HOW EUROPA WAS BEATING PLAYBOY


How EUROPA was beating Playboy.

My comments will deal with a 25 years anniversary today – the birth of the server EUROPA and how it was beating even Playboy.



EUROPA’s big bang did not take place 13 billion years ago. It happened on a cold and rainy December day in 1994.  On that day I was – as director of communications in the EU Commission – called to a meeting with one of my political bosses. He told me that he was preparing a G7 ministerial meeting on telecommunications. EU was going to host that meeting in Brussels on February 25-26, 1995. The Americans have told us that they want to present something called the internet, he said.  We must do the same. And YOU have to organise it.
I rushed back to my staff, told them about the new political orders – and asked them, if they knew what this was all about, the internet.  Nobody knew. I didn’t either. And later I found out that my boss was also in the dark about what this was.   Ok, so we had to get going right away. We had about 2 ½ months until the meeting.  Nothing is more motivating that having to discover something new – and having to do it to a deadline not far away.
It was all about planning, preparing and presenting a web site for the EU. A website giving information about what was the EU and what was it doing day by day. And to do it in several languages. No more – no less.  It would immediately be visible and could be used all over Europe, all over the world, if you had access to the internet.  We decided, of course, to call it EUROPA.  Our president, Jacques Delors and his team, were very keen that it would be a success.  Other in the Commission were either sceptical or directly against the new initiative.  This all motivated us even more.
We made it !!  It happened on Saturday,  February 25, in front of the G7 ministers.  Starting in three languages, English, French and German.

From the very beginning we were the web site in the world with the second highest number of visitors – 100.000.  No. One was the American magazine Playboy. But after a couple of months we were the biggest!
Today this is exactly 25 years ago. So EUROPA has its birthday!  We really felt being pioneers.  And, by the way, we still do.  We had created something very new and special. A tool which in many ways changed the way the Commission and the EU communicated.
EUROPA continues to be very active and growing. It has today information from all EU institutions. The Commission alone has 800 different website on it.  About 140 million individual visitors use it every year, and 80% of them claim that they found what they were looking for.   So far so good!

Have a look:   www.europa.eu  
Now you may ask, if we all have become wiser and more clever by having easy access to all this information?  Gertrude Stein said already in 1917:  We all get so much information every day that we lose our common sense!  Of course, this cannot be the fault of EUROPA, at least not back then.  Others have said the same in another way:  How is it we have so much information, but know so little !!
Yes, this is very interesting. Do people today know more about Europe today, than they did in 1995?  Do they understand it better?

My view is, that it is not the amount of information being the problem. It is peoples’ will and ability – or lack of will and ability – to evaluate and sort out the information they receive, which is the real problem!

Even an EUROPA server in top form cannot solve that problem.



It is great to celebrate the 25 years today!  Even with a nice and delicious birthday cake.


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