“The EU is only a phone call away”

Following the ideas of some commentators of my previous blog, I decided to dedicate another post to the topic of the EU communication. This time focused on a special service of European Commission, called Europe Direct. The portal is a communication tool focused on direct communication about the EU matters and is accessible by landline, e-mail and on-line web assistance. However, sometimes these kinds of services promise a lot, but do not really work. So, I decided to make a small experiment and contacted the portal by email. I fulfilled the enquiry form and asked them about the last statistical report which has not been accessible on-line yet. My initial skepticism vanished when I received an answer in a prescribed time.

Coming back to my request, I was wondering how much people actually use the service and if there are some major differences among the EU member states. Even though the 2008 report has not been finalized yet, it still provides some interesting information.

(source: Europe Direct, report October - December 2008)

* Data in the text below are calculated as the average of all quarter reports.

Firstly, it is possible to notice a huge discrepancy between “old” and “new” member states in using the portal. The club of EU-15 presents on average around 57 % of all enquires, while 2004 new comers only around 8 % of them. For comparison, on average non-EU citizens made around 7 % of all requests. The mentioned statistics is not complete and probably also not the most accurate one also because there are around 27 % of people who do not reveal their nationalities. But even so, I guess the gap between the “two poles” provokes some questions:

-         Are people from new member states less interested about the EU? Or, are they less informed about the available services inside of the Union?

I guess finding a complete answer cannot be drawn only by emphasizing this service; for getting a complete picture would be necessary to check and estimate all similar services of the EU. But nevertheless, I think it is an interesting topic to discuss.

Another interesting element of the research stems from coverage of topics that people are most interested in. The data show that top three were related to: EU institutions, Euro Direct and Energy and Transport. Hm, the first and the last make sense. But Euro Direct as one of three most “wanted” topics? This made me think: what about if people are mostly interested about the “experiment” and ask questions for the same purpose as I do? And here we go again, facing the same dilemma: we have an interesting communication tool and obviously also responsive service, which again does not seem to reach broader public. And it seems that there is more interest about functioning of the portal than its service. And as shown below, in comparison with the previous years the curiosity has even decreased…

          (source: Europe Direct, report October - December 2008)

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