With the EU election day coming soon (22 to 25 May), the EBU Brussels office hosted a lunch debate on Tuesday 1 April on how European Public Service Media (PSM) are enabling citizens to make well informed choices with impartial and relevant information.

Radio Romania CEO Ovidiu Miculescu and Head of News Emilian Blinda presented how their radio channels – the most listened to in Romania - have engaged in a comprehensive campaign to increase understanding of how the EU works and how its decisions impact Romanians’ daily lives. The will to increase voter turnout on 25 May has largely inspired the launch of this campaign.

With the help of a permanent Brussels correspondent and two journalists focusing fully on EU affairs in Romania, Radio Romania is broadcasting a 90 minute programme every week on how Europe works and what it does, called “our Europe”, and documentaries on “European Success Stories”, alongside regular interviews with Members of the European Parliament. In addition, Romania’s public radio broadcaster has set up a dedicated online platform for EU affairs.

Contrasting with scant interest for the EU elections by Romanian private broadcasters, Radio Romania’s programmes on the EU elections are being aired in prime time to an estimated audience of 5 million.

In Italy, RAI has also developed a campaign on TV, radio and Internet in particular to “bring more emotive energy” to elections for Institutions which are often perceived as bureaucratic, cold and distant. RAI TV journalist and editor Davide di Stadio showed the importance of the RAI website, mixing EU informational clips with user-generated content, as a means of engaging with citizens.

Jean-Michel Bos of the European Radio Network (Euranet Plus) highlighted how transnational cooperation between 15 European radio organisations is leading to common productions via a news coordination office in Brussels.

Finally, VRT (Dutch language Belgian PSM) elections project manager Tim Pauwels discussed the challenge of informing citizens ahead of not just one vote, but three in one go, as Belgians will be electing
their national, local and European representatives on 25 May.

“I can say this because I asked people,” said Tim Pauwels as he explained the importance of directly asking audiences about what they expect from their politicians to provide a basis for impartial coverage. Like his counterpart from RAI, he underlined how a good website is a key means of interacting with audiences to make interesting, accessible and relevant programmes. In addition, VRT presents EU news as regular domestic news and strives to break away from party politics and decision making procedures to make EU affairs tangible for citizens.

The event concluded with the identification of two key challenge for PSM when covering EU affairs. All speakers agreed that reaching out to younger, in particular teenage audiences, figures high on the to-do list. From the floor, German MEP Sabine Verheyen also pointed out that EU affairs need to be covered continuously, and not just when elections are looming. 

Covering the elections is also figures high on the EBU’s to-do list, as Eurovision prepares the first major multichannel TV debate between the candidates for the position of President of the European Commission, to be broadcast live from the European Parliament on 15 May.