‘Whiteness’, low youth engagement and lukewarm pro-Europeanism in some states risks eroding bloc’s founding values, expert says

Voting patterns and polling data from the past year suggest the EU is moving towards a more ethnic, closed-minded and xenophobic understanding of “Europeanness” that could ultimately challenge the European project, according to a major report.

The report, by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), identifies three key “blind spots” across the bloc and argues their intersection risks eroding or radically altering EU sentiment.

The report, shared exclusively with the Guardian, argues that the obvious “whiteness” of the EU’s politics, low engagement by young people and limited pro-Europeanism in central and eastern Europe could mould a European sentiment at odds with the bloc’s original core values.

  • geissi
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    18 hours ago

    Ask any black soccer player

    Not the best example if you want to argue that it’s not about skin color, tbh.

    “White” has always been more about fitting a certain narrative than a specific shade of skin.

    Replace “White” with “Racism” and you’re on the money.
    Whiteness has always been more important in the US that in Europe. People here have always been surrounded by other “white” nationalities and cultures that they could still be racist against.
    Of all the things people say about Roma, them not being classified as white is one I have never heard.