific act was published, occasional information campaigns were indeed targeted at a selected elite audience . . . while leaving outside the general public’.Footnote 28 Terra misleadingly claims that ‘information programmes . . . have emphasised the need to transmit “the European message” to the general public in each member state’Footnote 29 only since the 1970s, whilst Petersson and HellströmFootnote 30 see the beginning of a public communication policy that addressed a general European public as late as the 1980s.
We argue that all four of these arguments fail to recognise that the Community had a persistent concern from the 1950s onwards for a public communication policy addressed at an inclusive general European public and that this was exemplified in both a popularist approach to public communication policy between 1951 and 1962 and an opinion leader approach from 1963 to 1967.Footnote 31 Consequently, the Community realised the importance of a public communication policy, including media relations, as a vehicle for its civil aims. A further point of difference from previous work needs to be noted concerning the historiography used in this paper. We rely heavily on primary sources and archive material, and we treat speeches as having, to borrow from J. L. Austin, both an illocutionary (performative) sincerity and a clear perlocutionary (persuasive) intention. For example, Jean Rey believed that Commission officials should speak as prophets, Jacques-René Rabier describes himself as a ‘missionary’ and Olivier BaisnéeFootnote 32 argues that those who worked for the European institutions at the very beginning were ‘militants’ and ‘pioneers’ for the European cause – that is ‘prophets’, ‘missionaries’, ‘militants’ and ‘pioneers’ who, through, in part, the use of speeches, sought to state the benefits of an economically integrated and civil Europe and to persuade a European public of these benefits. Such speeches were taken very seriously, were carefully craftedFootnote 33 and consistently deployed the same essential narrative. Indeed, Commissioners ‘should be regarded as prime movers in an identity-construction enterprise’.Footnote 34 The narratives and representationsFootnote 35 used in the speeches (and other primary sources) are important in understanding the meaning of a civil and integrated Europe. We do not accept the view that these speeches can be disregarded as political rhetoric made insincerely and for ulterior motives.
In this paper we wish to show four things. First, that the Community's public communication policy had an explicit civil aim: it wished to stimulate a European civil consciousness in a public conceived of as European and inclusive. Second, that the Community realised the value of public communication in attempting to achieve this. Third, that this civil aim provided the rationale for the Community's public communication policy efforts from 1951 to 1967. Fourth, that throughout this period the Community adopted two different approaches – first a popularist approach (1951–1962) and second an opinion leader approach (1963–1967).
A European civil consciousness
The Community's conception of an inclusive European public was grounded in the federal possibilities of the Schuman Declaration (1950), which had unhesitatingly and unambiguously said that the ECSC was the ‘first step in the federation of Europe’.Footnote 36 It was not restricted to economic and corresponding social policy competences, which, if followed literally, would only cover a European public that comprised of workers (and their families), trade unions and employers. On the contrary, the Community was concerned with the idea of an inclusive European public, comprised of all Europeans, not one simply consisting of ‘homo oeconomicus and homo faber’.Footnote 37
This inclusive conception of the European public was envisioned through press articles, TV, radio, cinema, pamphlets, brochures and most notably in speeches given by the High Authority (1952–1957) and Commission officials (1958–1967). Hallstein, President of the EEC Commission from 1958 to 1967, used terms such as ‘a new society’,Footnote 38 a ‘Europe of free and equal men’,Footnote 39 ‘citizens’,Footnote 40 ‘men and women’,Footnote 41 ‘every man’,Footnote 42 ‘citizens of the European Community’,Footnote 43 ‘individuals and peoples’.Footnote 44 Specifically, he hoped (many years before ‘citizenship’ became part of the official EU discourse through the Maastricht Treaty) that one day Europeans would say ‘“Civis Europaeus sum” – “I am a citizen of Europe”’.Footnote 45 Jean Monnet, President of the High Authority from 1952 to 1955, and his successor René Mayer, President of the High Authority from 1955 to 1958, used similar terms including a ‘European civilisation’,Footnote 46 ‘Europeans’,Footnote 47 ‘citizens’,Footnote 48 and ‘men and women’.Footnote 49 In other words, the Community envisioned the European Community as a ‘human Community’Footnote 50 and a federation ‘in progress’ and correspondingly imagined the future European public as consisting of citizens who were democratically active, participative in and supportive of a European federation.
