The European Union spends millions of euro every year on opinion-shaping activities “dangerously close to propaganda”, a Swedish think-tank said in a new report.

[Fredrik Reinfeldt, Sweden's Prime Minister and José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission]

Related news: • Economic crisis tops Swedish EU priorities

Swedish free-market think-tank Timbro slams the EU’s opinion-shaping activities designed to promote a broader and deeper European integration – but EU's commissioner responsible for information, Margot Wallström, fights back.

In the report “The European unions burden - Information and communication to a reluctant people” the organization point out that Europe’s citizens are conflicted when it comes to further political and economic integration, and have consistently voted down referenda that would move Europe in this direction. To bridge this gap, the EU has launched a communications effort to burnish the image of European cooperation.

However, the authors of the report, Philip Thomasson-Lerulf and Hannes Kataja, believe that the EU has taken a step to far in its ambitions to persuade the Europeans.

“Efforts are underway to create a common European identity in the hopes of building support for closer economic and political cooperation”, they write. “These activities extend beyond the normal realm of factual information, treading dangerously close to propaganda”.

In a debate article in daily Dagens Nyheter on Monday the think-tank wrote that "The EU's propaganda apparatus has until now gone uncriticised, despite the fact that it acts in a way that would not be tolerated in any member state. In Sweden we have had a broad debate about the way government agencies and publicly-owned companies push political agendas”.

"The fact that the commissioner responsible, Margot Wallström, is Swedish, doesn't improve matters”.

In a response on Tuesday Margot Wallström did her best to brush of the criticism by saying that Timbro’s report was “incomplete, simplified and slanted”.

“My goal is to make the EU commission more open and susceptible to opinions and thoughts from the general public. Not to make people love the EU”, she wrote in the newspaper.

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