‘Footnotes’ to the post “Delors inspired projects big & small, EurActiv … and my mistakes!”

Here are complements to the 'big picture' post (welcoming your own snippets there!). Stories around Erasmus start, media attempts, enlargement...

* Details about the Delors Erasmus inspiration:

The context: students eager for Erasmus

The students’ lobbying took place before and after the 1984 EU Summit in Fontainebleau, helping to fund Erasmus as a full fledged programme, alongside with setting up the Commission’s nascent? ‘education task force’, today’s DG EAC)... Some university leaders were also keen, but overall students were more mobile than professors and politicians… in traveling and also in their minds :)?

France, the UK and Germany had existing exchange networks, notably the latter’s DAAD: they were initially reluctant about what they saw as ‘competition from Brussels’. Today, Erasmus is one of the main regrets from Brexitland youth...

As part of a citizenship package, showing the EU is more than a market, the Fontainebleau Summit supported two more visible symbols:? the common EU ‘bordeaux’ passeport’, and voting rights in local and EU elections for non-nationals. Complementing the Delors package on cohesion (social and regional policies), these really made the EU popular, well somewhat popular.

A first venture fitting Delors inspiration: EuroManagers

While being on the board (Comité Directeur) of AEGEE-Europe, I founded the cross-border job fairs EuroManagers, later becoming the EMDS recruitment company, taken over by the Vivendi group. EuroManagers was initially a conference in K?ln in 1987, small but perhaps visionary (all key business schools from Francesent top directors: HEC, ESSEC, ESCP, INSEAD, also Belgian ICHEC); it then grew to a full job fair in Brussels in 1988 (inaugurated by @Wilfried Martens).

Will recall that period of euro-entrepreneurship: AEGEE / European Students' Forum Europe, Giorgio Clarotti and Isabella Lenarduzzi Lenarduzzi (her father Domenico was the mastermind behind Erasmus).

Inspiring Stars4Media, and other media projects

Years later, the Stars 4Media pilots followed the same procedure as the Erasmus pilot projects: this sets some excessive ambition! Martine REICHERTS Reicherts, then Director General at @DG EAC, recommended that approach. Two ‘rising stars’ EP budget amendments led to open calls. Later on, other EP initiatives were regrouped and expanded by the Commision into the current Journalism Partnership programme , under the NEWS bundle of the EU’s Media Action Plan.

**? Details on Delors media inspiration:

EurActiv and Notre Europe / Institut Jacques Delors

CEPS had hosted our first real Brussels office. Notre Europe offered something similar, but I did not have the right director for Paris, having focused first on enlargement countries. Guillaume Klossa will recall this time. I also remember the Notre Europe staff showing the board room, where Helmut Kohl was discreetly visiting J. Delors. Moving the French EurActiv team there would have been closer to the old EU establishment, perhaps too close? Later, we went for a franchise partner in Paris, and then turned again into an integrated office. Interestingly, the Delors Institute now fully ‘gets communication’: it was recently led by a former La Croix journalist.

Today, I am pleased that Europe MédiaLab (Stars4Media) is part of the consortium for European Digital Media Observatory , managed by European University Institute in Florence.

Media mistakes??Many attempts at 'a European media'

On this front, mistake chiefly by other publishers, if I may… This old post from 2014 could also be called the ‘cemetery of EU media attempts’ ... This list could be updated, but to my surprise, not that much has changed… yet. In any case, nothing wrong with attempts, always much learning, also for others. Change will speed up, notably with AI, both worrying and also an opportunity…

EurActiv’s integration in Mediahuis:?

It's still early stage of course, with ambitious goals .? Already in Spring 2023, we welcomed many encouraging comments from stakeholders.

*** Details on Delors enlargement inspiration:

Negotiation policy: focus

After the 1989 Berlin fall, and based on the Delors-inspired Copenhagen criteria of 1993,? when I set-up up EurActiv in 1998, EU circles were getting ready for enlargement. Therefore we decided to go for policy depth rather than news width, and to focus on one theme first:? enlargement negotiations. This worked: for example our early NegoMonitor was republished by The Economist (despite its owning European Voice, predecessor of Politico Europe). From that day we felt: ‘OK, we’ll make it!’.

Network: East then West

Inspired by the Delors era push for support in the countries, we never wanted to limit ourselves to EU circles, a.k.a. 'the bubble'. And in fact EurActiv did not expand from Western to Eastern Europe: rather then reverse. The media started in Brussels (but multilingual: in EN, then FR, then DE), then our franchise network grew in upcoming enlargement countries in Central Europe: initially Visegrad (PL, CZ, SK, HUN), plus Slovenia and Romania (later joined by others, as far as Turkey: another story…). After that, the EurActiv network grew in the West, first in Berlin and Paris, then elsewhere.?

Further East? My Ukraine mistakes…

J. Delors tried to avoid the Yugoslav wars thanks to the EU appeal, and sadly did not succeed. At my own level, in analogy, I regret not having helped early enough in Eastern Europe.?

EurActiv always refused russophone and Chinese approaches, as these could not feed independent journalism. But Ukraine was seriously considered: Thanks to Georgi Gotev Gotev, I was approached for a Ukrainian joint venture by @Karl von Habsburg (yes, the Austrian heir, also media entrepreneur) and Christo Grozev Grozev (now leading the top investigator @Bellingcat). It was in 2015, just after Crimea had been invaded by Russia. Not having raised spare capital, I put several conditions regarding sustainability, hence we did not go ahead, sadly. It would have been bilingual Ukrainian / Russian… , it may have helped mutual understanding within a European horizon ??

In those days, I also drafted a political fiction novel on Ukraine’s European integration: another unfinished regret…another story.

Europe’s MediaLab cooperates with great dynamic people in many organisations, also in Central and Eastern Europe, and I still have much energy. So, perhaps these ‘chunks of clay’ listed above will morph one day into small bricks?

Still contributing to the ‘bridge’ blueprints left by Jacques Delors.

Tagged people and others are welcome to 'chip in' with their own memories also on the 'pig picture' post about Jacques Delors' legacy , and impact for my / their lifework.

Luciano Morganti Lars Boering Stephen Fozard C?t?lina Dumbr?veanu Gianni Riotta Slobodan Sibincic G?k?en ?al??kan Ross Melzer Zoran Radosavljevic Sarantis Michalopoulos Paolo Cesarini Madeleine de Cock Buning Paula Gori Karolina Zbytniewska Pavel Nikodem Radovan Geist @Jan Vitasek manuela preoteasa @Roberto Castaldi Ian Hall Frédéric Simon France Roque Jean-Marie Cavada Daniela Vincenti Giacomo Mazzone Marianne Ranke-Cormier Marie-Hélène Caillol Karel Lannoo Omri Preiss Stephen Boucher Laurent Brihay Jean-Paul Marthoz Stephen Boucher