The Community also articulated a belief in the need for an active European civil society and distanced itself from being a technocratic and remote entityFootnote 51. The Community expressed on several occasions that it hoped to involve European citizens actively in the process of Community building.Footnote 52 In other words, the Community was aware that ‘to create a living, breathing [democratic] Community of man it [was] not enough to put words down on paper it is not enough to affix seals’Footnote 53 and that, in order for a solidary European public to emerge, a specific civil aim needed to be achieved, namely the stimulation of a European civil consciousness.
The Community believed that a European civil consciousness would act as a solidarising force and help develop an understanding of the workings of the Community, its objectives, its values and its commitment to liberal principles.Footnote 54 Moreover, it hoped that a European civil consciousness would lead to new European ways of thinking and actingFootnote 55 based on mutuality of interests, common bonds, collective association and a common heritage. An ideal inclusive European public was perceived of as a ‘solidary sphere’ that ‘unites individuals dispersed by class, race, religion, [or] ethnicity’.Footnote 56 This ideal European public united through a European civil consciousness was envisaged as being able to reconcile both national and European interests in a non-contradictory manner. This view was expressed particularly clearly in speeches given by High Authority and Commission officials. For example, Mayer,Footnote 57 in an address at the New York Council on Foreign Relations, said: ‘Tonight I address you as a European. It is not to say that I have ceased being a Frenchman – indeed that would be quite impossible – but rather I am a Frenchman and something more’. This was a point endorsed by Hallstein, who argued that ‘no one is asked to disown his country’ but rather that ‘a double allegiance is required of our citizens, so that the new Europe may be built with the nations for its foundation’.Footnote 58 European civil consciousness could and should be comfortable with the multiple attachments and loyalties associated with having both national and European citizenship. In other words, the European public would ‘think and act as multiply situated selves’.Footnote 59 A self-aware European public capable of understanding itself would ultimately bestow political legitimacy on a federal Europe. The Community understood European civil consciousness as an aim that was symbiotically linked to the Community's economic and political ambitions.
However, the Community's ‘ideal’ inclusive European public and the actual European public were poles apart. While the Community had hoped (and believed) that a European consciousness would spread quickly among the public,Footnote 60 Rabier admitted that it had been naïve to think this could be achieved quickly and to not realise how difficult it was for Europeans to see the benefits of the Community in their daily lives.Footnote 61 The reason, they thought, for this lay mainly in the Community's predominant technical and economic characteristics. Hallstein, for example, believed that ‘the average citizen . . . feels somewhat lost when confronted with an edifice whose structure appears to him complicated; he easily imagines that Europe is a matter exclusively for technicians, economists and a few political figures upon whom it is difficult for him to exercise any influence. This opinion is obviously erroneous, but it has the advantage of showing us where we must apply our effort’.Footnote 62 Because of the Community's apparent irrelevance for the ‘man on the street’, the European public lacked curiosity about the European project and did not seem keen on learning more.Footnote 63
The challenge was to bring the Community closer to the European public, to show its relevance and to demonstrate that Europe was not just an ‘abstract idea’ or a merely technical and economic entity. In the hope of achieving this, the Community turned to public communication policy.
Stimulating a European civil consciousness through a public communication policy
Public communication policy
The Community believed that it ‘will only come to true realization [i.e. fulfil its federal aims]Footnote 64 if the actions it takes are made public, and explained publicly . . . to the people of our Community’.Footnote 65 In conforming to this belief, it developed its own public communication policy, in order to inform the European public about the benefits (material and affective) that it could gain, and thereby evoke interest in the Community's objectives and workings. Public communication was understood as helping to build a relationship between the Community and the European public, and as essential to successful integration.
