No amount of ‘Youth in Action’ will make EU citizens

James Gubb, 31 October 2006

Last Wednesday the European Parliament voted to extend the EU’s Youth in Action programme through 2007-13. This programme will eat up a budget of some €885 million, or €147.5m per year. It’s goal? “To encourage young people to work together to acquire new skills through non-formal education activities, for a common project, for the defence of cultures, for a future of prosperity, understanding and peace,” according to Ján Figel, EU Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Multilingualism. All sounds very complicated, and very nicey nicey.
But let’s consider two points for a minute. Even taken at face value, is €885 million worth of grandiose projects really the way to go about promoting what is essentially social cohesion and intercultural dialogue between young people? Almost certainly not; Civitas’ own research has shown time and time again that such initiatives are best run and coordinated at the local level, and certainly not by an organisation as bureaucratic and cumbersome as the EU.
Taking this aside though, is this ‘social cohesion’ really what ‘Youth in Action’ is all about? Again, almost certainly not. The Conservatives clearly don’t think so, having already dismissed the project as ‘propaganda’. In reality – as is alluded to several times in the Draft Report by German MEP Lissy Groner – the project exists, to a not insignificant extent, to foster the idea of belonging to the EU among young people.
A previous statement by the EU Commission on ‘Youth in Action’ states: “One of the main challenges facing the European Union remains how to bring the EU closer to its citizens and have them more involved in the development of Europe….the Commission believes it has a role to complementary role to play [through ‘Youth in Action’]”. For the EU itself, it has to be true that it needs to be closer to its citizens; it is an elite project. Nor should there be a strong objection to non-prejudicial dialogue and friendship between European nations and cultures. But this is not going to happen by the EU throwing money at projects such as this. I feel British, and even to some extent European, because I have an affinity to British and related culture and values, not because any government spends ridiculous sums of money trying to make me feel like I do.