Friday, 29th January 2010
Europe Post-Lisbon Treaty
While the EU has markedly changed since the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty, with a new Commission, a new parliament, a new President of Europe in Herman van Rompuy, a new High Representative for Foreign Affairs in Baroness Ashton and wide new legislative powers for the MEPs, it is still necessary to work even harder to reconnect the citizens of Europe to the EU institutions.
One of the things that alienates people from the EU institutions is the use of Eurospeak or Eurobabble. I saw a perfect example recently in an article which appeared in European Voice, written by a civil servant from Portugal who was urging the new Commission to use this opportunity to reinvent Europe for the benefit of its people and institutions. He particularly wants the EC to create a new 'Agenda for Change' ...an agenda, he says, that the citizens must be able to understand.
I was about to throw my hat in the air in enthusiastic agreement until I read the next paragraph of his suggestions. According to him, the agenda for change should contain things like social cohesion / an effective attitude of mobilisation /implementation of the Lisbon agenda / Poles of competitiveness / Clusters of Innovations/ Knowledge Cities & Regions/ participation of local actors/ and culture as a driver for development!
My heart fell! This is real Eurobabble. It is this sort of ludicrous Eurospeak that horrifies and alienates citizens, but which has become the common parlance of the Euro elite, who make challenging noises about involving the people of Europe and then keep them at arms length with a barrage of Euro gobbledeygook like this! The very fact that this Portuguese civil servant was recommending such ideas within the context of an agenda for change that everyone could easily understand really underlined for me how serious the problem of alienation has become. If we seriously want to reconnect Europe's 500 million citizens to the EU institutions then we should start by speaking to them in a language they understand, using terms that are accessible and not Eurobabble!
