European Union Citizenship Awards
As hundreds and hundreds of people and organisations write out their application forms for funding the main and the big questions remain silenced. What is this European Citizenship? What projects are ”we” to fund and agree too? It might also be useful to ask the question: ”WHY”. What are these EU citizenship awards all about?
The benefits of these EU citizenship projects are fairly easy to find. They benefit MEPs because they can then claim that their over-paid and under-worked jobs are actually achieving something apart from hyper-inflated expense accounts. So that is nice.
They benefit those poor unemployed project-workers who need more short-term contracts just to survive. They also benefit many academic workers who need things to write about and thereby gain promotion in the university stakes.
But we can doubt that these projects actually benefit most European citizens. Not nice.
We can doubt that these projects benefit any EU democracy. Where is this EU democracy? Can anyone tell me?
We can doubt that these projects benefit the real participation in democratic politics. Again if anybody can show me just where this increase in participatory democracy is evident then please let me know. The projects that I have seen have been, mainly, as useful as a weekend of hugging trees and hugging ”new found friends”. I call it nice psycho-brainwashing.
I have been able to find few and far less than a few projects that actually work towards ”active citizenship” and what makes this worse is that I find few EU funding officials that will agree to fund real active and democratic projects.
The fact is (or it seems to me) that these EU funding missions and project statements pay for ”lip service”. If any real active project comes around it is rarely going to get funding. Why? Far too radical, that is why. If real projects for the EU were made with (and for) active citizenship and participatory democracy then all hell would break loose.
So advice to future project leaders:
1. Just see these applications for funds as a game. Never get real.
2. Make your projects with a ”Dr Feelgood” atmosphere where pscho-babble rules the whole thing.
3. Make your project application with a good Americanised business plan.
4. Never attempt to make projects where active citizenship is actually going to help change things.
5. Try (if you can find one that is not travelling or on holiday) to get the support of a local MEP.
Final Note: It helps, (when you make your applications for funding), to make extra clear that your project for this EU citizenship and active democracy does NOT include the politicians or the business leaders.
Do not even try to mention the promotion of European Trade Unionism.
But arty projects are OK. If you have a project for the Gypsy folk then be arty.
Good luck with your EU citizenship projects this year.
Steve Bowles
