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Why Does the EU Get Such a Bad Rap?

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    Why Does the EU Get Such a Bad Rap?

    I wonder if these projects underway in the UK shall continue to receive funding from the UK government (upon Brexit) or will they be withdrawn. Even still were the money available the Tories would spend it on war before infrastructure, like they did with the oil boom money. Wasted. We need the EU more than ever to save us from the evil Tories.

    A long read but worth it. A snippet given below. I'm guessing many who voted (in or out) never knew the half of what the EU was about. Only the Daily stories get the light of day.

    Has the EU really lost touch with its citizens? Is it unable to improve people's lives? Yes and no. Across Europe, EU money flows from Brussels into thousands of projects and ideas. Why does nobody notice?

    January 23, 2017 11:27 AM
    Photo Gallery: The Long Arms of the EU
    On the search for an alternative narrative of Europe, there are plenty of places to start: A giant, next-generation bio-product mill is being built deep in the forests of Äänekoski, Finland. A new, state-of-the-art trauma center is under construction on the outskirts of Birmingham. On the Greek island of Crete, resourceful entrepreneurs are replacing pig fat with olive oil to make better sausage for the world. Near Barcelona, pharmaceutical researchers are experimenting with plasma and proteins to develop drugs to treat genetic defects. Off the coast of Suffolk, England, German wind turbines are going up in the North Sea.

    Keep in mind them Tories have just withdrawn solar panel subsidies, utter madness


    Thousands of small companies in the Netherlands receive low-interest loans, thousands of homes in France are being renovated to make them more environmentally friendly, thousands of jobs are created by such measures. Portugal is getting a 4G mobile network, a large printing company in Heidelberg is getting cheap R&D funding to expand its digital portfolio, Spanish ports are linking up with the railway network, contaminated wasteland in Belgium is being converted to clean building sites, and many Polish dairy farmers will have the opportunity to work with more modern machinery in the future.

    Such are the outlines of the other European story. It is rich and colorful, but it is also so discordant and diverse that it is almost impossible to create a single, compelling narrative. The bits of good news go largely unnoticed.

    Making things even more difficult is the fact that some of the worst storytellers happen to be located in Brussels and the European capitals. Year in and year out, they fill entire libraries with books full of laws, papers, projects, programs and reports, but the texts are usually so incomprehensible, so blighted by footnotes, cross-references and legalese that no one can understand what has happened thus far. And no one can say what is happening now, either. And when it comes to figuring out what the future will bring, we are especially clueless.

    Such is the situation in Europe at the beginning of 2017. March will see the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which marked the beginning of the European adventure. But in many places, the prevailing mood is that there is nothing to celebrate. Project Europe has been running on fumes for years, and now it seems as if majorities in society and the media believe that the European Union belongs in the dustbin of history. That the entire anemic episode has come to an end, those eternal Brussels congresses where elitist Eurocrats engage in nothing but myopic navel-gazing. That, at least, is the well-practiced cliché.

    But the examples mentioned at the beginning, the hospital in Birmingham, the sausage factory in Crete, the wind farm in Suffolk, the pharmaceutical research facility in Barcelona, the environmentally friendly houses in France - all that and more would not exist without Europe, without the European Commission, with the European Investment Bank (EIB), and without the "Juncker Plan," the unofficial title of the "Investment Offensive for Europe" launched two years ago by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. The Juncker Plan is an attempt to use smart lending to trigger additional investments worth many times the original sum, with an ultimate goal of 315 billion euros, distributed among thousands of projects throughout the EU. This article's aim was to take a closer look at the Juncker Plan.

    Humming Along

    The idea was simply that of examining whether the European Commission's strategy to provide a beneficial jolt of liquidity into the European economy is working. The plan was to find out whether the funds are truly being disbursed, whether the companies in the glossy brochures actually exist and whether the stories about them are true. The research involved traveling to the construction site in Birmingham, to the Cretan sausage factory, to Barcelona and the French region of Picardy, and to Munich and Luxembourg. And yes, it's true, the companies and the projects all exist, and while they may not amount to a huge jolt, they do inspire hope. Loans are being disbursed and the money is being transformed into machines, buildings, software and jobs. In other words, Europe is alive. Europe is humming along.

    But during the course of the research, we discovered something else. It's more of a feeling really: that Europe's institutions are the last to profit from these success stories, if they profit at all; that hardly anyone makes the connection between the wind farm in Suffolk and the European Commission, between the sausage factory and the Juncker Plan, between the hospital and EIB loans, between Polish dairy farmers and European ideals.

    It became apparent that although this Europe is working tirelessly everywhere to achieve its goals, its successes remain invisible, while in the 28 member states (soon to be 27, without the British), a bright spotlight is shone on every failure. The sad thought emerged that this EU, which has become part of our everyday lives, an indispensable player in even the most remote corners of the continent, has nevertheless remained a remote, unpopular entity.

