Real time blogging… [Blogging în timp real…]

No longer than a few years ago (5-6 or even less), being able to take part in an ECAS conference, as a speaker, and (not long afterwards) to write about it in real time would have seemed impossible to me. Yet, here I am doing it now, in Brussels.

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This is just a glimpse of how far information technology has reached these days. Too bad that I don’t have a statistically relevant number of readers who would be interested in this little sample of real time blogging…

And I could only hope (without being sure of it) that at least some of those dropping by on this blog wouldn’t find the EU merely a ‘remote’ reality, as long as we can’t ignore the extent to which our lives are influenced by this unique experiment.

Are there countless things that many of us don’t know anything about? Are there also things we dislike about the EU? Is integration too fast or too slow for us?

Do we feel a more or less widening ‘gap’ between our rights as they are enshrined in the Treaties and those we can actually use?

Apart from these, most people are interested in practical things related to employment, academic diplomas recognition, social entitlements, family law problems, residence permits, car registration, cross-border health care…

Well, we could try getting some answers on websites that have been presented at this event, and that I am recommending: Your Europe, Solvit and Europe Direct.

Quite often – particularly in Romania, but in other EU countries as well, from what I am hearing here – we give up the idea of trying to get answers, and find it easier to complain about how ‘complicated’ the EU machinery is.

“When the EU administration was built, based on what France had best in this area in 1958, there was no concept of citizens. The French used these three terms: «the administered, the contributors and the users». Citizenship came 40 years later in the EU”, Nikiforos Diamandourous, the European Obudsman, explained today.

EU citizenship is surely no means of miraculously making people happier, nor of saving souls; however, it remains an important tool for all Europeans, and an aspect of EU policy that needs serious improvement.

[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]