The union has failed to communicate in a way that engages its citizens. So change the language, suggests Adrian Langan.
The EU has a serious problem in how it communicates. Complex, difficult language that is riddled with jargon as well as a lack of clarity about its goals and objectives makes the EU a place of suspicion for the uninitiated. Phrases like QMV or JHA are the verbal equivalent of the Masonic handshake - only a few get it and even then there are different levels to the understanding.
Unlike the Masons, however, the EU by its nature needs popular support and never more so than in the next two years. There will be a new Treaty, the Constitution Treaty as its known, and more countries than ever before asking the people for their consent in a referendum.
Communication of the EU is a very difficult process - resistance to the topic is enormous and discussion of the EU is usually greeted with a sigh of resignation.
Years of effort to "educate" the public about EU terminology can be self-defeating in that the terminology continues to change faster than the understanding can be developed and addresses the problem at the wrong end.
The solution to communicating Europe is not to keep banging people over the head with your information until they understand. If the language isn't working, why not change what you say and how you say it?
In many ways, the problem starts with jargon and finishes with jargon; it is the central problem in communicating the EU. The problem basically is quite straightforward.
If you are talking to someone and you use a word mid-sentence that the person you are talking to doesn't understand, the whole meaning of the sentence is usually lost. If you do this often enough on a personal level, you become a bore.
This is the EU's problem: it has allowed itself to become the biggest bore in Europe.
It is a similar problem to communicating to people with low levels of literacy: if you present a person who has poor literacy with a dense text that they cannot digest, the feelings engendered can vary from embarrassment, to hostility, to a sense of "get me away from here". This, more than anything, is what causes people to view the EU as "boring".
So, is the EU boring? If it has become something of a truism at this stage - something that defies analysis - it is because it is.
The EU is continually discussing 'boring' topics such as how we make our economies a success, how we can secure jobs, how we can develop our social system to meet the challenges of an ageing population and how we can try and stop conflict and a fresh outbreak of war and killing in countries like Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Not topics you would normally consider boring.
That said, we are facing a general problem here: people are taking less and less of an interest in matters of public concern. This has serious implications in that policy and discussion of our common problems are left in the hands of an ever-smaller number of people at the top who do take an interest in these things.
This is what lurks behind the idea that the elite is doing everything in Brussels and we are all but cogs in the "machine".
The reality is that the EU (with some exceptions, it must be admitted) is one of the most open systems of governance in the world.
Log onto the European Commission's website (http://europa.eu.int/comm/index_en.htm) and you will find yourself inundated with material about all sorts of matters and how you can influence the process of developing and deciding EU positions.
The problem is that this information is restricted not by law but by jargon. Phrasing things in a certain way, which only an initiated elite understand is a sure fire way to control power.
I don't think that in this case it has a sinister subtext - the EU is a club, albeit a big one - and when you have any club, people start to form their own language and communicate to one another in this language, forgetting the need to make this information more widely available.
So what can be done to try and tackle these problems? It is remarkable that an organisation which employs so many translators - to translate from English and French into all the Community languages - is really quite incapable at translating its own jargon from English into English.
Serious thought has to be given to making the language of the EU more understandable to its citizens. New programmes and initiatives at European level have to be re-imagined in terms of their communication.
Today, European leaders are discussing the Lisbon agenda, the Copenhagen criteria, and the Petersberg tasks. Now what does that mean? Unless you can re-translate that into something meaningful, you have lost your audience straightaway.
And then there are the acronyms. If there is one thing the EU has a special gift for, it is acronyms: CFSP, ESF, and JHA. Even in a society like Ireland with a long history of recognising our many paramilitary organisations with acronyms, it is impossible for people to make any sense of it all. Of course, any system of governance is complex by its very nature. It is difficult to explain issues to a public busy with their own affairs, and with a media world that is continually reflecting that by making the bites of information we have to swallow smaller and smaller.
That does not mean however that you shrug your shoulders, retreat to a pub in Brussels and bemoan the fact that they (the public) will never understand and appreciate the great things the EU does for them.
National and EU politicians have to subject themselves to a rigorous communications analysis to break down the meaning of what they are saying into understandable language.
Organisations that disseminate information about the EU have to subject themselves to literacy proofing at a minimum but also understandability proofing in terms of the material they distribute.
Unless some serious thought is given to these problems, the level of disconnection of citizens from the EU will continue to grow.
Adrian Langan is the Executive Director of Bill O'Herlihy Communications and a former Director of the Irish Alliance for Europe