Hurray! An EU video at the cinema…..but….

Last week, suddenly, among the ads that preceded the movie I was about to watch at the cinema, this one popped up:

I know that now you can see immediately that it is about Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (it’s written on the top! Look carefully!) but when I watched it at the cinema – did you hear me? AT THE CINEMA – I did not know that until the final shot.

Maybe it’s news to you, but I have been talking about the need to improve the distribution of the good videos the EU produces since time immemorial – and will continue to do so until the cows come home (no pun intended with cow screenshot above).

Hence you can only imagine my utter surprise and delight when I saw one such videos on a cinema screen  – actually that is not quite true: I am telling you, so you don’t need to imagine anything at all, plus I have capitalised the ‘in the cinema’ bit above, dah.

Now, given that:

A) I do not know whether the video is being screened in all cinemas in Brussels, or across Belgium, never mind across Europe.

B) I ignore how much the European Commission spent to get the video shown in that one

cinema, if they indeed spent money at all because of some sort of agreement with the cinema.

C) I won’t speculate on whether this is part of the European elections campaign budget – hence a one-off that will not be repeated until the next EP elections.

Given all the above, I was incredibly happy to see an EU video at the cinema (if we exclude of course the ones promoting European film-making). Very happy indeed. And, as videos go, stylistically, this is not bad. I have seen better videos coming out of the institutions but still, I like the choice of pictures, the split screen – always a winner – nice soothing shots and music.

BUT….. THE CAP????

Seriously….the CAP? The most unpopular, least understood of all EU policies, perceived by the majority of Europeans as old fashioned and a waste of money? Really, we want to promote the CAP? How is this going to help reduce anti-European sentiments and make people understand all the useful things the EU does? No matter how many lovely pictures of beautiful countryside you decide to use, the CAP will always – at least until a serious, but I mean serious, reform is fully in place – be used as one of the reasons for having ‘less’ EU not ‘more’.

The cynic in me thinks that as the amount of money going to agriculture is so huge, probably it was the only part of the Commission able to afford the cinema screening. Naaah.

Virginia Mucchi