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As European unity is tested, five readers from the continent share their thoughts about what the EU project means to them
As Ireland faces an EU bailout and rumours about other countries grow, many are questioning the solidity of the European project. As part of our people's panel series, we have asked Cif readers who come from continental Europe to tell us how they feel about it.
Because of the personal nature of the debate, moderation will be strict.
Alexandra Skwara aka SocalAlex
I'm Austrian and, while I was born in the US and grew up there, I've always felt primarily European. At home, my parents emphasised the fact that we were European, not American. We all applied for new passports the day Austria joined the EU in 1995 – not because our old ones had expired, but because my father couldn't wait to exchange them for European ones.
I was raised bilingual in English and German, learned French at school and have worked hard to achieve a conversational level in Spanish and Portuguese. I rely on media sources in all these languages to ensure my perspective is a European one. By the standards of university-educated Europeans of my generation, this makes me pretty average. I also chose to study in Britain and without my EU citizenship, I would never have been able to afford to do so. I spent my third year doing Erasmus in Germany, before moving to Vienna, where I've been for the past six years.
I am a passionate and unashamed supporter of the European political project and the goal of "ever-closer" union. In Austria, in less than a decade, public sentiment has changed from being enthusiastically pro to largely anti, so it often feels like a thankless position to take. I don't agree with everything the EU does, but I still believe it deserves enormous credit for what it has achieved. The truth is the vast majority of EU decisions are made by our elected representatives. As a citizen of a country where the far right is increasing in political power, I feel like my freedoms and democracy here rest on a safer foundation because of our membership.
I accept that I speak for a privileged minority with the education and skills to take advantage of the mobility EU membership offers. But many of us are concerned about how to sell and, more importantly, extend, these benefits to everyone else. There are no easy answers. We need to encourage a factual debate, which argues with politics and economics rather than nationalist fears and tabloid myths.
For most young people the age of border controls is a distant memory, and we've never been paid in anything but Euros: debates about "before" must sound historic. Not even the Austrian and Slovakian teenagers who vote for the far right really want to have to show their passport again when they hop on the train to go clubbing in Bratislava or Vienna. Many will tell you they're anti-EU, but in fact they're quite comfortable with the status quo.
Marco Federighi aka mfederighi
When I was in Italy, I always thought of myself as an Italian rather than a European. This was partly because I was very aware of Italy's diversity – Klemens von Metternich said, not altogether incorrectly, that Italy was merely "a geographical term". If anything, I saw myself more as a Livornese than an Italian, let alone a European.
Moving to the UK gave me a different perspective. I had always thought well of the British, or rather I had always admired certain qualities that they were expected to have: stoicism, self-control, a taste for understatement, pragmatism and diffidence towards abstract ideas. Living here for 25 years has given me a much more nuanced view. I lack certain characteristics of the English: my sense of humour, my way of socialising and my sense of fairness are all radically different. I think this is only natural – even among English people there are wide differences of character and outlook.
I have developed a certain attachment to England. I get somewhat annoyed when foreigners criticise England or the English, even when what is criticised is something that I myself find objectionable: criticism from outsiders is less acceptable than criticism from insiders. I react in the same way when foreigners criticise Italy and the Italians. I suspect that I would feel annoyed if American friends criticise Europe, too. In an emotional sense, I am thus Italian, English and European – at least to some extent.
I have benefited significantly from the EU and particularly from its policies about the free circulation of capitals, goods and people; however, I think that many people have not benefited as much as I have – which is normal whenever significant change takes place. As far as the euro is concerned, I don't think it will work in the long run. The US is very diverse and has a single currency, but it also has a federal government and, much more importantly, one single language. Educated people can circulate across Europe, and unskilled people can, too, but generally people in the middle are stuck – which makes a single market much less fluid here than in the US. I think we Europeans should help each other, without forgetting that our diversity may well be the source of the success of our civilisation. As an engineer, I believe in trial and error more than in planning, and a diverse Europe will permit more experimentation and more opportunities to learn from failure than a Europe with uniform rules.
Liliana Bajger aka justsimpleme
For most of ordinary people from Poland, EU membership offered hope for a better future. I am 50 and have been working in a call centre in Staffordshire for three years. Before that, I worked as a cleaner in a hotel in London. I had previously worked as an English literature teacher in a high school in Poland. I was deeply rooted in my own culture, but also had an extensive knowledge of and love for English.
