The big news on the day that the Danish presidency were that the new waiting rooms (not cages!) were ready for captured demonstrating people. By accident the policeman at the press conference called them cages. Accoding to radio they look like dog cages but supplied with fruit and white plastic garden chairs. So maybe it is more like a monkey cage.
The enlargement is also a big issue. National television is made into a chearleader choir for the Danish presidency, the government and EU. They claim that a new Irish “no” will make enlargement impossible.
In reality only obstacle for the enlargement of EU is… EU (Council of Europe is enlarged a long time ago and OSCE has always contained all of Europe). And perhaps the demand of Germany and the other powerful countries to get more power and to leave poor Romania with an extremely low number of votes compared to their population.
Hopefully the voters of the enlargement countries will also be an obstacle to the enlargement. But if they vote against, they will probably be told to vote again (like in Denmark and Ireland).
The difference between ordinary people and politicians is in Denmark that if you ansewer “yes” (ja) to something, people will often think that you said “what?” (hva’) and they will ask you again. For the politicians it is the “no” that is not understood, if you ansewer “yes” they will never ask you the same question again.
It was a strange experience in Berlin to take part in the attempts to make a paper on the future of europe and the pressure to sign it. In the end I was suggested to make additions to the paper, but the more I read it the more it looked unacceptable and contradictionary and I became still more sure that my possible additions would only make it more contradictionary adding a fifth direction to the four that it was already pointing. I was also talking to other young greens about the paper while reading it. One said smiling and laughing “oh, did I sign that ? I wouldn’t have if I had read it carefully” and another just made very big eyes while looking at it and said “no, I am not going to sign this”. I was imagining what people would have said at home if I had signed a paper suggesting a European government.
The things in the paper that we could agree on were things that everybody could agree on despite age and party. As young greens we agree much more with our national motherparties and the ideas among (young) people in our own countries when it comes to EU-issues.
Young people are normally more radical than the older. But if in one country he attitude towards EU is sceptic- pragmatic and the young people are radical sceptic-pragmatic, in another country the sentiment is euronational and the young people are radical euronational, in another country the attitude is conformist and the young people are radical conformist, in another country the attitude is anti-EU and the young people are radical anti-EU, then it doesn’t make sense to make a common platform to tell the old what the youth wants.
We cannot make common policies on these conditions if they are not about content instead of institutions and we cannot make a common EU or identity or state.
I believe that the countries being in favour of a EU-state and EU-identity should make their new nation and keep the rest of us out.
The European identity idea is not European but something that is connected to certain parts of Europe. There are more ways to be European. Some of us consider that the good thing about Europe is that we never became one (empire) like China.
But I actually do think that we could have made something valuable if we had sticked to the political issues and priorities between money and power versus people and environment.