Monday 17 November 2008

The state of the EU debate

What else can be said than summarised by Nosemonkey these days, inter alia as a reaction to Kosmopolito's article on "The problem of EU debates":
[T]he reason the public are so uninterested in the EU is that they’ve been consistently misinformed about just how important it is to their daily lives.
The European blogosphere remains small, and with few readers, even after several years, he (Nosemonkey) reminds us. The public is misinformed, and most probably we bloggers are as badly informed as them (you allow me to distinguish ourselves from the general public, which we are not, because we blog about the fact that there is a misinformed public).

In fact, a major problem is that those from the inside do not blog from there (good morning, whistleblowers!), and those from the outside don't see what's going on behind the institutions' walls. So what we are doing is reading between the lines, putting issues on the agenda, discussing in circles, asking ourselves where this will lead us and our readers. Without definite answers.

So what?

Let's be satisfied with this situation, let's complain, let's cry and wait for our Messiah! Let's hope for better days, and better years, and better debates, and a better public, and a better press, and better institutions.

The country where I am living these days faces similar problems, and the choice the local population takes is to leave in masses, to look for money and status, to ignore politics and to remain ignorant because there is no real press to take on its responsibilities. The state institutions with whom I work don't show much interest either to increase transparency, and their hopeless efforts of self-promotion are as imperfect as their internal organisation.

Additionally, the international organisation I work with shows similar problems, and so we turn around in circles, as does the European blogosphere, the European demos, and the millions of people who have no time to care for a bunch of bloggers that write about a bunch of themes that are of interest for a bunch of people.

Because below the surface, we don't care. And if we care, we don't have the guts or the time to care enough.

And so we continue in imperfection, in self-reference. And if after five years we realise nothing has changed, we continue for another five years, and then meet our friends and colleagues and tell that still nothing has changed.

This is the state of the EU debate.

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