Abstract

On 17 March 2009, DG Comm, the agency responsible for coordinating the communication policy of the European Union, presented its communication strategy for the European Parliament elections: The Use your vote campaign. For the first time, this saw a common message broadcasted to 375 million people inviting them to vote for Europe. This strategy began a year and a half ahead of the election date and was a strong action in support of European integration. It involved a large investment of resources: 18 million euro were spent on the campaign. While this might seem an enormous sum, it was of course modest when compared with the number of European citizens (in other words, it represented an expenditure of 5 cent for each potential voter). The campaign was also a significant commitment in organizational terms : It targeted all 27 member states equally and all materials were translated into 23 community languages. This article describes the EU's communication strategy and offers some reflections.