Using Children To Sell The EU Message

Geoff Hoon is evidently not familiar with that classic work The Raspberry Ice-Cream War. He has plainly not spent hours with a gleeful four-year-old, cackling like a hyena at what must be one of the unintentionally funniest books ever written. If he had, he wouldn't be calling for children to be taught about the benefits of European integration.

The Raspberry Ice-Cream War, published by the European Commission, tells the story of a group of intrepid youngsters who travel back through time to a land where there are still nations and borders. They explain to the ignorant inhabitants that, where they come from - the EU - frontiers have been abolished and, with them, every misery and misfortune that used to afflict mankind. The grateful natives agree to pool their sovereignty, thereby ushering in a period of cross-border trade and sustainable growth.

Mr Hoon, who became Europe minister at the last reshuffle, sees this sort of thing as the way to overcome Britain's stand-offishness towards the European project. Capture the children, he reasons, and the parents will follow. The trouble is, it has already been tried. The EU has spent hundreds of millions of euros on kiddieprop. As we Old Brussels Hands say, été là, fait ça.

Who can forget Let's Draw Europe Together, in which young readers are invited to colour in such phrases as "Europe - my country"? For older children, there is Captain Euro, a square-jawed superhero whose mission "to uphold the EU's values" brings him into conflict with the villainous - and for some reason Jewish-looking - Dr D. Vider, who plots "to divide Europe and create his own empire".

My favourite is Troubled Waters, possibly the silliest thing ever published by the EU. Troubled Waters is a Tintin-style cartoon strip - except that, in place of the drippy Belgian reporter, we get a sexy MEP as the heroine. Among the lines of dialogue are: "You can laugh! Wait until you've seen my amendments to the commission proposal!" and, "I seem to spend my whole life on the train between Brussels and Strasbourg, but I'd hate to have to choose between mussels and chips and Strasbourg onion tart!"

These publications are funded out of the EU's information and communication budget, which currently stands at slightly more than 100 million euros a year. If money could buy you love, the EU would be the most popular organisation in history. But no amount of subsidy can sell an intrinsically wrong idea.

Do you remember the massive campaign to promote the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms? Or the blitz of propaganda in favour of the European Constitution? Or the squillion-euro "Plan D" to convince sceptical voters? You don't? My point precisely.

Yet my Europhile friends genuinely believe that all they need is better information. These "No" voters, they tell me, are suffering from false consciousness. If only they could be brought to see their own interests, they would vote in their millions for closer union. All it takes is a little more money.

In any crisis, the Eurocrat's first instinct is to reach for his wallet - or, rather, for your wallet. Thus, the EU's response to the French and Dutch "No" votes has been to whack up the information budget. Some of the funds are channelled through intermediaries - federalist think tanks, Jean Monnet professorships - some firehosed directly at the electorate. In fairness, Brussels is not unique in seeking to buy popularity: almost every big organisation has a PR budget. But there is surely something a little creepy about targeting children.

A couple of years ago, I stumbled across an internal commission report that concluded as follows: "Children can perform a messenger function in conveying the message to the home environment. Young people will often in practice act as go-betweens with the older generations, helping them embrace the euro." The notion that the government should get at parents through their children is a characteristic of authoritarian states, not liberal democracies. One thinks of Orwell's fictional youth organisation, the Spies; or of the revolting Pavel Morozov, who became a hero of the Soviet Union after shopping his father for hoarding grain. (Having decreed a state funeral for the boy, Stalin privately remarked: "He was a rotten little shit, ratting on his parents like that.")

You'd have thought that, what with all the propaganda being lobbed their way, young people would be better disposed towards European integration than their elders. You'd be wrong. According to a poll in this newspaper, the under-25s are the most Euro-sceptic section of the population, followed by the over-65s. I have recently spoken in a number of schools, as part of a programme run by the brilliant think tank Civitas, and I keep coming across the same pattern. Middle-aged teachers tend to be vaguely pro-Brussels.

They like to think of themselves as modern internationalists, and so support the European ideal without worrying too much about the details. Their students, by contrast, worry a great deal about the details: about the agrarian protectionism that is pauperising the Third World; about the ecological calamity of the Common Fisheries Policy; about the unelected commissioners and the unaudited spending. They are not prepared unthinkingly to support schemes that call themselves progressive.

Nor is this just a British phenomenon. In each of the past eight Euro-referendums - Denmark and Sweden on the single currency; Ireland (twice) on Nice; Spain, France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg on the constitution - "No" votes came disproportionately from the under-30s.

And here is another striking fact about those votes: whenever the government distributed factual information, the sceptics benefited. French and Spanish "No" campaigners agree that their best moment was the dissemination of the text of the Euro-constitution. The better people understood the Brussels system, the less they liked it.

The worst mistake that Euro-integrationists ever made was to start explaining themselves. For 40 years, the EU advanced without debate and without fuss. Then, whether from vanity, foolishness or an honest desire for a mandate, Eurocrats decided that they needed "to engage with the citizens". Immediately, the citizens started voting "No".

People, especially young people, have seen through the racket, Mr Hoon. That's why, in the long run, you've had it.

3 posted on 08/04/2006 9:56:15 PM PDT by GeronL (http://www.mises.org/story/1975 <--no such thing as a fairtax)

The European countries are comparatively tiny, and are getting tinier as other countries are catching up. A United States of Europe could be useful for them.

For older children, there is Captain Euro, a square-jawed superhero whose mission "to uphold the EU's values" brings him into conflict with the villainous - and for some reason Jewish-looking - Dr D. Vider, who plots "to divide Europe and create his own empire".

This guy looks Jewish? Really? I guess I don't see it.

Really, not more than half Jewish at most.

5 posted on 08/04/2006 11:00:38 PM PDT by Alter Kaker ("Whatever tears one sheds, in the end one always blows one's nose." - Heine)

6 posted on 08/04/2006 11:47:09 PM PDT by bruinbirdman ("Those who control language control minds. " - Ayn Rand)

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