Shortly before Brexit, a touching little farewell ceremony took place in the Berlaymont, the European commission’s Brussels headquarters. On Jean-Claude Juncker’s last day as president of the commission, he made a final appearance in the basement press room at midday – the time the commission has been briefing the world’s press every day for much of the past 60 years. Juncker gave an emotional valedictory. When he stopped speaking, an Italian journalist stood up. “History will judge you, Mr Juncker,” the journalist said solemnly, “but we will never forget you” before urging a round of applause for the Luxembourger’s “30 years as a true European”. A British reporter shook his head in mild disapproval at the tribute, muttering: “You did your job, Mr Juncker, we did ours.”
The moment summed up much about the British – and the British media’s – relationship with the EU. UK political reporting culture prides itself on keeping a sense of distance, holding power to account. But for much of the UK’s 50 years of membership, British coverage of the EU seemed so confrontational as to lose all sense of perspective. Deliberations in Brussels were written up as national victories or defeats – an art form pioneered in the early 1990s by a young reporter by the name of Boris Johnson). The idea of compromise and collaboration simply didn’t enter into the adversarial narrative. The question now is, with the UK relegated to the sidelines, will the Eurosceptic British press just disengage or gloat at every setback? Post-Brexit, collective decisions taken by the EU27 will continue to have a profound impact across the European economic space. Britain will be affected. Will its press be watching? Daniel Boffey, the Guardian’s Brussels bureau chief, says a narrowly focused UK media could find its access to the corridors of power in Brussels receding in time. “Much of what is leaked and briefed in Brussels is done to influence the internal debates among member states on key policy decisions – and to influence the views of the domestic electorates,” Boffey said. “But the British government is no longer a decision-maker in Brussels.” Boffey believes that the Guardian’s huge readership, broad European appeal and stated commitment to cover pan-European affairs in all their complexity will guarantee its relevance. “In the run-up to Brexit, people often asked me whether I would be staying in Brussels,” his Brussels-based colleague Jennifer Rankin said. “It was an easy answer. I wasn’t going anywhere because (I think) the UK will be in semi-permanent negotiations with the EU over something. But also because we are here to cover the EU in all its rich complexity. I’m delighted that the answer is even easier today.” Just figuring out what is going on in Brussels can be the initial challenge for the newly arrived EU correspondent. Not necessarily because it is the remote, elite place of legend, but because it is a complex, hybrid decision-making system that lacks any parallel in national politics. John Palmer was dispatched to Brussels for the Guardian in 1974, the year after Britain acceded to full membership. Those early years were “primitive” for journalists, Palmer recalls. Reporters were left to stand in muddy fields to wait for ministers to emerge from whichever German schloss their meeting was taking place in. Palmer had a ringside seat for all the huge political realignments that followed the end of communism in 1989 and the EU’s expansion eastward.
He also chronicled the extraordinary political switch in the Conservative view of Europe – from enthusiastic backing to open hostility. The high watermark of the European project coincided with the tenure of the charismatic Jacques Delors in the 1990s. “Delors came to symbolise the push towards European integration,” says Palmer. “Yet it was clear from early on that decisions would have repercussions on national politics. The UK drove hard for the single market. But then it began to assume a dynamic of its own – you could see it would eventually lead to a single currency.” British diplomats also became “aghast”, Palmer recalls, to see that Bavarians, Catalans and other autonomous regions had their own “governments” represented in the EU’s committee of the regions. “They began to see where all this might lead,” he said.
By then global media interest had ballooned and the EU could boast a press corps to rival Capitol Hill. “All three Mexican TV channels had a correspondent accredited,” Palmer remembers. Stephen Bates was Brussels correspondent for the Guardian for four years in the 1990s and remembers a panic-inducing bewilderment at the acronyms, arcane structures, committees, the system of porte-paroles [spokespersons], all rooted deep in French administrative culture. A former Westminster reporter, Bates grew to love the role because “for all its faults the EU had a forward looking and expanding view, it was a positive project for Europeans and it was about collaboration”. He blames British political journalism for much of the incomprehension. “UK journalism is predicated along Westminster lines: a majority government is in power, and it does things. But the EU works in labyrinthine circles, decision making is slow and often very technical, as well as being essentially about collaboration and compromise.” The paradox was that the EU was attacked for ruling people’s lives, when the opposite was true. “In a way, the problem is that it is so diffuse it’s very difficult to get a decision through,” Bates says. Often it’s a miracle that 27 countries can agree about anything. Bates recalls a story about how UK chocolate was going to have to be relabelled “vegelate”, because it contained so little cocoa compared with Belgian or French varieties. “I wrote that story at least four times,” says Bates “and it was always illustrated with the same picture of a bar of Dairy Milk. But we never seemed to get it resolved because it kept being referred back.” That is a feeling familiar to Rankin. “The EU often feels like one endless process: meetings that result in decisions to convene a meeting at a higher level. One broadcast colleague complained there were never any pictures in Brussels: just endless shots of middle-aged men shaking hands in rooms.” A regular complaint from those hostile to the EU is that it is undemocratic, with decisions cooked up behind closed doors. Palmer blames the democratic deficit on a decision by national governments deliberately to keep the directly elected European parliament weak. But no Brussels correspondent ever complains about a lack of information. “Finding out what had been decided was never a problem,” Palmer insists. “What was more difficult was to establish what would happen next or what lay behind any decision. What you never did was rely solely on your own government to tell you. You went to talk to the Finns, the Irish, whoever.” The skill, adds Rankin, is in knowing what not to bother about. “Brussels has always been abundant in information, the trick is finding the useful nuggets from endless press releases, announcements and invitations.” Rankin is on her second spell in Brussels – and notices a big difference from her first stint in 2006. “In my first stint, the UK was part of the EU machine,” she recalled. “British ministers spoke on the record to British and international media after EU councils. “By the time I returned (in 2015) the UK was detached. Barely touched by the eurozone or migration crisis of 2015, the UK also didn’t play such a big role in the EU law-making councils. Those on-the-record ministerial meetings with journalists had disappeared.” The expectation is that this detachment will only grow, with less and less about the EU and European affairs in the pages of British newspapers. Katherine Butler was a Europe correspondent in the 1990s.