Welcome to Sharp Talk, the regular podcast of E Sharp Magazine. Go to Esharp.E.sharp. EU for free access to all the podcasts to date.

This is Paul Adamson. I'm in conversation with Ryan Heath. Ryan Heath is the author of the Daily Politico

Playbook, which has about 80,000

subscribers, I think. Ryan will correct me if the figure is wrong. And to many people, certainly

in Brussels, the visible face of a Politico in Brussels. Before that, many people not know that

possibly that he was a speechwriter in the European Commission, working for people such as the

former president of Mr. Barroso, and a spokesman for one of the most senior and visible commissioners in the Barroso Commission.

So we're going to talk about communication and media relations and your assessment, Ryan, of how well or how badly the European institutions do at communicating.

We're getting quite close to next year's European Parliament elections,

and it's a way for people to focus again every five years about to what extent can the EU raise its game.

So question number one, has the Commission in particular, institutions more broadly, have they raised their game perceptibly in the past few years?

I think yes, that would be my broad answer to the question, because they're involved in many

more platforms now.

It's very clear.

You look at the sort of graphic information the Commission shares.

It explains itself in more relatable ways, using more relatable numbers and images and so on.

It talks sometimes in more political terms than we used to when we were spokespeople back in that sort of financial crisis era of the Commission.

I think, if I'm very honest as well, it's not necessarily more useful as a journalist

because I don't think that forums like the midday

briefing of the European Commission. You know, they're more controlled now. You know, you don't

really get an answer necessarily from those spokespeople. So I think that can be frustrating as a

journalist, but the Commission probably feels better about what it achieves from those platforms.

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