How Young People See EU and Enlargement
First Question Interpretation - Knowledge about EU -Group work Jelicic, Nigro and Proietti -
Question One
What do you know about the European Union?
Che cosa sa/sai dell’Unione Europea?

We asked the previous question to people between 16 and 30 years of age in order to understand what level of information the young generation have about the Union.
It appeared that a lot of the people interviewed were not at ease because either they had very poor knowledge about the Union or their information was rather superficial. Only few people showed detailed knowledge.
Also there seemed to be some confusion about EU and Europe.
But what is the difference between the two? What is the European Union?
It was born to share economical and political interests in view of keeping peace but with the enlargement process Member States seem more interested to cooperate to build a European Union than ever before. They would like the Union to be based on respect of human rights, stable democracy, protection of minorities and besides they focus on the interests of the common market.
It is the Union of citizens that seems to matter more to politicians who are afraid the distance between the Union and the common people may put all the Union forerunners at risk.
Coming now to speak about Europe, it is something different.When speaking about Europe people generally refer to a geographical area useful to distinguish the main continents of the World (Africa, America, Europe). In a few words you should not get mixed up between Europe and the European Union.
Surveying the gathered data you must say that if they are a small representation of a more generalized situation they are proof of a very low level of knowledge about the European Union.
We think that the main cause for such ignorance is due to the absence of careful and frequent information on the media that can reach large numbers of citizens
People in general but the young in particular need information about the process of integration and cooperation because it will without any doubt change their future. Another problem is people’s indifference in front of the Union and the implications of European citizen since they do not share the spirit, the ideals, the values and the finality of a European Union about which they know very little.

Antonella Nigro's personal considerations

Our group dealt with the first question of the EU Interviews posed. The question was about the knowledge of the EU.
We generated a table and tried to process the answers acquired. First of all we have to say that, when we speak about the European Union, we mean something different from Europe. The former is an institutional union; it is a treaty-based organization and its power derives from the treaties that Member States sign upon their entrance into the EU.
On the contrary, the second is a geographical reference.
Further significant information is that EU shows the most important development in the history of Europe after the Second World War. As a matter of fact it affects everybody’s life, whether he knows it or not. It is a process still going on and one that has shown different steps and stages.
After the end of the Second World War European leaders such as Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, both French, were determined to tie European countries closely together so that they could not make war on each other.
In 1948 France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg signed the Brussels Treaty and in 1951, with the treaty of Paris, the six countries established the European Coal and Steel Community (CECA) to control coal and steel resources.Later, in 1957 the six signed the treaty of Rome that set up the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM).
IN 1991, with the treaty of Maastricht the EU was born and from the original six members, nineteen new states have joined the EU, all located in Central and Eastern Europe.
The previous are to be considered really basic information about EU and its enlargement process.
The objective of our work was to understand how young people ( 16-30 years old) perceive EU and it must be recognized that results are not encouraging. In fact only 35 people gave us answers that show a reasonable or detailed information level, while the remaining 70 people did not seem to know much or they simply provided superficial answers.
Therefore the survey make us understand that young people do not feel part of the EU. They perceive it as a distant reality and do not give to it so much importance.