Institutionally it was the Information Service of the High Authority (which became the Press and Information Service in 1955 and eventually the Common Press and Information Service of the European Communities in 1958) which publicly communicated on behalf of the Community. However, the ECSC had no explicit public communication policy mandate. Article 5 of the Treaty of Paris (1951), which refers to informing the public, reads: ‘The Community shall accomplish its mission, under the conditions provided for in the present Treaty . . . . To this end, the Community will . . . enlighten and facilitate the action of the interested parties by collecting information, organising consultations and defining general objectives.’ Such a wide-ranging and ambiguous ‘brief’ gave the High Authority sufficient scope so that its public communication policy efforts were effectively unrestrained. According to Rabier, Director of the Press and Information Service from 1955 to 1973, Jacqueline Lastenouse, founder of the Jean Monnet programmes in the university sector and Paul Collowald, a senior official in the Commission's spokesperson's group from 1959 to 1972, the Community frequently tried to take a wider approach than that prescribed in the Treaties in order to reach a wider publicFootnote 66.
Correspondingly, the ECSCFootnote 67 noted that the Community's public communication policy efforts ‘had long ceased to be confined to the admittedly most important fields of economic and social information work and of daily press releases and instead was bringing all appropriate technical sources to bear in an endeavour to reach the various circles which make up European public opinion’.Footnote 68 Indeed Monnet thought that in order for the High Authority to fulfil its legal obligation of consulting with interested parties it needed to develop a public communication policy directed at all interested partiesFootnote 69 – and that meant in practice a European public of 160 million peopleFootnote 70 – and to target ‘all levels of the population’.Footnote 71 He believed that if the European public was informed a European civil consciousness could emerge. In order to meet the challenges of adequately addressing such a large European public the Community adopted two distinct approaches.
The popularist approach 1951–1962
The Information Service of the High Authority was created in 1952 and became the Press and Information Service in 1955. It was divided into two divisions, with the first responsible for public communication policy addressed at the trade union sector (as requested by the trade union sector itselfFootnote 72), and the second concerned with providing information to the European public ‘in its widest extension’.Footnote 73
The popularist approach (1951–1962) had three characteristics: first having the general public as a target and using the popular media to reach them; second, ensuring that the information disseminated was straightforward and widely comprehensible through the deliberate use of simple language; and, third, fostering direct relationships between the Community and the European public through visits to Community institutions and offices in member states.
The Community defined its target as all Europeans, meaning all citizens of member states, youth and, to some extent, children.Footnote 74 Accordingly, the budget allocated to the second division of the Information Service was consistently larger than the budget for the first division, which specialised in communication addressed to trade unions.
Table 1. The Commission's Information Policy Budget for 1955–60.
Source: Gustave Amorin-Fulle, ‘Mádias et construction européenne, généalogie d'une dynamique’, BA Dissertation, Universitá Catholique de Louvant-La-Neuve (1995), 133–136.
