POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE EU’s OUTREACH STRATEGY AND ITS PERCEPTION

Source: Analysis of the Perception of the EU and EU’s Policy Abroad (2015)

OVERARCHING PUBLIC DIPLOMACY STRATEGY

Establish a centralized Public Diplomacy strategy with a decentralized implementation plan to adjust to local specificities The EU suffers from a ‘priority problem’ as the sheer volume of statements and declarations dilutes the focus of external messages. Statements are seen to be frequently not followed-up with meaningful and coordinated regional or national Public Diplomacy efforts. The EU is repeatedly assessed by external observers as over-complex, lacking transparency and with a tendency to over-promise and under-deliver. There are structural challenges due to the intertwined responsibilities between the Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the relationship between different Directorates General (DGs) that implement initiatives with implications for Public Diplomacy (PD).

• Develop a comprehensive and centralized Public Diplomacy framework and strategy, ensuring sufficient flexibility for Delegations on the operational level in order to adapt outreach to national and local contexts.
• Identify a finite set of core messages in cooperation with EU Delegations, encompassing common areas of interest, key topics, and key target groups that the EU Delegations can work with. Targeted and innovative Public Diplomacy activities along core messages have more impact than a large number of activities. Inputs from Brussels HQ need to be provided in timely manner with consideration of time zone differences and translation needed. Innovation should be encouraged given that often availability of resources is but one and not the most significant factor of success.
• Enhance EU’s consistency and credibility through designing multi-annual Public Diplomacy frameworks/ strategies on a partner country level.

Strive for an ever better coordination with the Member States

The EU is frequently perceived as lacking unity and partially inconsistent. There is a certain overlap between Public Diplomacy efforts of the Member States, the European External Action Service and the European Commission. The most attractive EU Member States differ quite substantially and synergy would be highest when linking the EU to them.

• Strengthen coordination with EU Member States by aiming for joint strategic approaches as well as regular and institutionalized coordination meetings within the respective country in order to better synchronize outreach and reinforce messages wherever possible. This would also help to share experiences and draw on the Public Diplomacy expertise of the Member States.
• Aim for a common direction and determine a set of core messages relating to the Public Diplomacy framework.
• Highlight the added-value that the EU adds to the efforts of the Member States openly rather than trying to profile the EU exclusively.

Engage in Cultural Diplomacy

EU countries are seen as somewhat or very attractive in terms of their culture and lifestyle. Indeed,  European culture is an influential point of attraction for and in demand of stakeholders across the world, who highly value Europe’s cultural diversity.

• Support initiatives of cooperation in the field of culture, look out for new and innovative approaches, engage better with the youth culture and empower local cultural actors.
• Support people-to-people exchanges in a spirit of equal partnerships, mutual learning and co-creation. Avoid promotional and showcasing approach as it is neither sufficient nor acceptable for the EU to engage with its foreign partners.

Take advantage of the local knowledge accumulated by the EU Delegations

Successful outreach depends on financial means, the thematic areas, the targeted audience and innovative approaches. These differ between countries. The EU Delegations have the knowledge concerning local context and local actors as well as skills and expertise in reaching out.

• Encourage EU Delegations to determine their target groups’ views and needs through regular analysis of their opinions and perceptions. Such regular country-specific ‘listening’ exercises would lay the foundation to the design of effective activities with a sufficient mandate for decision-making.
• Identify national foci in close cooperation with the Delegations (who in their turn would work in close contact with local experts) for tailor-made communication while the EU Delegations would work on detailed implementation.
• Find trusted local partners to increase and retain the contextual knowledge.

Make regular high-level visits an integral part of Public Diplomacy effort

High level visits – undertaken regularly – are crucial instruments for high visibility and a chance for EU Delegations to promote their messages.

• Arrange frequent high level visits to promote the visibility of EU Delegations and their programs

Formulate and target the messages while being aware of differing interpretations of history

•  Carefully remove any Eurocentric notion of European superiority from dialogues with any actors abroad, particularly in countries that have experienced European colonialism.
• Take into account potential resentments due to historical encounters when providing development aid or negotiating FTAs to anticipate allegations toward the EU of pursuing a ‘civilizationary’ agenda.

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE STRATEGY

Provide multi-annual, lump sum budgets to Delegations

Budgets vary across countries’ EU Delegations and are often miniscule compared to Member States’ capacities. Moreover, many projects of other DGs, first and foremost DEVCO projects, entail financial positions for ‘visibility measures’ that are not combined with each other.

