An
IQ-Net Conference debate on the subject held in Athens identified three key problems – prioritisation, professionalism and performance.
- Prioritisation. Communication is not a priority among the hierarchy of EU Cohesion policy priorities, especially among management staff not directly responsible for communication, at all level of shared management - EU geographical units, national/regional managing authorities and intermediate bodies, and at project level. Political leadership is often lacking, and there is insufficient use of communication networks to promote interest and exchange of best practice.
- Professionalism. Targeting of groups and messages are often deficient. There is frequently and over-reliance on information provision, sometimes obscured by EU jargon, rather than interaction and information exchange in ‘plain language’. To be successful requires ‘going local’ - getting close to beneficiaries on the ground, localising messages and using a range of professional tools for each group.
- Performance. There is no shortage of case studies of ‘good projects’ with which people can identify and where the impact of Structural Funds is most directly evident and credible. Less convincing is communication of the performance of the Funds at programme level. In part, this is a problem of evaluation methods but it also needs better communication of aggregate achievements such as the creation of jobs, upgrading of skills levels, and enhanced research and innovation budgets.
More positively, the 2014-20 period has seen an upsurge in innovation and experimentation with methods to improve better communication. Examples from IQ-Net partners include
beneficiary guidance for good communication in Greece which sets out comprehensive and step by step guidance for non-communication experts, including digital media guidance, technical billboard guidance/templates, and a poster application for beneficiaries. In Wales, the Welsh European Funding Office holds an annual
publicity awards event for beneficiaries and stakeholders to promote more active and better communication, inspired by the Regiostars Awards organised by the Commission. A
project score card in Finland is a user-friendly tool for projects to develop, measure and communicate their achievements. This has been taken a stage further with the
Fireflies project in Lithuania – winner of a 2016 RegioStars award - where citizens themselves rate the transparency and effectiveness of EU-funded projects. As with many other examples, good practice involves demystifying the world of Structural and Investment Funds to the public and ensuring there is credible, open information on how EU funding is being spent in their name.
Finally, an important area of communication is social media – a tool with the greatest potential in many communication strategies. Effective use of social media faces several barriers, not least expertise and experience among communication officers. However, there are good examples of tools for planning and implementing ESIF social media campaigns, including creative use of visuals, infographics or videos to reach new target groups. One area of uncertainty, though, is impact: there is a lack of robust and credible evidence on the effectiveness of social media platforms and tools. This is part of the wider difficulty of measuring the effectiveness of communication: (how) does it affect public awareness and attitudes to Cohesion policy?
John Bachtler, Carlos Mendez & Viktoriya Dozhdeva
European Policies Research Centre, University of Strathclyde