EU Enlargement and the Perception of the Young - Classtests [5A]
Mara Sorato - 4th Classtest
The aim of the following essay is to discuss the problem of EU enlargement referring to the follwing points: the extract about the Copenhagen criteria, my personal experience in interviewing young people about EU and the interpretation of the data, carried out by our class.
The first consideration we must keep in mind when we speak about EU enlargement is that it is a process still going on, based on the concepts of deepening (the efford of the Member States to implement a quality form of integration) and widening (the process of enlargement of the Members States), with the aim of expanding the area of peace, stability and prosperity.
For this reason, at the Copenhagen Council the Union decided that the European Countries who desire, shall become members of the Union, on condition that they adopt the standards required by the “Copenhagen criteria”. Therefore, every European country can potentially join the Union once it demonstrates he respects membership criteria.
Nonetheless, Turkey’s question demonstrates the Copenhagen criteria are not the only criteria EU must consider to let Turkey enter the Union.
The entry of Turkey is one of the most important problems discussed at the moment. It appeared also in the interviews we posed to some young people to check their level of knowledge about EU.
Processing the data, we found out young people know very little about the problems concerning EU: they gave us a lot of incorrect or superficial answers that are proof of a very poor level of information.
Working in groups, we tried to single out the possible causes of this low level of knowledge: probably people perceive EU as a problem distant from their reality, their everyday life, so they are not interested in creating their personal opinion on the issues.
In my opinion, school should provide more information about the European Union’s reality, as well as should TV programs.