Journalists @ Your Service, President

How long have you been covering EU affairs?

Since Maastricht which was 20 years ago. EU was extremely interesting at the time, with talk of financial and political integration. For the political part, that didn’t become the case and this has disappointed me. Many mistakes were made.

Many journalists who have been here for a long time said they didn’t care about the EU affairs before arriving but after working in the domain they realized how important this European dream was….

Absolutely, I remember when I was at university; the treaty of Rome was signed. You can imagine the enthusiasm. At the time, young people were following this. The idea of all these countries that were fighting each other before were now coming together to create something united. The youth was pro Europe. We didn’t think of the practical things. The idea that you could get together and have exchanges with citizens from other nations gave us enthusiasm. Looking back, we were a little bit naïve dreaming of a united states of Europe but this takes centuries to do. Until 1945 we were still killing each other. So the progress from the war to the beginning of this European community at the time called common market was a very good idea and we were dreaming of a European citizenship instead of national. But national states have taken over now and we see that now we the crisis so countries are becoming self-centred so I think it will take much longer. We will reach it but when, that I don’t know.

You were talking about that sense of European identity. There is no European card for journalists.

We thought that it would be a great idea since we were in Brussels because many journalists come here not for the city but for European affairs. But the national states have their own rules so you have to respect the rules. The idea of a European journalist status should be a European journalist who can move from country to country to deal with different situations and have a kind of status similar to pilots who have a “European status”. The assistants in the parliament also have their own special “European parliament status” which allows them easier movement. It is something very bureaucratic but it is important to feel like you belong to a European community. Do you think that young people feel like they belong to Europe? We seem to remember we are European only when there are problems. “Help, help we need money!” is what people say. These past few months have been very depressing seeing how countries don’t want to help each other. The situation with Greece and how some countries don’t want to help shows a divided Europe.

When journalists come to cover EU affairs, how do you help newcomers through your association?

Journalist from all over the world come to Brussels to interview people and for example when they go to the commission and are not familiar with how it works they are sent to us to guide them. Then we meet different journalists from different countries and backgrounds and we explain what we do, explain the philosophy behind the idea of Europe. It started with the decimation of Europe after the war. Some politicians had this idea to put together the reasons for why war happened. The possessions of wealth from another country which is energy, which at the time which was steel works for constructing, armoured weapons, this is what happened in Germany with the power of the industrial sector in Germany that is. To build tanks and weapons and they needed energy which at the time was coal. So the fathers of the Europe said let’s put this wealth together so that we manage it jointly so nobody can say this is mine and this isn’t. The idea of wealth being managed jointly means that the idea of taking things away doesn’t exist because you can also share and a journalist from Turkey said we never heard of this reasoning. They always thought this idea was about getting money from Europe or about how EU doesn’t want them because they are Muslims. The idea of the EU is about sharing values but it isn’t easy now as the crisis has brought nationalistic movements so it is difficult to share this common idea.

For instance, for these Turkish journalists they have some historical clash. Do you recognize bureaucratic limitations, clashes that all journalists who come to Brussels face as barriers?

Yes there are a lot of limitations with all these bureaucratic issues. But on the other hand this is the basis of a common law if we want something to work, there has to be a kind of legislation so that people have to comply with legislation. An example, when I married a British citizen, I lost my Italian citizenship due to Italian legislation that says if an Italian woman was to marry a foreigner, he would be giving her his citizenship which is a completely absurd idea. This kind of things through common legislation has disappeared. These common rights shared by EU citizens are important to create partiality. You don’t know how it was like before, going through borders, having your passport stamped. Getting a pass to get a passport was complicated as you had to ask your husband for authorization. The countries that were in Europe could go through a special gate in the airport but countries that had not joined Europe yet had another gate. So I had a child who was 2 months old and at the airport my son who was British and me, Italian, well that was a nightmare. It’s these small things that make you realize the importance of shared legislation. So I insist very much on the importance for legislation of citizens. There is a European citizen’s initiative which gives citizens the right to initiate legislation but people don’t know. It comes active on the first of April. People don’t know the power that they have because national government don’t want them to know because they want to keep hold of their citizens within their borders which is another thing, trans-European networks which are railway links between countries so the EU said they would finance it, especially the trans-border sections because you have trains and motorways going through borders. The EU was above borders and was symbolic to how EU citizens could move from a country to another. But there are complications achieving these networking passages. The problem is that the people in the villages cannot agree with these rail works as they don’t want to be disturbed because we are still linked to our national boundaries. They don’t like being close to a railway, which is under the mountains but they don’t want to be disturbed by works. I’m very much in favour of these networks as they physically unite Europeans. You probably don’t remember, before, they liberalized air transport. Every country had their own national company and they could charge whatever they wanted…Enormous amounts of money. You have these low costs companies nowadays that are only there because of legislations passed.

Do you think people don’t realize the importance of the European Union as they didn’t live through its evolutions to fully feel how it has changed things?

