Svitlana and Olga created a youth partnership to participate in the European Union (EU) Youth Programme (now Erasmus +). The programme supports the organisation of meetings with European youth associations. The excuse is a cultural exchange, that is, trips and juerges paid by the EU with people from different countries. The Youth programme is an extreme version of the reputation of Erasmus stays in universities, because studies are not involved and a lot of money is given to organise a week-long activity. On many occasions, the partnership that organizes the meeting (of the host country) derives economic benefits, which in the eastern countries can be a significant money for their economic level. Olga, 23, is working for the partnership thanks to the money he receives from the EU, which doubles the average salary of Ukraine.
These young Ukrainians have demonstrated their ability to ask for money within the EU’s bureaucratic framework. If these people develop a critical spirit they can become dangerous to the system, but they will hardly be dangerous to the EU, neither they nor the majority of young people who have participated in Youth programmes. The same applies to pupils and teachers who have participated in the Erasmus programmes. The EU knows where to invest that money, among other things, tomorrow’s authorities, journalists, teachers and most intellectuals will leave the universities. In Lithuania, university teachers have very low salaries, so they are able to get EU money. They particularly love the Erasmus programme, which allows them to travel for a week to a European university at the expense of all EU expenditure.
The EU has for decades been softening the critical capacity of intellectuals, journalists, elites and politicians and feeding European utopia through money. It was a great success among the leftist parties that were orphaned by the fall of the Soviet Union. Faced with the militarism and right-wing politics of the EE.UU, it seemed that the most progressive and democratic thing was to be a fan of the EU. But that European utopia does not exist, as it was once called ‘real socialism’, it is time to talk about ‘real EU’ and not just what we dream of.
The EU is an instrument of economic imperialism, US majordomo on military and democratically Lilipuse issues. Interestingly, an organization that seeks to promote democracy around the world (although it sometimes supports coups d'état, as in Ukraine), has a very low democratic density. Many of our public policies are designed and conditioned by others, but yet the democratic control that we European citizens have is scant and cross-cutting. The decisions are taken by the state governments in the committee and in the council of ministers, in the two institutions in which we Europeans have not voted.
Most “Europeanist” politicians demand more sovereignty from states when more Europe demands it, and to the extent that they are democratic, by calling for more Europe to demand less democracy and to move away from the decision-making areas of citizenship. This is combined with bureaucracy and a lack of transparency in decision-making and it is well understood how easy it is to impose neoliberal measures. Faced with them, many low-class people who do not receive EU money or privileges, the same people who suffer from a lack of democracy and neo-liberal measures, have shown their indignation by abstaining or voting for eurosceptic parties. In the meantime, many left-wing politicians have been agitated and have not wanted to understand anything about their elitism.