Europe is making headlines. In the current decade, there has in fact been a surge in media attention for EU-related topics. What previously appeared next to impossible in most Member States, front-page stories involving the European Union in mainstream news outlets, has almost become a matter of course. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not unequivocally favourable.
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The constellation of Council, Commission, and Parliament, all with their different tasks and characteristics, has proven to be a powerful mechanism to reach consensus even on highly contentious topics, and imposes well-functioning checks and balances on the European Union. That this is hard and takes time goes with the territory.
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The European journalism sector needs a boost to catch up with the technological skills as well as the contents-related prowess of the globalised competition. But will Google’s Digital News Initiative really help?
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Why is the European Union so ineffective when it comes to supporting press freedom and media pluralism? And what could it do within the limits of its current competences to foster journalism? It all boils down to one word: CONNECT.
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Conventional wisdom has it that Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) can hardly be more forward than the society it serves, which spells problems for PSB in many Western Balkans countries. But in actual fact in can be at least slightly ahead – provided that it has the international and multi-lateral backing necessary to rise above everyday obstructions.
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The transition to a free and democratic media system in formerly authoritarian countries may be almost as difficult for the revolutionaries themselves as it typically is for the former mouthpieces of defunct regimes. Can the European Union help?
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The EU has masterminded the very rules of public procurement, but it is also one of the largest tendering authorities itself. The scope of design of tenders is such that it may make or break entire companies and organisations, and affect the implementation of public policy beyond the specific objectives of any individual tender.
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Perhaps there just are no stakeholders of the Digital Agenda as a whole, only stakeholders of a number of particular Digital Agenda subsections. Is the Agenda therefore too encompassing a policy after all?
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What Europe is still missing is a substantial intellectual debate about the Digital Agenda and its implications for civil society and politics. Europe dearly needs innovative and groundbreaking outside-the-box-yet-pragmatic thinking at the interface between technology and the public sphere.
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Across all the application areas of the EU’s Digital Agenda policy there are several common and mutually interdependent issues which need to be tackled irrespective of the specific purpose of a technological solution. This is why I first take a look at some of the most important overarching issues at stake. Political analysis will follow in part II.
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