Europe in the regions — it is everyones task!
By Hannah Neumann
It is true. The EU is far away and abstract for many people. And that is a problem. Because European decisions play a big role in our daily lives — and because the EU can only be successful if people like to live in it and have the feeling they can shape it. Against this background, the proposal for an EU Commissioner for citizens is an exciting idea. But I think it falls short. Bringing the EU to the people and the people to the EU should be a task for all of us and not be delegated to a single person or institution. He or she will take care of it and we continue to do business as usual? That would overwhelm the institution and help only little meet the challenge at hand.
But how else could it work?
Let’s take the commission. What if each Commissioner had once been in each Member State during his term of office? With visits on site and time for dialogues with citizens. Let’s take the parliament. What if we MPs no longer have 36, but only 25 weeks of session, as our colleagues in the Bundestag? And eleven additional weeks to spend in our constituency, for on-site events and personal exchanges. Take the cities and communities. What if they all had European officers who could explain the funding programs, do educational events in schools and promote exchanges? They would then no longer have five other responsibilities, but could ensure that the benefits of the EU are experienced and that a strong civil society is formed, which upholds the values of this Union on the ground.
And then let’s talk about our national politicians and media. What if we were no longer discussing European decisions only in the corset of nation-state debates? If we national politicians would no longer sell every success as their personal one and every unpleasant decision as imposed by Brussels? Then maybe we would one day have real European debates. In which we could discuss the balance of interests not only between parties, but between regions. And people would realise that “Brussels” is a (certainly not perfect but) very democratic and transparent process for which everyone, including the national governments, is responsible.
512 million people live in the European Union. A single Commissioner cannot succeed in creating the necessary proximity to citizens in order to achieve a robust acceptance of the decisions made in Brussels and Strasbourg. Bringing Europe to the minds and hearts of Europeans is a complex challenge that should be borne by many actors. And from each and every one of us. Because it is our EU.
Dr. Hannah Neumann has been a Member of the European Parliament since May 2019 and is a member of the Group of the Greens / European Free Alliance. There she is Vice-Chair in the Subcommittee on Human Rights, as well as in the Subcommittee on Security and Defense.
As part of her job as office manager in the years 2013 to 2016 for several members of the Bundestag of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, she worked mainly in the areas of human rights policy and crisis prevention.