    Brexit supplied spectacular evidence to support this notion. Wales, for example, is one of the biggest beneficiaries of European support. A great deal of money has been sent to the British region so that museums could be operated and festival halls built. The EU helped rebuild roads and pedestrian zones, create educational and sports facilities, and build bicycle and hiking paths. But the majority of Welsh voter supported Brexit, more even than the nationwide average. Some 52.5 percent of the Welsh, 854,572 people, voted to withdraw from the ridiculed, despised and hated European Union.

    These numbers alone made it seem pointless to simply dissect the Juncker Plan and write, for example, that within two years this bold program has helped 290,000 companies in 27 countries receive loans and provided 100,000 people with new jobs. It seemed pointless, because such information apparently goes in one European ear and promptly goes out the other. When Europe does something, the common response is: So what? How is that my concern? What do I have to do with Birmingham? Or sausage in Crete?

    Europe is the forest that people are unable to see for all the trees. Spend half an hour on the European Commission's website searching for funding opportunities, and you'll end up feeling thoroughly confused. There is no branch of politics and no segment of society without a corresponding subsidy program.

    Limited Effect

    There are funds to promote civil society and others to address asylum issues. The European Commission promotes foreign trade and competitiveness. "Creative Europe" supports artists, filmmakers and other cultural workers. "Galileo" funds a navigation system supported by 30 European satellites; "Copernicus" provides money for the collection of geodata; "Erasmus" promotes the exchange of students and trainees. There are funding programs for honorary positions, for nuclear safety, for cultivating the rule of law, for urban areas, for villages and for underdeveloped regions. There is something for almost everything. And yet its effect seems to be nothing.

    Supposedly so out of touch with its citizens, Europe is in fact on every market square and every street corner, and yet most passersby consistently overlook it. There are currently 1,175 small and large EU programs underway in Barcelona alone, a huge number, and the story isn't all that different in Lyon, Liverpool, Milan, Prague, Rotterdam, Lisbon, Seville, Cologne, Vienna and Warsaw.

    In the German state of Saxony, where enthusiasm for Europe wanes by the year, there are 5,753 entries on the catalog of projects funded by the EU. The list includes hairdressers, small software companies, law firms, youth workshops, kindergartens, English tutors, naturopaths, employment agencies, clubs, associations, businesses and government agencies. The EU, it would seem, is doing its best not to forget even a single citizen of Saxony with its largesse..
    Source: The Vast Funding Machinery of the European Union - SPIEGEL ONLINE
    Last edited by scooterscot; 24 January 2017, 21:18.
    "Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience". Mark Twain

    #2
    Dunno really. This lot certainly won't help though.

    Comment


      #3
      It's not binary, the EU does lots of good things, but there is a lot of bad that comes with it too. So it's a balance of the good against the bad.

      Like Rolf Harris. All in all, you'd rather not. If you know what I mean.
      http://www.cih.org/news-article/disp...housing_market

      Comment


        #4
        "state-of-the-art trauma center " - this might come in handy after blunt trauma of Brexit...

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by PurpleGorilla View Post
          It's not binary, the EU does lots of good things, but there is a lot of bad that comes with it too. So it's a balance of the good against the bad.

          Like Rolf Harris. All in all, you'd rather not. If you know what I mean.
          Please post bad stuff...
          Brexit is having a wee in the middle of the room at a house party because nobody is talking to you, and then complaining about the smell.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by darmstadt View Post
            Please post bad stuff...
            Clearly EU did not do enough to stop Rolf Harris, maybe even conspired with him!

            You know it makes sense

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by AtW View Post
              Clearly EU did not do enough to stop Rolf Harris, maybe even conspired with him!

              You know it makes sense
              And Jimmy Saville. In fact it was all a huge EU plot, in fact anything bad that has ever happened in the UK is the fault of the EU, going right back to 1066 and all that...
              Brexit is having a wee in the middle of the room at a house party because nobody is talking to you, and then complaining about the smell.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by darmstadt View Post
                Please post bad stuff...
                duh, the weather.
                McCoy: "Medical men are trained in logic."
                Spock: "Trained? Judging from you, I would have guessed it was trial and error."

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by darmstadt View Post
                  Please post bad stuff...
                  Corruption beyond belief, complete disregard for democracy, the egos of politicians saving their failing empire placed above the poor buggers who are being shafted in Greece. Any more you need?
                  His heart is in the right place - shame we can't say the same about his brain...

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by Mordac View Post
                    Corruption beyond belief, complete disregard for democracy, the egos of politicians saving their failing empire placed above the poor buggers who are being shafted in Greece. Any more you need?
                    Yes, tell us about bad things in EU now...

                    Comment

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