Britain trying to "persuade" electorate into accepting EU Constitution
Facing a potentially perilous referendum on the proposed new European Union Constitution, Britain's government has hired a commercial PR company to extol the document's virtues to the people, a report said on Thursday.
London-based Geronimo PR had been hired as part of an "extensive communications campaign" on the Constitution, the Financial Times reported, citing a British Foreign Office memo.
The public relations firm had been handed a 40 000 pound (75 500 euro) budget to increase awareness about the "benefits" of EU membership and the "facts" about the Constitution.
Although the Foreign Office memo stressed that the aim was to inform the public rather than "persuade", it reeled off a list of the Constitution's merits, calling it a "success for Britain", the report said.
Losing a referendum, which would be most likely to take place in 2006, would "jeopardise our position in the EU" and "marginalise and isolate us", the memo added.
Opinion polls show a great degree of scepticism about the planned Constitution, and some government ministers have complained that too much British newspaper coverage about the EU is either unbalanced or plain false.
Source: Mail & Guardian
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