Monthly Archive

JMECE SEMINAR PROGRAMME – EVENTS

Meeting with EU expert and UK Head of the EU Commission until 2005

Geoff Martin, from the Commonwealth Secretariat

Monday, 10th March 2008 – EU, Media and the Citizen
Location: ICS seminar room – Houldsworth Building, University of Leeds

See photos of that event HERE

Report of the event by Stergios Mavrikis:

Geoff Martin is the Special Adviser to the Commonwealth Secretary General on Strategic Relationships. He was head of the European Commission in the U.K. since 1993 and inaugural Head of the European Commission in N.Ireland. He spoke for the JMECE Lab members and students of “Communicating Europe” module at ICS about Europe’s communication deficit.

As an experienced public speaker he mentioned that he is extremely sceptical about “what his former colleagues are trying to achieve in the context of communicating Europe”. He started his talk with the pessimistic note that Britain “remains the country least interested in the European Union”. UK and EU citizens want to know about Europe “what they feel they want to know”. They don’t need propagandistic material in its nature.

One of the reasons why UK citizens are not adequately informed about EU is because British press is very rampant in comparison to the press of rest of the continent, interested in “money coming from advertisers”. Only Finacial Times and BBC report the facts about Europe because “their audiences are people from all over the world”.

Geoff Martin continued his speech saying that national governments do not see that they have a responsibility to communicate Europe. Within countries there is no national sense of the need to be talking about Europe. In EU level European Commission’s role is not or shouldn’t be to communicate Europe. It is not the right platform from which to talk or communicate Europe. European Parliament should address this issue.

He closed his illuminating speech mentioning that, since citizens would like to be given the opportunity to follow current European affairs, we should all “leave the media alone to report about Europe”.

Presentation of the JMECE Lab activities:
2nd Annual Postgraduate Conference
Communications and Space/Place

Friday 6th June 2008

May Jacob, Anna Zoellner, Agnes Schneeberger, Stergios Mavrikis, Richard Corbett, Juliet Lodge

 What happened to the EU’s draft CONSTITUTION? Is it the LISBON TREATY? … or is the Lisbon treaty something else altogether? Should there be a referendum? Dr. Richard Corbett discussed some of the key provisions and benefits that are expected to be gained from the new Treaty, and also some of the issues regarding ratification and referenda. 

JMECE RESEARCH STUDENTS LAB R4eGov Focus Group on ICTs and European Mobility

University of Leeds, Friday, 7th March 2008

JMECE LAB R4eGov Focus Group on ICTs and European Mobility

R4eGov Focus Group on ICTs was an opportunity for the JMECE Research Students LAB to make an input into deliberations about the kind of technological “solutions” young European students would ideally like to experience when applying for mobility programmes with: 1) other European universities, 2) in general when thinking about going to or working in another EU state, where citizens want to register residence, driving licence, health, tax etc online.

The final report, based on the answers given by this student’s advisory group (focus group), summarises: 1) main views, 2) recommendations to the EU, 3) ideal vision of a portal/software which could help student’s mobility.

The focus group took place in the Seminar Room at the Institute of Communications Studies in Leeds on 7th March 2008. Duration of focus group: 2 hours.

Download the Final Report

Related Link:

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"...how young people perceive themselves as European citizens with the right to vote for European Parliament"

Production of a DVD clip marking the

“50th anniversary of the European Parliament and 30 years since the first Euro-elections”

JMECE LAB will produce a dvd which will be uploaded onto the JMECE webpage and will go around the world! Creative minds wanted to brainstorm and produce an audiovisual product which will be sent to European Forums and European Institutions. If you have any ideas, story lines, scenarios etc. please contact us in order to arrange a meeting and develop further your idea. Our focus is on: European elections, political participation and mobilization of young people and how young people perceive themselves as European citizens with the right to vote for European Parliament. Please contact us: cla7sm@leeds.ac.uk