It’s a common question. That can be answered in a mind-boggling range of ways. After all, the EU is huge. But does this necessarily mean it is distant, over-complicated and irrelevant to you and your life?
We are all familiar with the idea of getting together to purchase a better gift for a friend than we would be able to afford individually. When this concept is scaled-up to Continental size however, the scope and the sums become rather harder to grasp on a personal level.
To help you to bring the EU down to an approachable size, Antonio Tajani, President of the European Parliament, today launched a website providing information on examples of the real-life deliveries that result from EU policies.
‘There is no one-size-fits-all response to the question of “What does Europe do for me?” – this site aims to provide citizens with answers that address their questions from their unique perspective.’
Antonio Tajani
Popping the EU bubble
Are you a cyclist? Do you use your smartphone on holiday? Are you worried about the air quality in your city? Are you a bus driver, a brewer or even a bee-keeper? Or are you a young person with a great idea for your own business? The EU has nothing to do with that, right? Wrong! While the EU leaves much of the regulation of your daily life to your national government, it tries to help where doing things together beats doing them alone.
Wherever you live in Europe, as an EU citizen you have the right to expect that EU funding is spent on improving your life. Sometimes the money spent by the EU is not easily visible, however, as it’s redistributed through a variety of programmes and by different national, regional and local players, who often add funding themselves.
Without using complicated and insider jargon, the site looks at what the EU is doing for you at the human scale: whether in your region, or in your personal life.
So, what does the EU do … for you?
In May 2019, Europeans like you get to make their views clear by voting in the European elections. Recent interference in campaigns in Europe and elsewhere underlines the dangers of people not having access to the information they need to be able to make up their own minds as to how to vote.
The researchers working for the European Parliamentary Research Service have produced 1 800 short notes on what the EU does for anyone from pet owners to parents, and brewers to bee-keepers, as well as a selection that showcase the EU projects that benefit your home region. They are used to producing independent, objective and authoritative information that is useful for all of the Members of the European Parliament, so you can be sure that the content is not linked to any particular political point of view.
‘Every citizen will be able to find information about what Europe has done for them, not only major legislative initiatives but also smaller changes that have helped improve lives.’
Antonio Tajani
The site will continue to evolve – and we look forward to receiving your feedback. We continue to work on finding interesting facts and projects from your region. At the end of the year, the European Parliament will have an app available for you to download with additional news and information for citizens.
This is an excellent opportunity for you to get your own information about the policies that you pay for. Why not take a look?
[…] Tajani, az Európai Parlament(EP) elnöke november 14-én mutatta be azt a honlapot, amit az EP a jövő májusi választásra készülve készített. A beszédes […]
To: Mr Antonio Tajani
Dear Mr Tajani,
Creating a website ” WHAT EUROPE DOES FOR ME” is very useful to inform the EU citizens about what kind of and what help, for which category of citizens is available, but I would like to point out some major difficulties/issues. For this, I have two interesting and important suggestions/proposals mentioned below (two items A and B below) hoping that you would be kind enough to consider them.
A. For the following two topics of the three presented on the website:
In focus: information is available only for 7 out of 24 topics. I hope that for the remaining items also, the information will be made available soon.
In my life: there are 369 items covering many cases and providing many details about procedures and processes which are not simple enough to understand.
For both of the topics above, in order that all the people with particular professions/backgrounds/problems/issues can benefit by the programs/budgets available for them, a few structural steps should be taken so that the benefit can reach the right targeted people. Now, in many categories included in the above two topics, only very few people who may be knowing the procedures very well or who may already have some good connections/links with the programs, may be getting their benefits.
So, the following steps should be taken:
a. In each commune of all the countries, about 10 special EU Citizen Help Co-ordinators (EUCHCs) should be appointed. Each of them should be responsible for a group of categories of people belonging to particular professions/backgrounds/problems/issues.
b. Each commune should inform its population by its various channels – newsletter, brochure, website, etc. – about the EUCHCs.
c. All the citizens of each commune should be asked to register under the categories of professions/backgrounds/problems/issues to which they belong.
d. It should be the job of EUCHCs in each commune to continuously find out and contact the people of the commune belonging to their respective groups of categories, and to inform these people about the help available for them and to support the people in getting the help by explaining the procedures and providing all support in fulfilling the related formalities. In this way, the benefit can really reach those who relly need it.
