Television to blame for lack of information about the EU?
Poll shows 62 percent Ukrainians don’t distinguish between the EU and other international organizationsA poll carried out in Ukraine, ordered by the European Commission, shows that Ukrainians know little about the European Union. Despite the overall positive public attitude, 62 percent Ukrainians are not sufficiently familiar with the international body and cannot name all the member countries. They also fail to distinguish between the EU and other international organizations.
Volodymyr Horbach, political analyst with the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, said in an interview with Deutsche Welle that Ukrainians appear to be willing to learn more about the EU, but that there is little to learn from watching the television, which is the largest and most influential type of media: “There is Euronews, but this channel isn’t sufficiently widespread in Ukraine and the cable networks are dominated by its Russian service, which means that there is less about Ukraine, and most information is meant for the Russian audience.”
The poll was carried out as part of the first round of polls in Ukraine meant to analyze public knowledge, understanding, and acceptance of the European Union in the European Neighborhood Policy countries, as well as to determine the sources of information being used. The next round is scheduled to begin in a few months.
Says Hryhorii PEREPELYTSIA, director, Institute of Foreign Policy at the Diplomatic Academy: “The polls carried out over the past seven years demonstrate that over 50 percent Ukrainians support the idea of EU membership. At the same time, this percentage shouldn’t be too uplifting, as most respondents understand the European Union as something akin to a European-style renovation of their apartments. Therefore, social psychology extrapolates the positive meaning of this kind of renovation to the European Union. The man in the street lacks concrete information about the EU; he doesn’t know what it is all about, what advantages it can offer and what difficulties we may experience in the course of European integration. This information is possessed only by experts specializing in EU matters. I wouldn’t blame the media for this situation. The State Program of Popular Information about European Integration, developed by the Institute of Foreign Policy at the Diplomatic Academy and adopted by Tymoshenko’s government in 2008, has yet to be implemented. That government allocated a mere five million hryvnias for the implementation of government-run European and Euro-Atlantic integration programs. This sum was absolutely insufficient for such an ambitious endeavor.
“In other words, when we declare having set the course on European integration, the governmental bodies must wage a strong information policy, something that has never happened in Ukraine and which we can’t hope to see in the near future. As a result, our society actually remains uninformed. Whereas we still have the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Kyiv, there are no such centers relating to the EU, except for the EC Commission Representation in Ukraine and the mass media attache. Also, the European Union and its representation aren’t doing large-scale information work with the Ukrainian population. Europe Day, traditionally celebrated in Kyiv (this year it was marked in the Crimea), is just one of few examples of such unsystematic information work. In other words, neither the Ukrainian government, nor the European Union or European Commission are making efforts to help Ukraine move towards EU membership. Were the Ukrainian government really determined to get this membership — and regard it as an actual objective — the information policy in this sphere would be conducted at least at the level of the state program worked out in 2008. The European Union, in turn, isn’t popularizing itself in Ukraine because it doesn’t regard this country as a real candidate member. The EU is mainly interested in Ukraine’s domestic stability and reforms that can bring it closer to European standards. Proceeding from this interest, the European Union doesn’t consider it necessary to disseminate information about itself, on a large scale, in Ukraine.”