Identity loss, identity theft, identity confusion: these are ramifications of joining the EU. Those who left their country are in a constant state of confusion. Their adaptation is superficial. They do not identify with or understand societies whose members they are assumed to be – yet they no longer identify with their own culture, either. I am talking especially about young people, who did not manage to recognise and appreciate their own heritage before they rushed towards "Europe". Those people, motivated mainly by a vague perspective of a financially better life, cannot belong: they are uprooted, have no sense of identity and no basis to compare and respond accordingly. Consequently, they desperately try to imitate the behaviour and lifestyle of those surrounding them. This phenomenon has inaugurated a very disquieting process of forming the next generations of English society, unaware of any identity.
My decision to leave my homeland was stimulated by an overwhelming desire for freedom, and for the possibility to share values different than those offered in my country. What I found turned out to be slightly different. English people seem to be unable to truly consider people on an individual basis, and inadvertently interpret their representatives as one. Despite this, I feel I can belong to English society, to which I contribute because I know where I am from and why I did not stay in Poland. I am currently working on a project to set up a senior citizens' theatre group, and present Romeo and Juliet performed by 60-somethings. This, also, will be about belonging and recognition in a much broader sense. Wish me luck.
Berend ter Borg aka Berend
I am a Dutch citizen. From childhood onwards, I have been enthusiastic about the European project, to the extent that I turn instinctively against any politician, from any country, who expresses Eurosceptic views of any kind, regardless of the merit of their argument.
When I moved to Germany two years ago, it felt like a release. The two countries where I had lived previously, the Netherlands and the UK, were both possessed by a subtle but ubiquitous sense of their own righteousness. People in both countries were convinced that they were more well-organised and harder working and that the world would do well to sit up and heed their example. Germans were blissfully free of this sentiment, presumably due to self-awareness because of the war. At least, that was the case when I arrived.
The debate in Germany has taken a distinct turn for the worse. The nationalist pedantry that one would encounter in both the Dutch and British press was virtually unknown here as little as two years ago. In spite of being a wealthy and well-organised country, Germans evinced little sense of superiority. The revival of the German economy, coupled with the misery in countries like Greece and Ireland, has awoken the beast.
The Germans now boast about having their house in order, and have ever decreasing sympathy for poorer members of the EU. Like the Dutch, they refuse to acknowledge that the euro is the only thing that has kept their export sector competitive. The Germans have no need to suppress their currency's exchange rate, as the Chinese do. They have created a system in which a smaller member of the eurozone will destroy investor confidence once every couple of months: a natural way of keeping the value of the currency in check, which cannot reasonably be criticised. Presumably, the system was not set up that way on purpose – not even German politicians are that clever.
Two weeks ago, the euro climbed to a rate of $1.40, trend rising, a horror scenario for the export-oriented German economy. Then the Irish catastrophe began to unfold, and the exchange rate of the euro started falling again. Germany's spectacular economic growth will continue. Seeing how the Germans (and the Dutch) have benefited from the euro, often at the expense of the economies of weaker countries, they would do well to create incentives for those more vulnerable economies to hang on, and convince them that one day they too will share in the success of the euro.
Mihail Krepchev aka GoAsYouPlease
As a Bulgarian from the first post-socialist generation, the EU holds a very special appeal to me. Growing up in a country that was recovering – and still is – from the ravages of a particular form of socialism, we looked at the west as an embodiment of social mobility, justice and freedom. In many ways, the struggle of Bulgarians to achieve some sort of international recognition was fulfilled in our accession to the European Union. So on a purely emotional level, we still hold that concept of an association of free nations very dearly.
But the EU has not been merely an idea, it has had very substantial positive effects on our generation. I would have never come to study in England were I required to pay international fees of over 10,000 per year. More importantly, for my parents, not to mention for their parents, it is still slightly bewildering how I was able to visit almost all major European countries before I was 20. For them, when growing up, the world might as well have ended at the western border of East Germany, so inconceivable was travelling beyond that other than in very limited circumstances. Don't you dare tell me the EU has failed.
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