Why the EU citizens see the EU like something necessary but they don´t love it? Well, in my opinion it´s our perception of the functionality of states and their relations with supranational organizations, and I will explain this. The UE is a recent event in the long history of Europe. For hundreds of years, a lot of their inhabitants lived under the protection of the state where they lived, without a superior entity. They didn´t had the necessity to understand anything about the International organizations because they knew that this international organizations worked by a system of deals between their membership and states didn´t give it any competence (for example United Nations and their council of security). But now, the UE is something new for citizens, and the international relations between countries, because the UE work in a different way. Common people can´t understand why a state must summit some competences to the UE, and their misunderstanding adds confusion and refusal about the feelings in the EU. They appreciate the ways to improve in economy, movements of persons and capitals, easier traveling, and business or studding aboard. In other way administrative organization, is a lack of awareness that makes suspicious of persons in the EU.
They know the advantages of being European citizen, but they think that this “golden association” of states has a dark face. This “darkness” is caused by the idea that the EU is a “monster” who stolen national competences and use them as a rule. Laws and norms that the citizen thinks are useless (for example the Bananas regulation that we saw in the videos). This “overregulation” is felt by the common people like a sack of their liberty, in two ways. The first situation is that someone who is not in their homeland said what they must do or not something. The second one is that citizen understand the rules easier if they can see the changes in their lives at first view, for example, everybody can explain the free movements of persons or capitals and why, but they can´t explain the necessity of the banana´s regulation, and if the rule and its duty doesn´t suppose a great change of their lives, specially economical change, they think that the UE exceeds in competences and effort.
Another example is the way that the EU banned the tobacco publicity in public spaces, the European citizen could see the change quickly, in this case a better change for they health and they can understand very easily why EU made this rule, because they can see and feel the change in their normal life. But this good feelings doesn´t happen with other rules, specially the regulation of the tinny things, like food, toys, drinks, etc. (We can see this in the last eurobarometrer, how European citizens said that free movement of persons was the best change that UE carried and the most important)
Let me introduce the European Paradox in my region now. I live in the North of Spain, and I appreciate how the people think about the UE in my region, with three examples that are the most common. The first of them is that people have a view of the EU like a Bank. My homeland received some of European Region Development Founds, but people see this situation in the way that the money has a consideration, like closing enterprises, renounce to future UE´s programs. For them, the European Regional Development Founds (ERDF) is like mortgage or any other bank product.
Brussels and Strasbourg is a place to send for a golden retires of old politicians. Other myth, because Brussels is far, the normal citizen’s can´t supervise the works of their political elections as easy as the political in the national parliament. They think that they don’t work anything, but it´s totally wrong, because the parliament has a lot of work, but the citizen don’t see their job as easy as the national or regional parliaments. We can add this problem in the same way that the laws, because the European Parliament work is not easy to see at first view, and there is no information about the things they are working on and that’s why the normal people see it like a place to rest with a big remuneration.
The EU is a big animal which walks slower than society. In other myth this is truly because society changed very fast after the fall of Berlin´s Wall, but the EU did it as well. In the last years, the integration was very quickly, since the 1990 EU made great advances, the changes were appreciated in a small period. The integration of the countries was very fast. Nowadays the new countries made their wayside like the old members, without differences, and the best example of the fast integration was the euro as currency of majority of members. But that change came with inequality of the economy and people are waiting for a new change to revert the situation.
The truth is that only in a few years, new region whit different countries, languages and law regulations appeared when some people thought it was impossible do something like this. It´s very good for a great animal that moves slow, with lazy parliaments and subsidy citizen to make them renounce to their future as I exposed in my three examples.
That was a personal point of view for explain why the EU has a low popularity and how I can see this in my normal life, and in my opinion this problem or this bad opinion in some things have an easy solution, and consist in explain better how the EU works, and why, for example starting in the schools. A original thing is celebrated a special event of one of the EU´s institutions in the European cities, like conferences, expositions, etc, being more closer the UE to the citizens, making them more confidents.
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