Euranet

Euranet

Broadcast area	Across the European Union
Frequency	FM, Internet
First air date	April 2008
Format	International broadcaster
Website	http://www.euranet.eu

Euranet, (European Radio Network) is a consortium of international, national, regional and local European broadcasters. Euranet covers events in Europe from a transnational point of view. Euranet offers a pan-European treatment of information about European affairs, covering both EU institutions and individual member states.

History

On the initiative of Deutsche Welle (DW) and Radio France Internationale (RFI), 16 international, national, regional and local European broadcasters from 13 EU countries joined forces to create a pan-European media consortium on 25 July 2007. This comprises both public and private broadcasters. The aim of the co-operation is to improve the quality of reporting on and from Europe, and to stimulate discussion about togetherness in Europe to promote a European general public.

The official presentation of the European media consortium Euranet by Margot Wallström, Vice-President of the European Commission, took place on 26 February 2008 in Brussels. As the commissioner responsible for institutional relations and communication strategy, Margot Wallström announced that Euranet would receive 5.8 million Euros in financial support from the European Commission over the first five years, while guaranteeing the broadcasters full editorial independence.

In the first year, Euranet programmes were broadcast in the five main languages – German, English, French, Polish and Spanish, as well as five further languages – Bulgarian, Greek, Portuguese, Romanian and Hungarian.

As of July 2012, Euranet brings together 26 professional radio stations, supplemented by 10 campus radios. All of these partnerships allow coverage to be delivered to more than 20 million daily listeners in all 23 official languages of the community. The Euranet network produces and broadcasts annually more than 2.000 hours of EU-related news and magazines with its members adopting a co-operative and collaborative production model and bringing a transnational view to its listeners.

Members

The following radio stations are members of Euranet:

Consortium

Euranet was launched as a consortium between radio enterprises from different countries of Europe and its activity is governed by a contract of service with the European Commission, which is its only source of funding.

Euranet operates according to two major principles of editorial policy, which are unanimously endorsed by its partners: “non-interference in the programme schedules of partners” and “management by editorial consensus.” Governance is structured around three main bodies (editorial committee, editorial co-ordination and language groups). Euranet’s legal structure was converted in 2009 to facilitate the development of its model, evolving from a simple contractual arrangement as a consortium to a fully integrated legal structure as a “Groupement Européen d’Intérêt Economique” (GEIE).

Euranet is fully independent of any instruction, pressure or request emanating from an EU institution, a member state of the EU or of any other state or institution, concerning the content of its broadcasts and programmes on topics relating to the EU.

Audio formats

Euranet reports on cultural, social, economic and political events in the EU from a pan-European perspective. The programmes made by Europeans for Europeans enjoy a daily air-time of between 30 and 60 minutes. These are broadcast at prime-time and are re-broadcast several times.

• News: Important daily information about newsworthy events in Europe.
• Current Affairs: Daily reports about politics, economics and society.
• Magazines: Daily in-depth background features from a pan-European perspective on cultural, social, economic and political events across Europe.
• Dossiers: Devoted coverage appearing several times a year in all languages focussing on topics ranging from immigration to energy and the environment through to lifestyle.
• Live: Live coverage of special events in Europe 3 to 4 times a year.

Affiliated radio stations deliver individual programme elements in their respective language, for example reports, reportages, interviews etc., for individual programming, which then form part of joint European programming and are broadcast and re-broadcast by the respective partners. The network produces around 110.000 minutes of programmes each year. All the programme elements are broadcast on the existing frequencies of participating stations.

Web portal

The Euranet web portal at www.euranet.eu is made up of several services.

Web radios are available in each language – the most recent network productions in each language are assembled and accessible via continuous web streaming. A user may also build a custom feed by aggregating stories of particular interest for continuous listening. All of the content can be heard in streaming or podcast format for listening on mobile devices.

The multi-lingual "Euranet Specials" are developed in a collaborative manner between all partner news teams. Each piece in a "Euranet Special" is presented with an English teaser text The result translates into an area of selected topics, organised the same way in all the different languages, in a text format illustrated with photos, and with a graphical unity from one language to another.

Moreover, the Euranet brand has a presence on the major social networks Facebook and Twitter and provides channels on YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr.

Euranet University Circle

Within the Euranet University Circle, journalism and/or foreign language students have the opportunity to use Euranet programmes as learning material. Additionally, students from participating universities provide the programme-makers with feedback and suggestions concerning Euranet broadcasts.

In addition to the participating radio stations, Euranet programmes are also re-broadcast by several campus radio stations. The local partner stations are associated members of the consortium. The partner broadcasters are:

• Finland: Radio Moreeni (University of Tampere)
• Ireland: Trinity FM (Trinity College Dublin)
• Germany: bonncampus 96,8 (University of Bonn)
• Poland: Academic Radio Kampus (University of Warsaw)
• Romania: UBB Radio (Babeş-Bolyai University)
• Spain: Radio Universidad de Salamanca (University of Salamanca), UAB, UNED Radio (UNED – Spanish National University of Distance Education)
• Sweden: Radio Campus Örebro (Örebro University)

Connecting U and the EU

As an extension of the University Circle, the "Connecting U and the EU" initiative aims to foster the debate between youth from the different European countries and European policy makers. Around a given theme, students fuel the discussion with questions, opinions and content. All of this material is then used by a team of Euranet journalists to construct a debate with the various stakeholders and in particular with the members of the European institutions (experts, parliamentarians, members of the European Commission, etc.). The main thrust of the initiative is a “live” debate which brings together the protagonists to exchange their points of view.

Launched in early 2011, the first fruit of the initiative was a live debate held in Brussels in April 2011 on the subject of “Employment of young people in Europe". After 12 successful debates, the last one was held in June 2012 on the topic of "Online shopping in the EU: Why not more cross-border?" The Connect.Euranet debate series will continue in September 2012 with the first debate on the topic of corruption.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Euranet Plus.

• Official website