Here in Czechia it’s tiring, constantly hearing what bad bad things the EU has done and most of the time if you dig a little it turns out it was our own government that did it.
Pro-EU parties make up the majority of our parlament (Bulgaria) but the vocal far-right party keeps growing election after election. Their whole sentiment is that we need to keep our neutrality and side with Russia(neutral innit?) and the ongoing war isn’t our problem…except Bulgarians are dying over there too, we have a sizable minority living in Ukraine and Moldova.
Oh and we’re the oldest people in Europe apparently and the Bulgarian spirit will soon be awoken to crush the euro-atlanic imperialists?
Yeah. Populism is one hell of a drug.
It’s always easier to blame something external for all the problems (both in politics and for the individual).
“Look at all the bad stuff that X is doing to us! If we remove X, everything will be so much better!”
Same story with EU, you can look at Brexit case, seems like the majority didn’t really understand all the benefits that EU brought, and instead focused on the negatives (which people tend to do). It’s a shame really, all it takes is to look across the Atlantic to see what EU brought us:
- Consumer rights (Right to repair, USB-C standard on phones)
- Privacy and digital rights (GDPR)
- Employment rights (Right to disconnect, employee benefits, etc)
- Cross border trade within EU
- Food safety standards (much stricter than US)
- Environmental regulations
The list keeps going
Timeless classic
Great comment! Take my upvote! (Just generating activity for the post)
[Obligatory Brexit comment]
There are so many legit critiques of the EU one can base an anti-EU campaign on, but in practice it always ends up being reactionary in character.
Russia is hellbent on destroying the EU and restoring the USSR. So long as people look for easy explanations instead of having constructive discourse, populism creates easy escape goats to exploit for whomever is in or seeks to hold a position of power.
The nationalist party in Sweden, the Sweden Democrats, have been threatening to leave the EU for awhile now.
But in terms of ads, I mostly just see ads like “You are EU”, which are pro-EU ads funded by the EU Commission.
But in terms of ads, I mostly just see ads like “You are EU”, which are pro-EU ads funded by the EU Commission.
And those are one of things EU should be criticized for. It’s just channeling EU funds into local advertising companies for dubious benefit of boosting the EU “brand”. I wonder how they measure the impact of this campaign.
Here it Italy too, most right wing parties are euro-sceptic and have built an impressively large consensus in the latest years with anti-european arguments and hate campaigns. People want something to blame for the current crisis (inflation, unemployment, recession) and Europe is the perfect target since no single person can be held responsible. After having been elected, though, those same politicians are not doing anything of what they promised in the election campaign so maybe people will understand they have been fooled so far.
