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Comment by rickdeckard | Hacker News Reader

> The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states that most citizens are completely unaware of their doing

That's largely because citizens of several countries accept the narrative of their local governing parties that the EU is some "external force" that is outside of anyone's control.

Reality is that the EU is largely formed by members of local political parties sent to EU-institutions. They just send people there which they deem not useful for local campaigning or prefer to become "invisible" to local politics.

Citizens should not accept this narrative, and instead demand more transparency on the activities of the local politicians sent to EU, holding the party accountable for their actions (or non-action) within the EU.

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This is similar to the Soviet Union. A lot of factories and utilities got asked to send their best employees to be council representatives. The factory managers naturally sent the most useless workers to become politicians. The rest is history.

Eh, partly.

But it's also inherent in running an organisation with 24 official languages.

Let's say you had really strong opinions on this, and you wanted to rally voters for a letter-writing campaign. Good luck coordinating the Spanish-speakers, the German-speakers and the Polish-speakers and so on. All of whom also have different TV networks, different newspapers, different radio, presumably different social media and so on.

And politicians have the same problem - maybe you're an amazing public speaker. Maybe you've got the farming subsidy policy equivalent of the Gettysburg Address. Clear, succinct, witty, persuasive, honest, passionate - everyone who hears it will be fired up to support your vision. But if you can only deliver that speech in Portuguese? Good luck with that.

Hell, look at this very discussion: I know first-hand about the complex relationship between the EU with the British parliament, press and electorate. But I have no idea what the equivalent situation is in the Czech Republic.

That's all a symptom of the current state of affairs. If citizens would hold their government accountable for their actions on EU-level, the ruling political parties wouldn't send people to the EU who are ill-equipped to communicate/execute.

But it's also an inherent problem of the EU. In retrospect, they shouldn't have left communication with citizens to the EU-members, expecting that they would communicate based on common interest.

As it turns out, the local governments are much more comfortable to celebrate themselves for everything positive, and blame everything negative on these "EU overlords".

The EU charter should have included the means for the Union to communicate directly with citizens, i.e. the basis to have their own local news-channels.

I can see improvements in communication nowadays, with EU press-releases and announcement carrying over into local (online) news at least. The fact that none of those messages are already carried by the local government speaks volumes...

> That's all a symptom of the current state of affairs. If citizens would hold their government accountable for their actions on EU-level, the ruling political parties wouldn't send people to the EU who are ill-equipped to communicate/execute.

What I'm saying is that everyone is ill-equipped to communicate, when communications are conducted in 24 languages.

Imagine a Greek newspaper decided to send a team of dedicated EU reporters to Brussels - how are they supposed to talk to the delegates from Sweden and Slovenia and Spain?

(and if you're thinking "they'll just communicate in english" let me remind you that less than 2% of the EU population lives in a country where english is an official language)

> As it turns out, the local governments are much more comfortable to celebrate themselves for everything positive, and blame everything negative on these "EU overlords".

Truth.

But IMO pre-Brexit a big reason the British government had a lot of influence over the British press (and vice-versa) while the EU government didn't was the simple issue of speaking the same language and being in the same city.

I get what you're saying but that's a non-issue. At plenary meeting and conferences every country is in the same situation, they communicate via an Armada of interpreters, just like they do at the UN, at the WTO, the WHO, the NATO, and so on. Outside of those they communicate in English and/or French.

If a Greek newspaper is sending a journalist who can't speak English or French they sent the wrong person. If a local government sends a politician into the EU who can't communicate in English or French they sent the wrong person. Also, it would already be sufficient for the cause if Greek newspapers would put the spotlight on GREEK politicians in Brussels. So far not even THAT is happening in a sufficient manner...

> But IMO pre-Brexit a big reason the British government had a lot of influence over the British press (and vice-versa) while the EU government didn't was the simple issue of speaking the same language and being in the same city.

Every single press-Release of the EU is done in English language. Granted, the EU doesn't invite to press-conferences in London to talk to the local press, that's the job of the local government.

Pre-Brexit it would have been the job of the British government to promote the spirit of "We are European", but as everywhere it is more useful to their narrative to promote "We are Nationalists!"

> they communicate via an Armada of interpreters [...] Outside of those they communicate in English and/or French.

> If a Greek newspaper is sending a journalist who can't speak English or French they sent the wrong person.

Right - so from the perspective of a Greek person, EU lawmakers are speaking a completely different language. Seems like a pretty big communication problem to me.

> Also, it would already be sufficient for the cause if Greek newspapers would put the spotlight on GREEK politicians in Brussels.

But the Greek politicians in Brussels already agree with the Greek government.

If the German faction in Brussels wants to do something that'll be unpopular with Greece, they've got no way to make their case to the Greek people directly.

> Pre-Brexit it would have been the job of the British government to promote the spirit of "We are European"

Did the British government ever agree that was their job?

I mean, in the United States I don't see Biden expecting the Texan government to convince Texans of anything. Luckily for Biden, he can speak to Texans himself. Because they share a language.

> Right - so from the perspective of a Greek person, EU lawmakers are speaking a completely different language. Seems like a pretty big communication problem to me.

It appears you've never checked the publications of the EU. They are published in ALL OFFICIAL LANGUAGES of the member countries, including Greek! [1]

> But the Greek politicians in Brussels already agree with the Greek government.

Sorry, I'm not following. I am talking about local citizens and media surfacing and challenging the actions/non-actions of the politicians that were sent to the EU, by holding their local government accountable for the performance of their representatives in the EU.

> If the German faction in Brussels wants to do something that'll be unpopular with Greece, they've got no way to make their case to the Greek people directly.

They shouldn't. They should make their case towards the designated representatives of Greece in the EU. It is their job to facilitate communication with the Greek government, whose job it should be to communicate with its citizens. This chain is intentionally broken, for the local party to either claim positive outcomes only on themselves or blame negative outcomes to some overlords outside of their control.

[1] Example: https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/d...

Switching language to Greek: https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/d...

You would need a common official language to do that. And even with that, you cannot really build something democratic if a large part of the population has no idea what you are saying.

> You would need a common official language to do that.

Not sure what "that" actually refers to.

The common official language of the European Union is ALL official languages of the member-states. Every major publication of the EU is ALREADY made in all languages of its members.

Example: Electricity market reform, an ongoing topic. What's the status there?

Here it is: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20240304STO...

Ah, you only speak Greek?

No problem. Here: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/el/article/20240304STO...

Ah sorry, Polish? Here: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/pl/article/20240304STO...

> you cannot really build something democratic if a large part of the population has no idea what you are saying

Why? There is a LOCAL government which is in charge of representing the citizens locally and also representing the country in the European union.

If they can't explain to me what they are doing, they are not qualified to represent me.

Interesting, maybe that’s totally changed as of today with the AI voice and language and lip synching tech we have now

This.

It's been same before EU or other similar multiple country things.

Back then some politicians were getting "promoted" into ambassadors of some faraway country, or decided to become university professors, if not flat out sent to "Goli Otok", "Siberia" ...etc.

Since that mentality/way-of-doing politics has been around for a while - it will not be easy to get the political establishment to change.

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