Europe, Practice of Public Relations In

Public relations in Europe is a thriving industry, but without European identity and representation. In 2004, Europe consisted of forty-three countries, and several new countries may emerge in the next couple of years. In many of those countries there are no professional public relations associations. Europe has no pan-continental individual membership public relations association for practitioners. Individual practitioners are members of their national associations. These associations are organized into a confederation—Confédération Européenne des Relations Publiques (CERP; http://www.cerp.org/)—which has been in crisis for years. European academics used to form a section within CERP, but they left that confederation and formed their own association: European Public Relations Education and Research [Page 298]Association (EUPRERA; http://www.euprera.org/). Students are formally still members of CERP, but it is now probable that they are transforming their organization from CERP Students into European Association of Public Relations Students (http://www.cerpstudents.net/). In all, the situation in public relations in Europe is complex, underresearched, and, above all, misunderstood by other continents, which sometimes see Europe as the underdeveloped “United States of Europe.”

This does not mean that public relations is not a flourishing industry. Public Relations and Communication Management in Europe is an edited book in which experts from 27 countries have provided an inside view on the situation of public relations in their countries. It shows that public relations is well recognized in most of these countries (although it is rarely named as such), and all over Europe universities offer programs in public relations (communication management). Some textbooks state that after World War II modern public relations came over to Europe with the Marshall Plan. Most public relations experts in Europe believe, however, that the Anglo-American ideas are being mixed with already existing concepts of public relations, although these are never referred to as “public relations” and never studied as such. Public relations in Europe even has a history of at least one century. In 1995, Günter Bentele and Peter Szyska, for example, referred to Krups as the first company with a department dedicated to press relations, set up in 1870. In 1999, Jacquie L'Etang placed the beginning of public relations in England in the 1920s. Eric Lagerwey showed in 1997 that the first public relations departments in the Netherlands also emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century. Moreover, the Dutch claim to have the oldest professional association in the world, established in 1946.

The European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA) was initiated at a meeting in Strasbourg in 1989, when CERP became a real confederation with 19 national associations, CERP PRO (an association of in-house practitioners), CERP CONSULTANTS (an association of consultants in public relations working in agencies or as independent consultants), and CERP EDUCATION (an association of educators and researchers). With CERP collapsing in the late 1990s and other constituent interest associations disappearing, CERP EDUCATION in 1998 established itself as “an autonomous organization that aims at stimulating and promoting the knowledge and practice of public relations education and research in Europe” (EUPRERA, 2003, n.p.). In 2004, EUPRERA had 62 institutional members (primarily university departments involved in public relations teaching) and 38 individual members.

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