This will not only ensure that the benefit of various good and helping programs reaches the target group people but also will create about one million jobs in the EU countries and will help to improve the lives of the EU citizens.
B. As you may be aware, there are so many practical problems in the EU countries and solutions are available for these problems but they are not implemented. Some of the serious problems from the EU citizens’ point-of-view/perspective are:
living standard in majority of the EU countries is low according to the UN HDI (Human Development Index)
salaried-class people are taxed very highly
real buying power of people is low
living costs are very high
many people waste so much of precious time in traffic jams daily that reduces productivity drastically
there is a lot of crime, many security-risks and very less safety and security for people
health/medical care needs to be improved significantly
many people work in black
many people live illegally
there is a lot of wastage of people’s hard-earned money by so many superfluous and exaggerated expensive organisational structures, processes and procedures of EU organisation
salaries of national workers are very low compared to those working in EU organisations/institutions
new suitable programs for the welfare of people need to be setup/implemented to create millions of jobs
To solve all the above and many other problems, EU needs a serious/drastic improvement program for all its citizens.
In this regard, please see the EU’s Comprehensive Improvement Program (EUCIP2019) short presentation on YouTube, based on EU citizens’ perspective/point-of-view – concrete/practical/feasible solutions for improved/better life that all the EU citizens deserve/need:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkTjnEX4bm0NNXxn6HrIYkg
Your valuable comments to improve the program and about how to get the program implemented will be very useful/helpful and appreciated tremendously.
Please let me know if you would be interested in the program which I have posted on YouTube and other supporting programs, and also, if you would be interested in the suggestion/proposal for appointing the EUCHCs in the EU countries’ communes.
Thanking you.
Best regards,
Jasveer Singh
Contact details:
E-mails: eucip2019@gmail.com, jsingh@live.be
Mobile: +32 476 654 099
Twitter: @eucip2019
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jasveer-singh-11230a12
Thank you very much for your comments and ideas!
Regarding the In Focus section, we continue to add content and new translations to the website.
I found a big mistake on the first note I opened…
Is there a link to send this kind of feedback ?
EPRS-EUandme@europarl.europa.eu
Thanks!
Woww… its great … Tks u for sharing <3
Hello, I got a comment from Fabio Geda, a famous Italian writer, who wrote to me the website is a very nice initiative and he will promote in among his students and readers but he has a suggestion:
Io ho aperto il link. Letto l’homepage. E poi ho cercato di entrare a vedere i contenuti cliccando su ciò che mi appariva in fondo alla pagina. Ho impiegato un po’ a capire che dovevo tornare su e cliccare su FAMMI VEDERE. Dovreste mettere il bottone FAMMI VEDERE in fondo alla pagina, non in alto.
Hence: the button SHOW ME should be placed at the bottom of the page not on top.
Dear Elena,
Thank you very much for your comment. Indeed, this is exactly how it is on the web version of the website. On the mobile version, however, we tried to limit the scrolling as much as possible for returning visitors. Hence, the button is placed on the top.
We will do some further user-testing and reconsider the placement of the button.
EU needs a serious/drastic improvement program for all its citizens.
In this regard, please see the EU’s Comprehensive Improvement Program (EUCIP2019) short presentation on YouTube, based on EU citizens’ perspective/point-of-view – concrete/practical/feasible solutions for improved/better life that all the EU citizens deserve/need:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkTjnEX4bm0NNXxn6HrIYkg
Your valuable comments to improve the program and about how to get the program implemented will be very useful/helpful and appreciated tremendously.
Thanking you.
Best regards,
Jasveer Singh
Contact details:
E-mails: eucip2019@gmail.com
Twitter: @eucip2019
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jasveer-singh-11230a12
Some people are wondering why, in the new website “What europe does for me”, there’s not the option to get back to the main page, so that you can change language if you want to read/share in a different language.
Maybe it could be a good improvement to add a specific button for that.
Thank you!
Dear Luca,
Thank you very much for your kind comment.
You can change the language of the website at any moment by clicking on the “globe” icon, which you can find on the white ribbon (right-hand side on the desktop or at the bottom on smaller devices).
[…] Source Article from https://epthinktank.eu/2018/11/14/what-does-the-eu-do/ […]
Hey!
So how much did this website cost?
The research for this site was done completely internally as a cooperation between several departments in EU institutions.