This is why it is not easy to cover European affairs. It’s so bureaucratic and too much politics. The best way to cover Europe is if people see how legislations have changed their lives and then you’ll see all the examples and it will put things into perspectives. The biggest problems are the politicians as Europe has more power now which means government doesn’t have much say as 80% of national legislation by Europe. And this people don’t like but Europe is doing this to harmonize. The problem before is that it wasn’t Europe who was saying this but France and Germany.

You were saying that some national entities like prime ministers have nationalistic approaches especially now with the crisis, does this reflect on journalistic work, do you notice that the sources that journalists use, does it reflect the nationalistic view?

I had been a correspondent in other countries and my sources were the different governments. Here the sources are everywhere but also other journalists are also my sources. When something happens in another country so I go to the other journalists to see what is happening in their country and this is interesting as you get different insights. The work is very much linked with other colleagues here as you cannot be everywhere at once to follow events.

Is it a friendly environment between journalists?

Yes, also because they write for different media in different countries, we don’t care about who has the news first. With your own colleagues it is important you want to make sure you are the first which is the usual thing.

Would you say that the midday express is a good place to get together? Would you advice newcomers to go there to network and so forth?

It is a good place to go to follow events but not for networking as everyone has to run afterwards. The parliament is also a good place and so is the press club. People don’t have much free time to spend socializing. The networking happens a lot during councils, like councils of ministers. Like if you write about environment, you know all the journalists who specialize in that and you can exchange information to better your work. They know all the details and sometimes you have to be prepared to get experts in other fields because you might be assigned an assignment that you don’t really know about.

I remember about the chemical project REACH. Clearly there you could see the pressure of lobbyists, especially the German chemical giants. At the time, they were trying to reduce the amount of chemicals in products. The approval was the following day and the pressure was so heavy that we talked to the rapporteur who said it wouldn’t go through. But something happened in the evening to do with law that made it be approved. It was a very technical case and some colleagues were helpful in explaining the technical and political details.

Do you have any advice for new journalists coming to Brussels?

Study, study, study. Remember that all the information you get, there might be another side. This means go behind what you learn to see what is beyond. Find multiple sources, this way you can be convincing by showing that you know different facets of the subject. They have improved press releases because journalists have been studying more, asking for percentages, numeric details and so forth. In the beginning this wasn’t there. But journalists needed something more concrete. Before they would give you a hundred pages so that you could go find what you are looking for but now communications and press releases are improving. You have to be inquisitive but it takes time. I often see some colleagues who read out questions that they were assigned to ask. The problem is that the people back home don’t understand what is going on. So you have to talk about the practical consequences events at the institutions are on us to get citizens more curious. I remember before there were big chemical companies releasing chemicals in water ways like the Danube. Now there is this law where if you can identify the polluter, they will be fined by Europe because EU’s legislation for pollution is a nation’s legislation.

To report that, talk about a farmer’s product were dying because his land was poisoned due to pollution dumping in the water and everything dies. Shouldn’t he be refunded? Yes. So this way people will take notice that Europe is doing something. This will come from your research this way people can relate. I remember the EU commission published a paper on which waters are better after sampling different bathing water particularly in the coastal areas where there is tourism. Then they come out with this paper and I think it was in Sicily, in one of the most celebrated areas. Near it was an industrial area and people didn’t know that the water there was polluted due to the industrial areas. So the mayor of this city was so furious that he jumped into the water and asked journalists to take pictures. This shows how much they value the judgment. Whenever they come out with statistics, you clearly look at your country how they are faring.

The newspapers like that very much because in a way the pit one country against another with these stats. Then again, with journalists, one thing you don’t realize is how important statistics are, Eurostat office, which is a source of enormous information. You could write a lot of information just by looking at statistics, crossing information and you can make an interesting article but it is a lot of work.

And journalist’s job is precisely decoding the bureaucracy from the facts?

If you are a journalist, you probably have a way of presenting a story, whether you write or use audio visual. I remember it one year I was with the jury panel of the European parliament journalist prize and I still remember this program, can’t remember which channel it was, but what they did was a kind of reportage on a village in Poland and what was life like there before Poland joined the EU and this program took several years to make with the before and after seeing how slowly the lives of the villagers improved and they would film the developments because of the money invested by the EU. It was very well done as it showed how being part of the EU changed the lives of people. This is a type of message that citizens will understand. Environment is another subject that will attract interest. I remember another participant, I was listening to some Romanian radio program and I listened through it, I knew it dealt with Romanian farmers again and the story was, what happened in a very small farming area while the EU funds starting to arrive.  It was very well done! It described the European commission being a type of office where people would sign agreements. You could hear the voice of an old man who didn’t know why he had to sign and was scared because he thought he was supposed to give money when in reality he would receive. If you want to talk about negative messages, there are plenty. Just think what would have happened if there was no European currency? I think it would have been catastrophic.