EU Referendum


EU politics: we assume too much


16/04/2014



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The recent IEA "Brexit prize" submissions brought home to us the depth of ignorance of people supposed to be expert in matters EU. This actually stops you short – one tends to assume that people at least know the basics and when they don't, it is necessary to reassess the way we deal with things.

But, if we need to be wary of the "experts", what about the ordinary public? According to YouGov, their ignorance is profound. For instance, only 16 percent can correctly name the date of the coming Euro-elections. A clear 68 percent didn't know and 16 percent choose the wrong date.

It gets worse. Some 77 percent admit they don't know how many MEPs we have. Only seven percent actually got the figure right. Some 93 percent couldn't even name one of their MPs.

Only 20 percent of respondents could get the number of countries in the EU right, a mere 44 percent of people knew that Norway was not a member of the EU, 27 percent thought Ukraine was a member and 30 percent believed Turkey was in the Union.

I am sure if we started asking more detailed questions, such as the names of the five principle institutions of EU, we would get blank stares. So here we are then, getting excited about arcane details of the EU, nuances in the polls and shades of opinion,  yet the bulk of people don't even know the date of the election. 

This tells us that we cannot assume that what drives us has any impact on the public, or they care about what we care about. For all our knowledge, we're flying blind. Intellectually, we live in a different world.

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