• Combine all funds related to Public Diplomacy/ visibility measures to a multi-annual, lump sum budget that the EU Delegation can assign to a comprehensive implementation strategy for its Public Diplomacy activities tailored to local conditions.
• Establish realistic and focused Public Diplomacy goals commensurate with budget, rather than opting for goals that are overly broad and difficult to measure.

Slim down bureaucratic and hierarchical hurdles to reduce use of human resources for administrative processes

Cumbersome, lengthy bureaucratic processes and hierarchical structures between DGs, EEAS HQ and Delegations and budgetary processes within Public Diplomacy activities currently make fast responses and tailor-made approaches difficult while consuming substantial (human) resources for the administration.

• Streamline processes and decentralize competencies in order to focus resources on the Public Diplomacy activity itself, thereby contributing to a more effective Public Diplomacy.

Initiate and engage with expert networks

Expert networks are particularly influential potential partners and multipliers for EU outreach. They serve as knowledge ‘hubs’ and complement physical exchange programs between EU and partner countries.

• Establish platforms for interested experts to interconnect, exchange ideas and share information on selected policy fields that are relevant to EU Public Diplomacy.
• Involve local experts into Public Diplomacy design, ‘listening’ exercises (e.g. perceptions and images surveys). Consult them on how to anchor centrally formulated messages and strategies to local discourses.
• The relevant experts include, for example, academics who teach/ research about the EU, journalists who specialize in Europe, editors of the papers who publish a lot about Europe, NGOs who have European partners or European support, secondary school educators who teach about Europe, etc..

Engage local civil society and the youth for wider outreach and local resonance

Civil society engagement activities are rather underdeveloped within Delegations’ Public Diplomacy outreach. There is a need for a more intensive engagement of civil society actors as current Public Diplomacy initiatives are primarily determined by the EEAS’ capabilities. In most countries (except the USA, Canada, and Japan) there is a tendency that perception of the EU in the general population grows more positive as the age increases. This means that the EU might be failing to attract the interest of the youth.

• Engage in discussion, support networking, initiate or mediate exchanges of activists, develop media strategies targeting particular groups.

Use e-diplomacy to make Public Diplomacy more effective and to reach distant audiences

Minorities in highly heterogeneous populations do not feel their needs addressed by EU programs. Meanwhile, Public Diplomacy increasingly relies on digital means which is an essential tool to reach out more broadly, including distant audiences.

• Further embrace the use of online/ social media to target civil society, media and youth.
• Provide specialized training, recurring along technological progress cycles, to officials at EU Delegations in order to improve digital diplomacy and social media skills for a successful design and implementation of e-diplomacy actions.

Ensure flexibility and decentralized decision-making in the case of unexpected events

Unexpected events require fast and flexible responses and only timely, tailor-made responses ensure the desired message to come across to the target audience.

• Ensure EU Delegations’ flexibility in the case of unexpected events through sufficient local resource allocation and decentralized decision-making.

Make evaluation an integral part of the outreach activities

Regular and systematic evaluation cycles of EU Public Diplomacy activities on a national and across key countries level are crucial in order to assess results and learn from the experience. Despite evaluation projects that have been or are being implemented, systematic evaluation and cross country comparisons of Public Diplomacy initiatives have so far not been a standard part of EU Delegation’s outreach initiatives.

• Establish an EU Public Diplomacy Strategy Committee in Brussels HQ in charge of evaluating the implementation of EU’s Public Diplomacy.
• Create a web-based regularly updated data-pool of on-going Public Diplomacy initiatives in the EU Delegations, EU Member States and other major Public Diplomacy actors in the world.
• Make impact assessments and evaluations of Public Diplomacy initiatives accessible for all Delegations, in order to share lessons learned among Delegations.
• Design centrally specific and consistent evaluation tools – such as baseline indicators – in order to provide the Delegations with synchronized measurement tools for the success of their outreach activities.
• Conduct regular public opinion polls, interviews and media analyses at the country level using consistent and comparable methodology across the borders.

Conduct expert and elite interviews from representative samples on a regular basis

Elite interviews serve to depict (changing) perceptions of the European Union among different societal groups. These groups contain different influential actors, such as academics, policymakers, civil society leaders or media directors who may act as multipliers as well as mediums to explain shifts in (public) perception and evaluation of the EU in general, or specific policies.

• Conduct interviews with representatives from academia and think tanks, media, civil society, youth, business sector and policy-makers.
• Use a uniformly designed set of questionnaires to enable comparability across countries and periods of time.