Today I had to teach a group of 48 high school students everything about the Bachelor’s degree in International and European Law. To give them an idea about the matter they will be tackling if they enrol and the work they will be doing after they’ve received their degrees, it is policy to combine the informative part with a small, general lecture on International or EU law. It’s fun because high school students don’t receive any education in law. The event therefor forces you to explain complex subject matter in a understandable way, without the help of jargon. For a lawyer, this is a challenge. It is also fun because there are a lot of parents present. Parents usually think they know a lot about a lot of things. In my experience, their perception may be based on a hormonal imbalance, as it has no basis on any objectively obtainable data.

Anyhow, it is interesting to see how much of the general populace’s knowledge of the EU is based on completely wrong perceptions, often fed by biased or sloppy journalism. Today a parent told me that “his paper has stories every day that tell him how the EU’s goal is to eventually create a superstate where everything is the same, ruled by technocrats.” To his credit, he said he was paraphrasing. When I asked him which newspaper he read, he didn’t understand how De Telegraaf may have a motive behind their reporting as: “it tells him the story as it really is, without politically correct non-sense”. Everyone, even academics that get paid to not have one, has a bias. The only thing we can do is be aware of our bias and have it corrected through debate with others. There is never black, nor is there ever white, nor do the shades of grey stop at fifty.

The students on the other hand are still too uncertain and uninformed to know the facts. If you are young, growing up in this economy and don’t know where to inform yourself, it is easy to assume the worst about everything. To be honest, you will be right in a lot of cases. However when it comes to the EU, the high school students have no idea about the aims, intents and purposes of the European Union, nor do they know about the way in which they are represented therein. It is a shame that I and my colleagues have to shoulder that task of informing them, next to the fact that we need to teach them a complicated legal-system. It is not strange that we, the academics, are branded Europhiles, even when most of us are realists. We are probably the first contact people have with with the EU without there being a centrefold involved.

Things are complicated further by media reporting like the following. A number of news media have stated that “The EU wants to implement a Kill Switch in car engines!”. A kill switch would make it possible for police enforcers across the EU to remotely shutdown a car in, for instance, a car chase. Of course media of a certain persuasion reacted to this gross violation of national sovereignty. However due to the nature of this particular piece of news, even the polar opposite of the political persuasion of said media reacted. Violation of civil liberties by the EU was the rallying cry.

For those of you who know a bit about the functioning of the EU, this news item would have been dubious. Articles 3 and 4 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU clearly state which areas the EU has an exclusive competence on and which areas enjoy shared EU/Member State competence. With the endless discussion on whether the European Union is overstepping boundaries, commentators forget that the Treaty gives goals which the EU should aim to achieve. Those goals are a limitative list. Justice (named area of freedom, security and justice in the Treaty), as mentioned in Article 4 is not not an exclusive competence of the EU. As such, something so far reaching as a kill switch in cars could not be actually implemented without Member State consent.

Secondly, when news media mention ‘The EU’, it is an interesting reading exercise to try and distill what is actually meant. Article 13 of the Treaty on European Union mentions 7 Institutions: European Parliament, European Council, The Council, European Commission, Court of Justice of the European Union, European Central Bank and the Court of Auditors. For most media, the distinction between the European Council, The Council and The Council of Europe is hard enough, let alone knowledge of the other institutions and their role in the system. Although a number of these institutions will sometimes offer statements on what ‘The EU’ will do or not do, most of these occurrences take place with a press-conference and a chairperson doing the talking. Think Barosso, think Rompuy. In this case, it remained ‘The EU’, which is suspect.

Further reading of the newspaper articles show us that the proposal stems from the European Network of Law Enforcement Technology Services (ENLETS). A group of law enforcement officials grouped in a Council work group (actually a subdivision of the Law Enforcement Working Party (LEWP)). Council work groups do not represent the EU. Council work groups are discussion fora in which specialists can discuss a topic and prepare policy for the Council to discuss. This specific group has as objective: “To strengthen police activities and cooperation, promote the use of modern technologies in the process of exchanging information, knowledge or experience.” As such, it will discuss a plethora of possibilities regarding technology and police cooperation. Anyone can imagine an example of technology and law enforcement working together, from secure communication lines that cross borders to drones hovering above crowds at a football stadium. It is not for this work group to decide on what is necessary, it is for this working group to discuss what is possible from their perspective as law enforcement professionals. If you are a policeman that wants to halt armed robbers, you like a kill-switch. You are a police officer, not a politician, the moral debate is not something that society asks of you. This is how political systems work. Mind you, most policemen know of the ethical problems with certain methods and would probably not actively pursue them, but that doesn’t mean they would not like them.

For a full picture, the Council has a 16 pages long list of so called ‘preparatory bodies’ which deal with absolutely everything under the sun. However, that doesn’t mean that all the ideas that get floated in these groups become law. That is not their function. Furthermore, unlike certain Member States (and I am looking at you Netherlands) the EU can be held accountable to its founding principles. The Treaty on European Union, Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union all contain limits to the power of the European Union. Even if the complete political process fails, and I am not saying that this cannot happen, and something as far reaching as a kill switch in cars is adopted, the Court of Justice in Luxembourg is able to judge if these limits are infringed upon and has the power to strike down the legislation if is deems this to be the case.

The final bit of information to stoke this specific fire is of course the fact that national political parties want to appear to be ‘Euro-sceptical’ to their electorate. There is political profit to be had from ‘standing up to Europe’. The fact that it isn’t necessary, or that there is nothing to stand up against, does not matter. The only thing that matters is the press-release. This is often facilitated by the fact that some media do not want to seem biased. As such, they do not do their work by informing the reader of the truth, but they want to offer all sides of a discussion, even when certain sides offer a completely false even ludicrous opinion. Populists make use of this effect, they feed it. If media isn’t ‘fair’ by allowing them their platform, they shout that it is the (usually) Left-Wing Media Elite propagating the European Myth. In this case, Dutch Christian Democrats opened their mouth (on social media of course) when they should have known better.

The EU is certainly not perfect. It is a political entity in which 28 Member States, 766 Parliamentarians and God knows how many lobbyists or interest groups try to ‘win’. That is not necessarily a bad thing. This is something that people have been doing for more then 2000 years, although maybe the amounts of money and the scale of the game have been raised significantly. Citizens are represented, by their government through the powerful Council and through their elected Members of Parliament. Even though it is slow, studies have shown that given the amount of people working their, the EU is more efficient than most governments. At the moment 32.666 people are helping to coordinate an area of more than 500 million people. That means that there are 15594 citizens to every civil servant. I know that at least the Netherlands has far worse statistics in this respect. A lot of data is open, but there is an enormous amount of it. It is the job of the media to report on the functioning of this giant experiment and to lay blame where blame is due when something goes awry. Better journalism, more attention and focus on the truth, no matter how complex these matters are, can help make the European Union a success. It is absolutely not perfect, but it deserves fair criticism, not populism that sells newspapers.