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Communicating Europe
As part of my personal commitment to breakdown the information
gulf between ordinary citizens in Ireland and the institutions
of the European Union I have drawn up and implemented
a Communicating Europe Strategy.
The four key actions:
1) The first of these actions is to engage
and work with Regional, Local and Community based media
in Ireland. It is essential that the media is reporting stories from
the European Union in order to provide a continuous stream
of information to the public. More often than not news
from the institutions in Brussels has a direct bearing
on the people in Ireland. Every single community in Ireland
benefits from its membership of the European Union and
it will only benefit even more if we are aware of events
in Brussels on a regular basis.
I feel very strongly about the importance of having
a vibrant local media sector in Ireland, that present
high quality news articles that leads to debate and discussion.
Under this heading I ran the European Young Journalism
Competition for 18-35 year olds. The competition encouraged
journalists to submit articles either from audio or print
media on a European Union topic. The quality of entrants
and the level of participation meant the competition
was a resounding success. There were six winners of the
competition, three of whom where from Donegal, Kevin Kelly
of the Inishowen Independent and Inishowen Community
Radio, Marie McDonald from Inishowen Community Radio,
and Amy Rose Harte from the Donegal News. The other winners
came where Nicola Corless from the Clare Champion, Ruth
Feeley from the Western People and Deirdre Flynn from
the Athlone Voice.
I am also continuously working with local and regional
radio stations and have sponsored live radio shows from
the European Parliament in Brussels, those radio stations
that have broadcast live from the parliament include,
Northern Sound, Clare FM, Galway Bay FM, Midlands Radio and Ocean
FM.
2) The second element of the strategy is to encourage active
participation of young people in politics, European Politics in particular. As part of this element
of the strategy I have been sponsoring groups of young
people from all over the constituency to come to Brussels
on a three day trip. The aim of the trip is to engage
them with the European Parliament and other European
Union Institutions. It helps them understand and comprehend
the scale of the work that goes on in Brussels on a day
to day basis. I also provide them with access to the
Parliament chamber, and arrange meetings with members
of the European Commission and other MEPs.
To date, we have sponsored approximately 50 young people
all of whom have gone back to Ireland with a greater
enthusiasm for politics and the EU.
3) The third element of the communicating
Europe strategy is allowing you to put
your question to Europe. This initiative allows you to put a question
directly to the European Commission or the European Council.
I am the first and only MEP to offer this initiative
out of the 736 MEPs in the European Parliament. The initiative
allows you to send me an email with your question which
will then be submitted using my privilege as a Member
of the European Parliament to either the Commission of
the Council, I will then send you the answer to your
question once I have received it. If you have any questions
that you wish to put to the European Commission or the
European Council please email me at jim.higgins@europarl.europa.eu
4) The Fourth and Final element of the Strategy will
see 200,000 households in the constituency receive a
copy of my newsletter.
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