Piloting1_Svenja&Tanja

The video deals with the topic of the European Elections which take place this June. A lot of people don't know exactly what is going on in the European Union or who they should vote for. The video contains three reports - the first one concerning the democratic deficite, the second one dealing with the topic of who is representing us in the the EU and the last one about nationalists in the EU. The first report says that this year's elections lack democracy in the eyes of many political scholars. In order to learn what is missing, students of the University of Maastricht even arranged a conference. At this meeting, participants coming from various countries discussed why there might be a democratic deficit. In general, there are two levels when people speak of the democratic deficit. While some scholars state that the structure of the institutions is insufficient, others reason that the flaws go beyond institutions. The citizens probably lost touch with the Eurpean Union and its issues. In particular, people feel that they're neither able to influence nor fully grasp decision making any more. As a result, they prefer to deal with national affairs. To solve this problem, Europeans should think out of the box and be more "trans-European". The problem is that newspapers mostly contain national affairs, for example. Academics are not even sure if there exists a democratic deficit because several ones claim that institutional structures are clear and decision making is direct. In order to improve the situation, teachers, professors and scholars need to put an emphasis on teaching of European values, ideas and background because that's how the younger generation might become more European-minded. Also, it may be useful to every citizen to learn a foreign language which makes people understand other Europeans better. In the second part the reporters shows us a typical candidate by following him in his daily routine. According to the documentary, the candidate Joost van den Akker, who is one of the youngest candidates this year, is a very musical and athletic person. He was chosen because he is young, dynamic and has a lot of experience despite his rather young age. The last report is about nationalists who are positioned at the very right which means that they represent very xenophobic views and excessive patriotism. Since 2004 there has been a political party which calls itself the "Union of the European Nations" and does not agree with the current model of integration. They claim that the cultural differences are an obstacle that cannot be overcome. Many members of this party are islamophobic because they only remember the fundamentalists who behave rather ignorantly or even violently. In fact, a great number of muslims do learn the language of their new country and do participate in institutions. Therefore, a big problem is that the political view of the extreme right-wing parties contradicts strongly the values of the EU but they still participate in the parliament. This is because we have a liberal democracy that must accept all kinds of views and because there have to be competing parties to have a perfect union, even though one might not agree with their views.


 * - THE END -**