On March 2, 2016 the Levan Mikeladze Foundation held its first working group meeting on Strategic Communication. The meeting was organized in the framework of the project - “National Convention on the EU in Georgia”. The project is carried out in partnership with the Slovak Foreign Policy Association (SFPA) and with the financial support of the Slovak Aid and Europe Foundation.

The meeting took place in the State Chancellery. It was chaired by Ms. Veka Modebadze, the Acting Deputy Head of Strategic Communication Department of State Minister’s Office of Georgia on European and Euro-Atlantic Integration and by Ms. Lika Shavgulidze, founder and editor-in-chief of web portal Europe for Georgia. The meeting was broadcasted on Imedi TV.

The working group was composed with representatives of government bodies, NGOs, diplomatic missions of various states and the Delegation of the European Union. In total, there were 26 organizations represented in the session. 

During the Working Group meeting, two sets of recommendations, one drafted by Georgian expert Mr. Mikheil Mirziashvili and the second one prepared by Slovak expert, Mr. Alexander Duleba were presented and discussed. The topic of Mr. Mirziashvili’s presentation was “Recommendations for the Action Plan for the Year 2017 of the Communication and Information Strategy of the Government of Georgia in the sphere of EU Integration for the period of 2014-2017”. He briefly discussed the mission, objectives and the structure of the communication and information strategy approved by the Prime Minister of Georgia in 2013. The expert talked about the process of the implementation of this strategy by the Office of the State Minister of Georgia on European and Euro Atlantic Integration and its cooperation with other organizations, such as the Information Center on NATO and EU, Embassies of the EU member states, media and others. Furthermore, he elaborated the presentation by including the key findings of the survey - “Knowledge of and Attitudes towards the EU in Georgia: Trends and Variations 2009 – 2015” commissioned by Eurasia Partnership Foundation and conducted by CRRC-Georgia. In the end, Mr. Mirziashvili proposed a set of recommendations in relation to the communication strategy action plan. The list included the guidance for both internal and external communication.

As for the second presentation, Mr. Alexander Duleba, who is also the director of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association (SFPA) discussed Slovak experience in the field of strategic communication of the EU matters. He talked about the complexity of the EU, which translates into the difficulties in communicating the EU to all of the citizens. Mr. Duleba proposed two main steps for the government to take in order to improve strategic communication to Georgian citizens. The first one is to create EU sectorial communities, which means organizing a group of stakeholders, which will be united by the corresponding EU sectorial policy. For example, to the community of farmers the specifics and plans of the Common Agricultural Policy could be communicated. The second proposed action was to engage citizens in policy making since they need to understand and see the importance of their role in this process. Furthermore, Mr. Duleba talked about the role of these working groups as the lobbyist force to pass EU legislations; this type of groups are the ones, which work tightly together with governments, NGOs, and the general public. In addition, he also discussed the possibility for Georgia to receive the status of an observer, which can further accelerate the passage of EU legislations.

Afterwards of the presentations, the Working Group members actively engaged in the discussion of the proposals presented by Mr. Mirziashvili and Mr. Duleba. Some argued that communication limited only to the target groups is not enough, since there are average citizens, who do not belong to any of the targets groups.

It was stated that the media is not actively used in this process; there is a lack of information on the EU on TV. To tackle this issue, it was suggested that the government should start funding media products, which could include, for example, television programs on the success stories of local citizens in relation to the benefits and opportunities they gained from the Association Agreement.

The discussion also touched upon the issue of the lack of support towards the EU among citizens due to the myths of losing national identity as a result of the EU approximation. The negative impact of the hybrid war between Georgia and Russia adds far more inaccuracies to this, threatening people with the prospect of their morals, language and other national characteristics to be eliminated. For this particular challenge, Mr. Duleba argued that within the EU, the identity is not something that is regulated and that the EU accession is for its most part about the single market. Others said that in order to fight back anti-EU propaganda, the involvement of media and government should be intensified; more money should be spent on visuals, showing the people the real image and impact of the EU, which along with its positives, also should include the problems that are to come and the expectations they should have. To further create trust and support among general public, it is of high importance to raise awareness on EU values.

It was discussed that choosing the theme of economy when communicating the EU is very advantageous; for example, the issue of visa liberalization is very attractive to the public; people are more interested in economic benefits than with democracy, development or similar issues. Another problem with current strategic communication was said to be the language used in this communication; it supposed to be understandable to the people, who are being talked to. To do this better, it is important to increase the number of study visits in local communities. As to conclude, it was agreed that in current situation, just the broad EU support campaigns directed to pre-defined target groups do not work effectively and in order to improve strategic communication, additional specific campaigns should be initiated and be complementary to the general one.