The European Paradox

European Union is the by-product of evolution of the European Coal and Steel Community
created in 1955. Robert Schuman, then French foreign minister, helped initiate the idea. As
professor Alemanno emphasized that it was the memory and legacy of World War II that make
the community possible. (Video lecture 2 - 3 1-3: 00.52). Taken together, EU is, as of 2012, the
worlds largest economy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union).
Despite its successes, Europeans, usually the young, still think negatively about EU. This is a
European paradox. As the assignment guidelines put it: The EU Paradox in short means that
despite many positive aspect of EU intervention, the EU is very often seen only in light of its
negative aspects. Actually, 67 percent of its citizens think their voices are not counted in the
European Union. ( video lecture: 2 - 8 - 1-8: 00.54)
Why like this? Firstly, I think media played a part in making Europeans hate Europe. By the
way, Im a Cambodian living in Southeast Asia and is a regular reader of The Economist
magazine. Find it that the magazine position toward EU is sometimes too extreme. Sometimes, I
picked the worst part about EU and generalize it. As one of our classmates Gareth Lee puts it I
think the problem is that the image of the EU presented by the media is so negative, particularly
in the UK, that when we are given the facts about the EU in a balanced way it seems like
propaganda. If youre unconvinced, read this article. The magazine called Eurozone leaders as
sleepwalkers.(http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578386-euro-zone-desperately-
need-boost-no-news-bad-news-sleepwalkers)
In addition, some newspaper and websites also make the problem worse. For example, a Greek
newspaper depicted German chancellor as Hitler. So, the media sometimes only makes the
audiences confuse rather than inform. So, this is an unhealthy trend. There are real differences
but propaganda makes things worse.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/angela-merkel-depicted-as-nazi-in-greece-
as-anti-german-sentiment-grows/2012/02/10/gIQASbZP4Q_blog.html)
Secondly, I think the negative sentiment of Europeans, especially the young ones has to do with
recent but lingering economic recession and austerity. A Phew research shows that EU
popularity is at or near its lowest point. Only 37 percent think of it positively.(
http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/05/14/the-new-sick-man-of-europe/). In fact, we know that
Germany and France demanded that Greece and other countries in need of help like Spain;
Portugal and so on imposed drastic austerity and budget balancing. The austerity and budget cut
in each country hurts deeply. So it is not surprising that European started to lost faith in so called
European Project. In 2012, only 2 percent of Greece people rated their economic conditions as
good. (ibid)

Thirdly, history matters. I remember talking an English class with a British teacher a few years
ago. He is named Tim. Some day, the chapter is about French food. He skipped it. When asked
why, he simply shrugged said that France is full of shit. We know from history and France and
Britain were usually at war with each other in the past. So did most of European countries.
Greece still remembered vividly of Hitler and Nazi troops. In short, I think nationalism, history a
sense of national identity. Probably, theres no such thing as European identity. National
interest almost always goes before European interest. Its true that both sometimes are similar
but they are of course not the same.
In conclusion, three main driving forces of the European Paradox are media, recent economic
crisis and austerity and history. One need to understand there forces to deal with the paradox
successfully.