EU Enlargement and the Perception of the Young - Classtests [5A]
Manuela Pastoricchio - 4th Classtest
The aim of the following essay is to discuss EU enlargement focusing the attention mainly on when and on the criteria according to which it will come true.
To the aim, I will refer to an extract taken from the web site http://europa.ue.int/common/enlargement/intro/criteria.htm and to people’s perception feedback of the European Union.
In the extract, the topic discussed is EU enlargement and the question posed is when the countries that are located in Central and Eastern Europe will fulfil the Copenaghen Criteria thus joining EU.
The problem of enlargement has ever been one of the main goals to be achieved by EU, but today EU is more interested in such a problem than ever before. Such attention is due to economic reasons. As a matter of fact, as the world economic balance has been changing for some years, Europe has to compete on the world stage with other major economies. Given that Europe itself is not competitive on the economic level, EU needs to expand its geographical boundaries towards new trades.
I want to underline this aspect because it provides an argumentation to the importance of EU enlargement, but there are many other motivations to be considered as well.
As concerns the data I processed thanks to the school interviewers about the problem, my survey came to the conclusion that people either get mixed up between EU and Europe (the former is a political institution and the latter a geographical entity) or have a very low level of knowledge about EU’s programs.
My group work dealt with the question of which and how many languages should be used in Europe and, after processing data, I could understand that the youngest people would like the English language to be chosen as working language, even if people should know two or more languages to successfully communicate in Europe.
According to what I have already said, I think that media should be more generous in providing information about EU. Since they give the youngest people a more and more virtual vision of the world, they are not cooperating in building up a Europe of the citizens. Furthermore, I think that the information on EU should be provided at school. Thus, young people, who are not interested in, are in a certain way compelled to be informed on the matter.