A boomerang made in EU

You can’t accuse the EU of not holding back when it comes to getting the word out about its activities and initiatives. This week, trying to strike hard, the Commission launched a clip, The more, the stronger, which was intended to proselytise the benefits of EU enlargement to the young.

It shows a young white woman, evoking Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, who, faced with three aggressive attackers with Chinese, Indian and Brazilian features, is multiplied in order to encircle and pacify them. She and her eleven clones are then transformed to become the stars of the European Union flag. The slogan “The more we are, the stronger we are”, wraps up the video.

The clip failed to reckon on the reality that you cannot always pick and choose your web audience. In the hours after it went online, the clip came in for harsh criticism from web surfers andin the press. Accused of racism and sexism, it was withdrawn by the Directorate General for Enlargement, who acknowledged his mistake and has since apologised.

An error admitted is an error half-redressed, they say. But in both form and substance, this case is sobering in more ways than one.

As for the form, it illustrates the difficulty the EU has in talking to Europeans. Addressing half a billion people who do not speak the same languages, literally and figuratively, and who often have mixed opinions of EU institutions, is a daunting task. According to the latest Eurobarometer, only 31 percent of Europeans have a positive image of the EU, while 26 percent see it negatively.

As for the substance, as pointed out by Annika Ström Melin in the Dagens Nyheter, the clip reinforces the tendency of European leaders, as the economic crisis deepens, to attribute the cause to external enemies. “Blaming others for one’s problems is a conventional – and dangerous – way to forge a community,” she writes. “True, Europe is exposed to global competition, especially from China.But the Union would have much more to gain by remaining united, taking advantage of the single market and speaking with one voice.”

Yet that is precisely what it doesn’t do. The lack of education, even hostility, shown by the governments towards the accession of new states to the EU, and the divisions over the crisis they have exposed, suggest they ought to be the ones getting messages encouraging more unity and openness.