It was this budgetary priority that enabled the Community to build what would today be called a multi-platform approach. It developed a routinised and consistent use of the mass media (as well as its own publications) based upon the Community's belief that ‘public opinion [needed to be] kept informed of the political significance of the Community’Footnote 75 via all outlets – Press, TV, radio and cinema’.Footnote 76 It was Monnet in particular who argued that it was important to develop relationships with news agencies and journalists in order to manipulate their viewsFootnote 77. Monnet was not secretive about thisFootnote 78 – he wanted positive publicity for European integration. It is incorrect to say that he wanted to avoid the press reporting on Community affairs, but he did fear that reports in the press could misrepresent decision-making and could risk the success of European integration. Consequently he used to invite journalists to the High Authority in an attempt to explain why decisions had been taken. According to Rabier, Monnet wished to establish a relationship of trust between himself and the journalists.Footnote 79
How successful he was is difficult to determine; nevertheless press relations developed steadily. In 1955 the first association of the Community's accredited journalists was formed. The number of accredited journalists increased from twenty-three in 1956 to about 100 in the 1960s and to 813 in 1999. With the creation of the Joint Press and Information Service in 1958, the Community believed it was necessary to create the post of a spokesperson. This spokesperson (Giorgia Smoquina from 1959 to 1961 and Beniamino Olivi from 1961 to 1968) was to explain the Community's positions and its decisions to the press. Weekly midday meetings on Thursdays with journalists were introduced. According to Bastin the Thursday press briefing became very important as they ensured a continuous exchange of information with reporters.Footnote 80 Journalists who attended these press briefings had office space at their disposal complete with phones, fax and stationary. Attendance at the midday briefing increased from about 400 in the 1960s to 1400 in 1995.Footnote 81 Further, the Community ensured that relevant information was given to the press agencies in the form of press releases, statements, press kits and press conferences, monthly newsletters, special issues or pages dedicated to the European Community in national newspapers such as Le Monde or Süddeutsche Zeitung and in magazines such as Ihre Freundin (300,000 ex.) and Heimat und Familie (100,000 ex.). The representation offices in the member states were also used to foster contacts with local media.
For TV, radio and cinema, the Community released its own productions: the documentary ‘Histoire d’un Traité’ (1954) which was translated into several languages. In France, it was shown in approximately 500 cinemas reaching an audience of two million. According to the ECSCFootnote 82 three further documentaries were produced in 1956, two more in 1958 and between 1958 and 1963 at least five short films were produced.Footnote 83 High Authority and Commission officials, such as Monnet and Hallstein, regularly gave interviews on national and regional TV shows and radio programmes.Footnote 84 In addition to the use of mass media, the Community also released its own publications mainly in the form of brochures addressed to the general European public.Footnote 85 These brochures had a two-fold purpose: To inform the European public about the Community and its workings and to show the European public where the Community was heading, its (federal) aspirations, its efforts to increase living standards and its commitment to secure peace. Only if, Monnet believed, information was not confined to technicalities would the public feel part of a common destiny and develop a European consciousness.
The second characteristic of the Community's popularist approach of this time was the deployment and systematic use of a simple, straightforward and readily comprehensible language in publications. For example brochures utilised a pithy style of writing, cartoons, information boxes, simple and clear statistics, diagrams to illustrate historical developments and photographs.Footnote 86
Photographs and the widespread use of pictorial representations of Europe in pamphlets and brochures were especially important since, as Foret says, they ‘painted a political panorama within which each player has a given place and is provided with an understanding of the world which shows the necessity and importance of integration’.Footnote 87 Overall these popularist publications constantly emphasised a ‘United Europe,’ ‘Europe to unite its strengths,’ ‘Uniting of Europe,’ ‘an ever closer union,’ ‘closer union of the people,’ ‘benefits,’ ‘confidence,’ ‘peace’, ‘reconciliation’ and even the Community's contribution to a ‘new European way of thinking.’
Figure 1. ‘Pourquoi et comment’ section from the EC's brochure ‘La Communauté Européenne – les faits, les chiffres’ (1964).
Source: © European Union.
Figure 2 Picture from the EC's brochure ‘The Common Market at work (1960)’.
Source: © European Union.
