{"id":5780,"date":"2014-02-25T11:16:49","date_gmt":"2014-02-25T10:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euroalter.local\/?p=5780"},"modified":"2020-03-03T12:12:26","modified_gmt":"2020-03-03T11:12:26","slug":"what-do-new-europeans-really-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/euroalter.com\/it\/what-do-new-europeans-really-want\/","title":{"rendered":"What do new Europeans really want?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was invited to speak at the New Europeans\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/1jmo3TK\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">debate<\/a>\u00a0about what do new Europeans really want from the European elections in 2014. \u00a0Also speaking were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hopenothate.org.uk\/\">Hope Not Hate<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.europeancitizensabroad.eu\/\">European Citizens Abroad<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.neweuropeans.net\/\">New Europeans<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nus.org.uk\/\">National Union of Students<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sussex.ac.uk\/sei\/\">Sussex European Institute<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sussex.ac.uk\/sei\/\">University of Sussex<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is what I shared:<\/p>\n<p>European Alternatives brings people together from different cultures &amp; disciplines to help people imagine, enact and demand new ways of connecting across borders. In short, democracy &amp; culture beyond the nation state.<\/p>\n<p>Because we believe you can only connect people across borders if you bring together different ways of thinking and doing.<\/p>\n<p>We don\u2019t talk about international or supranational but transnational collaboration, because we believe that a purely top-down or bottom-up approach doesn\u2019t work, it\u2019s like having one of your eyes constantly blindfolded. We prefer a transversal approach.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 1px solid #CCC; border-width: 1px 1px 0; margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 100%;\" src=\"\/\/www.slideshare.net\/slideshow\/embed_code\/32730572\" height=\"356\" width=\"427\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 5px;\"><strong> <a title=\"Power is Everywhere\" href=\"https:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/noelhatch\/power-is-everywhere\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Power is Everywhere<\/a> <\/strong> from <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/noelhatch\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Noel Hatch<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 5px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 5px;\">Before exploring what new Europeans really want from the European elections in 2014, let&#8217;s go back to first principles and ask what motivates people to vote in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>People will\u00a0will vote when they believe the elections will make a difference on the issues they want their vote to affect.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that firstly, most people currently\u00a0feel that the\u00a0<strong>political establishment aren\u2019t aware of let alone understand and empathise with the issues they\u2019re facing<\/strong>&#8230;and in some cases the ideas they\u2019ve got to tackle them.<\/p>\n<p>They feel that politicians are too distant from their everyday lives&#8230;that they don&#8217;t experience what they go through on a day to day basis. However much MEPs try and connect with their constituents lived experience, the imagery of an MEP representing you in Brussels doesn&#8217;t dispel this perception!<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, people feel in some cases that even if politicians did understand the issues they faced, they don\u2019t have the power anymore to tackle them, particularly in the face of globalisation.<\/p>\n<p>There is a feeling by some that\u00a0<strong>Europe &#8211; whatever we mean by that &#8211; is best placed to tackle issues which are impacted by globalisation, but that it\u2019s not doing so.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>People often feel that MEPs are in thrall to lobbies. Vested interests certainly do put pressure on the institutions, some even going to say there is a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/1jmpTUE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">hold up<\/a>&#8221; of the EU. But this (unfortunately) is no different to the circling of the corridors of power by lobbies in our own national parliaments.<\/p>\n<p>On a more optimistic note, as the French philosopher Michel Foucault once said\u00a0<strong>\u201cPower is everywhere: not that it engulfs everything, but that it comes from everywhere\u201d.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What he meant by that, is that\u00a0<strong>power doesn&#8217;t exist within individuals or even institutions &#8211; whether they be lobbies or MEPs &#8211; they exist in the relations between people.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When people go to the polling station to vote, they go on their own to make their vote in the privacy&#8230;and isolation of the ballot box. This doesn&#8217;t create any sense of connection with other people around them, let alone other Europeans. Of course, I&#8217;m not proposing that we open up the privacy of the ballot box.<\/p>\n<p>But we need to think of the vote as only the &#8220;closing curtains&#8221; of the process to build power between people, in a particular at a transnational level. That&#8217;s why at European Alternatives\u00a0<strong>we provide the spaces for people across borders to imagine, enact and demand new ways of building this transversal power<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>imagining\u00a0<\/strong>it through our\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/19gkkUb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Citizens Manifesto<\/a>\u00a0which has been built together from discussions across over 30 cities and over 1000 people<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>enacting<\/strong>\u00a0it through our\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/YPIOtj\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Transeuropa Festivals<\/a>\u00a0where creativity and activism come together to help people take part in collective experiences of tackling issues that cross borders<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>demanding<\/strong>\u00a0it through our\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/VrFfvB\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">European Initiative for Media Pluralism<\/a>, which uses a new tool for building power transnationally to reclaim pluralism and freedom from the vested interests<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/1jmhrF4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Get involved!<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was invited to speak at the New Europeans\u00a0debate\u00a0about what do new Europeans really want from the European elections in 2014. \u00a0Also speaking were: Hope&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":3144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-european-alternatives"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What do new Europeans really want? 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