EU Enlargement and the Perception of the Young - Classtests [5D]
Pavan's 4th Classtest
In this short essay I'm going to discuss the problem of the enlargement referred to EU: my intention is to underline the most important features of this process referring to my experience in interviewing people from 16 to 30 years of age and the interpretation of data obtained from their analysis.
Enlargement is an important process in Europe dealing with EU. Its meaning is to enlarge the boundaries of the EU to those countries satisfying some requests. From 1950s the enlargement has brought a lot of countries with different uses and customs and different histories. In this way the continent can be unified under common levels: economical, social but also in terms of stability and peace.
However the process of EU's enlargement is still going on: nowadays Turkey wants to enter the EU and this is a hot problem because of some negative features of the country.
Considering the topics, it is interesting to highlight my experience about them. As a matter of fact I processed the data resulting from some interviews I have made about EU. Questions were about the knowledge of young people on EU and its relative problems; for example the opinion about Turkey's entry in EU, or about the possible languages EU should adopt as its own language or who can obtain EU's citizenship.
After the analysis of the data, I noticed that most of the interviewed have a superficial knowledge, sometimes even inexistent: this is an important problem because it underlines that EU's citizens do not know the features of the system they belong to; this is a consequence of the lack of information derived from the reduced interest of the lack of mass media and school activities about EU.
The EU is not a subject and therefore it is not considered at school so young people are not prepared on this fields; mass media do not help because they give information to those people who know the problem enough because of the difficulty of the topic.
In spite of this, it must be underlined that there are few people who are exhaustively prepared on EU and they gave very significative answers which elevate the quality of the answers.
I personally think that it is important to be prepared on contemporary problems and that school should introduced EU and its influence on our country in the list of subjects in this way young people can better understand what is happening in our continent today.
A better information can also improve integration between young people: the entry of Turkey in EU is not positive for European young people so information can make the dialogue between the young more easy.