Former journalist for Nrc Handelsblad and Der Standaard, Derk- Jan Eppink is a European deputy born in Amsterdam and elected in Belgium. He belongs to the “Conservatives and reformists” political party, an eurosceptic group.
In October 1999, he started working for Dutch European Commissioner Frits Bolkestein as a liaison with the European Parliament and a speechwriter.
He published two books about European institutions. The first one, “The Limits of Europe”, was written with Bolkestein and appeared in 2004. The second one, “Life of a European Mandarin”, was released in March 2007.
Today he answered our questions about how he keeps in contact with his constituents.
Interview with Jan Eppink (listen to the audio)
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As a former reporter and MEP, what are the main challenges to making people interested in European topics?
One of the main problems is that the EU is too far away, is too big, is doing many things, and they are starting viewing it as a sort of danger, and that’s why they get indifferent.
Do you use a particular tool or instrument to communicate with your voters?
I use everything at our disposal- media, newspapers, interviews, internet, everything to get our views across. The most important thing is to talk in an understandable language, to not be part of the “EU bubble” or “EU code language”, because people don’t understand, and moreover, they switch off.
Do you use social media?
I think that Facebook was very useful during the election campaign, and that [social media] is less [useful] during the process of legislation. But all these things, like blogging, like Youtube, they remain very important. I think that Youtube has a lot of potential, because you can bring across the message the way you want, and people can select for themselves what they want to hear or not.
Do you get feedback from your voters?
I’m in the process of setting up a website, I think that then I’ll get more feedback. You get a letter, sometimes you get a call. In the beginning, after being elected, basically you have to build up your structure, have assistant, researchers, an office running, and then you can response particularly when you’re dominating the political agenda and you’re trying to do some agenda- setting, and that’s what I’m trying to do.
Andrea is a 24yr old student and journalist. He has an BA in Communication and a "Certification d'Etudes politiques". He is currently based in Turin. He has been intern at the Representation in Milan of the European Commission, at the Turkish Daily News, Corriere della Sera and Repubblica.