It helps me, from the US, to understand the EU a little better--more than I ever would by simply reading official documents and news reports.
Seems like the information unravelled and exposed here could be the basis of a very interesting and useful analytical piece. Is there a Euro-focused journalistic enterprise that would take on such a project?
One serious function of the "blogs," the independent blogs especially, has been to feed stories to the newspapers, by raising important questions and revealing significant problems and demonstrating public interest and concern, thus "inspiring" the professionals to focus on a particular topic.
I would expect someone will pick this up and run with it . . .
(If this was dkos, and it was a US issue, I would expect to be reading long articles about it in the NYTimes within the week)
Is it impolite to ask what is European identity? Perhaps a safer question in the context of this diary is what right does any European living outside their country of birth have to use the local resources of their place of residence to vote in a EU elections? (meant to be rhetorical, and hopefully not offensive)
A European identity is also a huge subject, and one I don't think we have yet fully addressed satisfactorily. A European political and civic identity, I'd say, probably doesn't yet exist, or barely. Which is the main reason that pushes me to write this diary.
Here's one I wrote on EU citizenship: Life, Love, Death and the EU.
Till the media starts taking the European institutions seriously, the population aren't going to either. Ludicrous Eurosceptic stories will find easy traction amidst the lack of any real reporting. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Several cabinet members who were elected a week ago have already demurred and will stay in Paris (and in the French government) instead. Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.
