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

‘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.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    125·
    2 months ago

    Yeah, Europe is about pure European whiteness. Just ask half the population of Iberia. Or most of the population of Hungary. Or pretty much anywhere previously ruled by the Ottomans.

    • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      2 months ago

      “White” has always been more about fitting a certain narrative than a specific shade of skin. Ask any black soccer player who’s ever missed an easy shot whether there’s a problem with racism in Europe. Or anyone of Roma descent.

      Most of their countries do not have the same issues of structural racism that the US does (largely because there weren’t enough people with recent non-European origins to make a viable political constituency to target), and they don’t have the legacy of dealing with a country that was involuntarily multicultural from the beginning, but in some sense that has allowed casual and personal racism to fester in a way that most Americans would find disconcerting.

      • geissiEnglish
        6·
        2 months 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.

    • SalehEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      Many Spanish people face racist attacks in more pale countries like Germany, where they are considered to be part of the brown people.

      Fascists and Racists are not know for differentiation.