The third characteristic of the popularist approach to public communication (1951–1962) was the attempt to foster a direct relationship between the European public and Community institutions through fairs, exhibitions, workshops and visits. The fairs and exhibitions included the Parisian book fair (1958), the Universal Exhibition in Brussels (1958) and the ‘Grüne Woche’ in Berlin (1960) among many others. The Community organised travelling exhibitions, one of which toured for a year in Germany. Fairs and exhibitions were seen as occasions which made ‘it possible to reach a large number of people, often from the least informed sections of public opinion . . .’.Footnote 88 Public visits to European institutions, as well as seminars and conferences, were also encouraged, all of which were seen as occasions to inform the public.Footnote 89 According to the EEC in 1960 about 150 groups comprising over 5000 people were received in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg.Footnote 90 In addition, the importance of representation offices in the member states (in West Germany, Italy and France at first) was increasingly acknowledged in helping to ‘decentralize the information system and to maintain [direct] contacts with the public at large’.Footnote 91
From the popularist approach to opinion leaders (1962/1963)
In the year 1962 the Gallup Institute undertook the first Community-wide opinion poll.Footnote 92 It revealed that public levels of information about Europe were low.Footnote 93 Three survey questions were concerned with the level of information the public had. The first asked people to name a European institution, the second to name a topic of current debate and the third to name an achievement of the European Community. On average eighteen per cent of those polled were able to answer all three questions, twenty-four per cent were able to answer two of the three questions, twenty-four per cent provided an answer to one of the questions, and thirty-two per cent could not answer any (two per cent gave an inexact or vague answer). The same survey revealed that only eleven per cent of those surveyed thought often about the problems of European unification, against twenty-nine per cent who answered ‘rarely’ and twenty-seven per cent who answered ‘never’.Footnote 94 Such figures revealed Albert Coppé’sFootnote 95 prescience when he said: ‘The first obstacle lies in the indifference of public opinion’ to which the Commission some years later added that the ‘European public shows little passion and little curiosity for the European project’,Footnote 96 although information was widely disseminated.
The results of the poll were taken as evidence that the popularist approach had been largely ineffective, and the Community's public communication structures lacked adequate financial and human resourcesFootnote 97 to satisfy the increasing demand for information from specialised groups, such as academics, teachers’ associations, journalists, trade unionists, industrialists, leading farmers, agricultural associations and the third sector.Footnote 98 The combination of the disappointing results and the lack of resources led to a change in the approach to public communication, with a move towards one which prioritised a public communication policy that targeted opinion leaders. Or, as the EEC put it: ‘[opinion leaders] could take over part of the load which the information officials of the Community can no longer carry alone’.Footnote 99 The Commission added that, because it is not possible to address 185 million people directly, it is necessary to target the most influential – not exclusively but primarily.Footnote 100 However, it is important to note that turning to opinion leaders was still seen as a way to address the public at large and to continue efforts to stimulate a European civil consciousness.
Opinion leader approach (1963–1967)
From 1963 onwards the Community turned to opinion leaders with the objective of using them as multipliers. Opinion leaders included those who had a direct relationship with or interest in the Community and those who in many cases identified themselves (especially academics and teachers) when asking for information about institutions as well as specific policies.Footnote 101 Others were identified through active searches for people who had a cultural or political vocation: politicians, CEOs, trade unionists, professors,Footnote 102 public and private managers of large-scale information media organisations,Footnote 103 national governments and big private organisations,Footnote 104 ‘influential persons’.Footnote 105 Primary and secondary schools were particularly important and provided an opportunity for teachers to hand out material on European integration.Footnote 106 Finally, journalists and pro-European civil society associations such as the European Movement were understood as channels through which to get ‘the European message’ out. In short opinion leaders consisted of all those who were regarded as having the most direct influence on the public when it came to disseminating information and influencing behaviour and attitudes. They held the ‘psychological’ and ‘technical’ keys of communication,Footnote 107 and were public figures likely to act as ‘multipliers’ in the intense task of making Europeans aware of and of informing them about developments in Europe’.Footnote 108 These opinion leaders were regarded as constituting part of what was known as a ‘eurosphere’Footnote 109 of influential people occupying significant positions.
From 1961 onward the Joint ‘Press and Information’ Service (first created in 1958) was subdivided into eight units: General Affairs, Fairs and Exhibitions, Publications, Radio TV and Cinema, Trade Union, Agriculture, University information, youth and popular education and Third Countries. The budget was rebalanced away from general public activity to opinion leader activity. In 1963, seventy-eight per cent of the public communication policy budget was allocated to activities addressed at opinion leaders with the rest aimed at the European public at large.Footnote 110 We do not have corresponding figures for 1964 to 1967;Footnote 111 however, the Commission did state that an opinion leader approach was financially prioritised because there were insufficient financial resources to target 185 million people.Footnote 112
Table 2. The Commission's Information Policy Budget 1963.
