Its day- to-day operation is overseen by Spielberg's producers from Schindler's List, Gerald Molen and Branko Lustig (who was born in Croatia, and who is himself a Holocaust survivor), and by Ari Zev, director of research and training."It is a very, very meaningful project and something I feel can make a real difference for the future in promoting tolerance," Mr Zev said. We're giving them a chance to survive for ever."Mr Spielberg was moved to begin the project, called the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, after being approached by a young man who had worked on the German film crew of Schindler's List. The IGC promotion campaign has been put on the back burner "until we know what to say", as one official put it.A poll has shown that only 20 per cent of Europeans know what the IGC is.. CALL IT Spielberg's List. Two years after releasing the emotionally wrenching epic Schindler's List, which tells of how the industrialist Oskar Schindler rescued hundreds of Jews from the Nazi Holocaust, the Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg is quietly working on a sequel It will not, however, be a film. Implicitly conceding defeat, a senior aide of Mr Santer said last week: "What makes the problem more complicated is that we must explain why we have become so complicated." But, the speaker well knows, viewers of Europe by Satellite will turn off if he even tries to explain that.The prospect of explaining this year's inter-governmental conference (IGC) - billed by politicians as a watershed for European reform - already appears to have defeated the Brussels image-makers.

Unable to shake off the personal impact of making Schindler's List, Spielberg has embarked, with little public fanfare, on a project to videotape personal testimonies from thousands of survivors of the Holocaust around the world and commit them to a single multimedia archive. The director's aim is threefold: to honour the survivors of the concentration camps; to increase awareness of what happened in the camps and promote racial tolerance; and to cast eye-witness accounts in, as it were, digital stone to ensure that it will never be plausible for future generations to claim that the Holocaust never happened."I often get asked, what will my next movie be," Spielberg said at a recent fund-raising dinner in New York "Well, I'm doing it It's a rescue mission We're giving the survivors a chance to survive twice. The commission put out a record 1,500 press releases last year, and in December history was made when the EU issued its first press release in Greek. Despite all this frenetic activity, there is no guarantee that the "image" of Brussels will be improved. The "European dimension" remains as hard to communicate as ever."Simplicity," cries Mr Santer, but he knows that his Europe is becoming more complicated. DG10 offers a range of "tools" and "products" to help the media present European issues. Europe by Satellite offers all its services free - in the hope that TV companies will give "Europe" more air time - and the number of staff involved in information work has topped 600.

Even so, media promotion work is contracted out at extra expense.Meanwhile, the Brussels press corps has reached a record 900 - bulging out of the press briefing room. With almost paranoid frenzy, officials at DG10, the commission directorate responsible for information, are working overtime on colloquies and seminars, disseminating "vertical information", countering Euro-myths, and churning out gloosy brochures for the European citizen.To force more of a "European dimension" into the press, a European journalism school has been set up at Maastricht. This month the commission will launch its single-currency campaign with an unprecedented two-day conference in Brussels at which politicians and Eurocrats will meet consumer bodies, business groups and media experts to devise a promotion strategy. Advertising companies and lobby groups are queuing up for the single-currency promotion contracts.On a broader front, the entire Brussels machine is rethinking its "image".

The Danish referendum result - and near-rejection of Maastricht in France - came as a rude shock, and undermined the confidence of federalists.Now, as the EU prepares to embark on its greatest revolution of all - the single currency - commission policy-makers know they must try to win over the public before the public turns round and says "No". The Danes know more about the EU than any other nationality - but it was they who rejected the Maastricht Treaty in a referendum. Until Maastricht, the European institutions promoted the cause of European integration with little concern for the reaction of ordinary people. Three per cent of Britons thought Britain was not in the EU at all and 7per cent said they didn't know.Educating people about the EU, however, doesn't necessarily bring more support - as the Danish experience shows. Polls show that ignorance is most profound in Britain, Portugal and Greece.A survey conducted in 1993 showed that only 36 per cent of Britons knew how many states were in the EU, compared with 77 per cent in France.

It is certainly worth asking whether sending cameras into the Brussels labyrynth might not deepen public confusion, confirm worst fears about the bureaucrats, and alienate people even more. It is only in the past year that the commission, under its new President, Jacques Santer, has woken up to the fact that most Europeans are grossly ignorant about the EU and the way it works. The idea that the commission might bounce its integrationist message direct into British living-rooms would send British Euro-sceptics into paroxysms of fury.Even within the commission there is uncertainty about how direct a role the institution should play in promoting its causes. But the recent launch of Europe by Satellite demonstrates the new efforts under way in Brussels to spread the EU message at a time when public disillusion with the European venture is rising.This year the commission will spend 50m ecus - more than ever before - on information campaigns, promoting the single currency, the inter-governmental conference on EU reform, and citizens' rights. The drive to spread the message is already bringing controversy. Or you could sit back and enjoy a "thematic dossier" of European capitals, before an episode of the European Parliament - live from Strasbourg.Clearly, the ratings for Europe's fledgling satellite TV station are not likely to worry CNN.