Young people love Europe

By Katy Dillon / @Katy_Dillon

‘Young people love Europe’. It’s a fact. It turns out that we are the biggest fans of the European Union, 65% of 15 – 24 year old across Europe consider their country’s membership of the European Union to be a good thing. But it is not only a question of with or without Europe; it is a question of ensuring that we have a Europe that delivers and puts people first.

Winning more Labour MEP seats in the UK means that the Socialist Group in the European Parliament also expands. Explaining the governance of the European Union is not particularly easy, but this is pretty comprehensible. Not only does campaigning for your MEP help Labour locally, but it actually means that we could return a boosted force of socialist and social democrat MEPs to the European Parliament. We could make the European Union progress with policies that turn the notion of ‘a social Europe’ into a reality.

But Labour is not saying this. We are a forceful pro-European party, but we won’t declare this publicly. Instead of facing the truth about the EU, positives and negatives, we struggle to find the right narrative and end up avoiding the question altogether.

The biggest challenges facing us today are global ones, and the European Parliament rightly holds great sway on such matters: climate change, energy, development, and security. In this mandate alone the Tories managed to vote against measures aimed at cutting the number of deaths from childbirth amongst women in developing countries and they voted against outlawing female circumcision. There are non-attached members from the UK who deny that climate change exists. These are not people who are creating the policies that will help us through the tough economic times. These are not people who should be re-elected and returned to the European Parliament.

Going out and campaigning for your Labour MEPs and candidates for the European Parliament elections on June 4th is the only way in which we can make Europe work for the people. We all know the EU has a few problems, but we can put it on the right path. It might even make a few more people declare their love for Europe.