Source: COM(63)242 final, p. 30.
What we can see from the above table is that specific public communication tools were almost exclusively used to target opinion leaders. They were based in the administrative units: ‘General Affairs’ publications and the University information, youth and popular education sector. The ‘General Affairs’ Unit was responsible for the organisation of conferences, visits to the Community institutions, workshops and study trips. However, following scrutiny and concern for cost effectiveness, the EECFootnote 113 stated that ‘funds were too limited to allow spectacular operations’ and so they became almost exclusively reserved for opinion leaders, notably from the University sector with sixty per cent of the people on study visits to Luxembourg and Brussels in 1964 coming from this sector.Footnote 114 Indeed, in the previous year the EEC had prioritised training lecturers in the various milieux on the occasion of their visits (opportunities which extended to ‘several hundred sessions a year’).Footnote 115 However, the Commission limited the reimbursement of travel expenses to those visitors who showed ‘a direct relationship with/interest in the Community and could be considered opinion leaders’Footnote 116 and who had directly been invited by the Porte-Parole group, the external Community office or the ‘Direction du Service’.
With regard to publications, the Commission restricted (again for financial reasons) the dissemination of brochures and folders to institutions, governmental organisations and key multipliers like libraries in Universities, professors or the media. The EEC gave the example of collaboration with ‘the European Association of Producers of Publications for youth (Europressjunior), which represents 240 publications reaching some thirty million readers monthly’.Footnote 117 With regard to the European public at large, the mass media, fairs and exhibitions were the main public communication tools used.
The new financial priorities and the re-prioritisation of information tools provided the template for information activities until 1967. After this, and following the guidelines laid down by Merger Treaty (1967), the public communication policy budget was to be increased and the service reorganised.Footnote 118
Conclusion
We have attempted to show four things. First, the Community had an explicit civil aim of trying to stimulate a European civil consciousness consistently through 1951 to 1967. Therefore, judgements such as ‘no political or bureaucratic institution could be further away from the citizens than one dealing with regulations on the production and distribution, including prices, of steel and coal and their derivatives’ are misrepresentative.Footnote 119 Second, the Community realised the value of public communication for the achievement of this aim, which, third, provided the rationale for the Community's public communication policy efforts in the period. Fourth, two different and consecutive approaches to public communication are discernible: first a popularist approach (1951–1962) and then an opinion leader approach (1963–1967), both attempting to stimulate a European civil consciousness.
Those who persist in describing this period of European integration in terms of a secretive elite or elitist bureaucrats who had little regard for the general public, no interest in diverse forms of outputs and content and little time for public communication outside marketing or public relations strategies in times of crisis are somewhat naïve. These arguments ignore the Community's civil intentions. This is not to suggest that the Commission was successful in stimulating a European civil consciousness – countless Eurobarometer findings record its failure. Nor is it to suggest that the Community spent its time, effort and resources wisely. Perhaps it overestimated the European public's desire for a civil Europe, and perhaps it was beyond its ability to facilitate a European civil consciousness. It is possible to see public communication as a compensatory activity, which attempts to redress the European public's lack of interest in European integration.Footnote 120 Nevertheless, it was meant to inform, inspire and persuade. It is what was said and intended rather than its success that is important.
Simply put: European integration needs to be understood as a project that was from the start intended to go forward with the European people and not without them, or in spite of them. The scale of the public communication effort and what was affirmed and promised testify to this. These public communication efforts have continued and have involved more and more members of staff, from a handful of High Authority officials to currently about 1200 in the Commission's Directorate Generate for Communication. Civil Europe has its own history, albeit a little appreciated history. Yet it has, we would suggest, the same importance as the purely economic and political histories of European integration. It is a history that merits looking at in its own right.
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