Europe Goes on Air

Radio broadcasting organisations from 13 EU member states are joining forces to participate in a new European Radio Project, which will provide news and views on European matters. Due to go on air in April, the venture has been conceived by the European Commission as a way of bridging the divide between the European institutions and the citizens of the 27 member states. Initially, programmes will be in available in English, French, German, Spanish and Polish, though others should not be far behind. Ideally, the EU would like every member state involved.

One of the participating organisations is Radio Netherlands Worldwide, which is going to shoulder the main responsibility for creating and running the associated website. Radio Netherlands Worldwide’s Acting Editor in Chief, Wim Jansen, comments, ‘it will be a multilingual website, where people can debate, listen and chat to their heart’s content, but it will also encompass all the information about the EU.’ He stresses that the European Commission and other EU bodies will not interfere in the running of the new radio project, although they are providing the funding.

Predictably, Britain is not one of the 13 countries that have so far signed up to the European Radio Project, even though Britain probably more than any other EU member state needs a source of good, factual information about the EU and its doings, to counter the distortions and outright lies from much of the mainstream Eurosceptic press. Equally predictably, Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Times’ gave its news story about the project the headline ’European Invasion of the Airwaves’.