Discovering the EP with Europarltv videos
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While European Parliament elections soon are coming I was curious to see how EU propaganda machinery with their countless millions of taxpayers’ money is putting their best to attract public to cast their vote. So I opened Europarltv which launched a series of videos explaining the history the Parliament, how it works and why to vote.
Here is feedback of my wasted time:
First impression was that I am watching some practice videos made by some primary school hobby group under supervision (without supervision the pupils probably would be much more creative). Maybe producers have selected a line explain EU/EP for dummies but I wonder is the target group really the same than with shopping tv, where brain-dead people who have nothing more important in life than buy multiple priced bullshit from divan.
To avoid boredom I tried to concentrate to content. Interesting about history I watched few
videos including response to holocaust
denial, some allegorical Hemingway quotation as starting step towards European
Constitution in 1984 etc. I bet that EU
history has much more 
interesting aspects than selected. Indeed a couple of weeks ago Adam LeBor
published a conspiracy thriller “The Budapest Protocol” based real event in Strasbourg on August 10,
1944. There Nazi officers ordered a
group of German industrials to plan for Germany’s post-war recovery – the
Fourth Reich – an economic empire known
later as European Union. (more about US intelligence document related to Nazi’s
secret post-war plans in Mail on Sunday )
Abandoning history and fictions an interesting video headline was “Who decides in Europe?”. The main claim was that no law which are in EU’s limits - will pass without EP. Correct! What was said only indirect was, that EP’s role is totally bystander. The formulations are made in Commission and decisions in Council of Ministers, EP can only slow this common development work not take the initiative. I think that producers tried to hide the insignificance of EP behind positive image of EU.
The official tv-spot highlights the same EU’s decision making dilemma. After imaginary news headlines the ad claims “You decide what tomorrows news will be”. Again correct! Your vote can have some influence in national elections and your government can be formulating the future EU policy with other national governments and EC; but where is the connections to EP elections – nowhere.
In conclusion I would say that EU could have used – or best not to use at all - its propaganda investment better; probably no big international company would waste money to marketing with so low standards. After EP videos it does not surprise me if the turnout is even lower than before.
One view about EU propaganda can be found from my post “€ 20 bn propaganda”