Europe Times

It's sometimes asked to people living in th European Union, by magazines as the Times Europe edition, or research for Eurostat (the statistical office of the Union): Do you feel "European", in which they mean if the interviewed feels if he or she is a European Citizen or not? Depending on the generation, the answer will be more or less yes of no. Generally speaking, the younger the person asked is, the more likely a yes will come out. The older generations, especially the pre-war generations still recent a big national understanding, not to say nationalistic feeling, thus they are least likely to say: I am European. For them the European Union is scary, a big monster far away, threatning their livelyhood (if not yet retired) and national independence. Souvereignity is a vey common used word by these people. And the EU? Well that's actually the European Communities, as they were from the start in the '50's to prevent war happening again, but a country, a federation? hell no!

But even for the younger generations there is some bias. Bluntly spoken, people with higher education the change of them being in favor of the union is more apparent. Because the Union give them opportunities to gain international work experience. Both for working for the EU itself, as well as it is easier to move abroad and work for companies or other governments than ones own! This count especial for higher educated people from the North Western countries, were English is more well taught at schools and thus they are better suited to move abroad, people especially in Southern Europe face a bigger language barrier, as English is much lesser well educated there (they write and read it well, but no spoken English), Eastern Europe has catched up with the North West very well and generally it's easier to speak English with a Polish person than with a French person! This stated, if we look at the salaries for higher educative jobs are more or less equal within Europe. So it doesn't matter if one works in Germany or Scandinavia or Spain or Poland, he or she makes the same. However, the higher jobs in Poland and Spain are still scares, so they are less likely to support free travel and thus less likely to feel "European". Because due to their language barrier, the chance of them getting a high paid job up North is not very likely to happen.

For the lower educated people there is a reversed pattern, in North Western Europe the salaries for lower educated people are much higher, so the need to move abroad is near zero. However, at the other hand, many people from Southern and especially Eastern Europe are much more willing to move up North to claim jobs for a much lower salary than the Northern colleagues do! Thus the lower educated Northern Europeans are much more opposed to free travel and thus against feeling European than the Southern and Eastern. Off course also, and even stronger within this group, there are language barriers. However, my own experience in the Netherlands is that these tend to be easy to overcome. As many Dutch companies work with Eastern Europeans, and hire one translator, still being cheaper than taking the same number of Dutch employees!

However, wheter we like it or not, this is going to be the future of Europe: companies hire the cheapest labour or settle in these memberstates with the cheapest labour. For now that means a shift of cheap production to mainly Eastern Europe, and an influx of Southern and Eastern Europeans on the Northern European labour market. However, higher paid jobs will be relocated to those areas were "live is good", as countries like the Netherlands or the UK suffer of bad wheater, we can imagine that research facilities, in order to attrackt most of the researchers will relocate to Spain. Italy or France, where the sun always shines......

All of the above are off course generalisations, but just give it a thought! Are you a European, can you imagine yourself relocate to another part of Europe, and which part will that be? How does Europe deal with issues like: insurance, pension, banking, travel, healthcare to name few, but we can also ask: how will the memberstates develop? how will we deal with foreign affairs, defence, development aid!?