1 00:00:07,170 --> 00:00:12,450 Hello, I'm Timothy Garton Ash, welcome to the Europe Stories podcast. 2 00:00:12,450 --> 00:00:17,190 What the young Europeans want the European Union to do and to be. 3 00:00:17,190 --> 00:00:18,480 Over the last three years, 4 00:00:18,480 --> 00:00:27,480 an amazing group of young Europeans have worked with me here at the European Studies Centre at Oxford University to answer this question. 5 00:00:27,480 --> 00:00:30,990 And this podcast will present their findings. 6 00:00:30,990 --> 00:00:53,690 Host Anna Mackintosh and Lucas say have a series of conversations with the authors of our concluding report and give you their answers. 7 00:00:53,690 --> 00:01:00,470 Know. Hi, Lucas. So we're talking about young Europeans today. 8 00:01:00,470 --> 00:01:07,760 And I just thought back on one of the things I learnt very soon after we started working on this podcast, 9 00:01:07,760 --> 00:01:14,980 which is that one side of your family is from the Azores, which are sort of violence. 10 00:01:14,980 --> 00:01:20,860 Pretty deep into the Atlantic Ocean, and that just makes me think of how Big Europe is. 11 00:01:20,860 --> 00:01:27,130 Young Europeans or Europeans of any age actually come from such different parts, 12 00:01:27,130 --> 00:01:35,260 different places, climates, cuisines, beliefs, and I just thought to ask you, 13 00:01:35,260 --> 00:01:46,780 do you think having that family connexion to a peripheral part of Europe, the Azores shapes how you think about young Europeans? 14 00:01:46,780 --> 00:01:49,390 That's an interesting and unexpected question, 15 00:01:49,390 --> 00:02:02,710 because I think that my good friends from the Azores don't feel perhaps as European as people I grew up with in Portugal and in Lisbon, 16 00:02:02,710 --> 00:02:11,950 and people who I've met from other parts of Europe. And in fact, I would say something similar for the people I grew up with in Lisbon. 17 00:02:11,950 --> 00:02:15,580 In contrast with people who are from more central parts of Europe, 18 00:02:15,580 --> 00:02:20,020 who had the chance to hop on a train very easily and go to the neighbouring country. 19 00:02:20,020 --> 00:02:23,960 And I say this because in the Azores now more specifically, 20 00:02:23,960 --> 00:02:33,010 it is almost literally exactly in the middle of the Atlantic between the United States and continental Europe. 21 00:02:33,010 --> 00:02:39,460 And that means that actually many exonerations have more contact with the United States 22 00:02:39,460 --> 00:02:44,980 and actually have family that immigrated to the United States during the dictatorship. 23 00:02:44,980 --> 00:02:57,430 What perhaps I can say in answer to your question is that despite the fact that this generation grew up interconnected with common references, 24 00:02:57,430 --> 00:03:06,970 cultural references in Portugal, my generation tends to be quite fluent in English as opposed to their parents' generation. 25 00:03:06,970 --> 00:03:10,930 So there is a sense of connexion on the one hand, but on the other hand, 26 00:03:10,930 --> 00:03:16,780 being in that part of the world, I think it's partly because they're growing up on an island, 27 00:03:16,780 --> 00:03:26,470 but also partly because of the distance and how remote it feels to be there that that still has an impact on how they relate to the rest of Europe. 28 00:03:26,470 --> 00:03:31,460 That's really interesting. And that got straight to so many of the themes that were. 29 00:03:31,460 --> 00:03:38,360 Working with in this report, and so really great to hear your own reflection on that. 30 00:03:38,360 --> 00:03:48,820 So I have one for you in return. How did you think of young Europeans before working on this project? 31 00:03:48,820 --> 00:04:00,520 I guess I should start with where I'm living right now, which is in Oxford, in the UK, and that definitely shapes how I see young Europeans. 32 00:04:00,520 --> 00:04:11,170 I moved here in the middle of the Brexit negotiations and I came with a lot of interest in Europe and in young Europeans, 33 00:04:11,170 --> 00:04:21,400 but very quickly had to grapple with some of the questions in Britain about British identity and European identity and how they converge, 34 00:04:21,400 --> 00:04:31,750 as well as diverge. And I think probably looking back, there always have been a set of experiences growing up, mostly outside of Europe. 35 00:04:31,750 --> 00:04:40,840 First in Hong Kong and then living in the US and travelling to parts of Europe that are more marginal. 36 00:04:40,840 --> 00:04:48,850 For example, I think one of my formative experiences in thinking about young Europeans probably is spending two weeks in the 37 00:04:48,850 --> 00:05:00,400 Ukraine and talking to two young journalists there about their experience reporting the events at the Maidan. 38 00:05:00,400 --> 00:05:07,240 So I think that sense of in between this and peripheral in this probably is something that's always 39 00:05:07,240 --> 00:05:14,530 shaped my understanding of Europe and that who's in and who's out is always an open question, 40 00:05:14,530 --> 00:05:26,380 depending on who you ask and what question you're asking. So the chapter that this episode is about is the first chapter of our Europe Stories report, 41 00:05:26,380 --> 00:05:34,300 which is called a young European speak to the EU and was co-written by our colleagues, Mave and Dan. 42 00:05:34,300 --> 00:05:41,170 So Dan is currently studying for a DPhil in sociology at Nuffield College in Oxford, 43 00:05:41,170 --> 00:05:50,260 and he specialises in changing patterns of voting behaviour and attitudes in the British electorate over time. 44 00:05:50,260 --> 00:05:55,900 And he's an enthusiast for quantitative methods and polling methodology. 45 00:05:55,900 --> 00:06:03,580 So our other guest today has a very strong interest in migration. 46 00:06:03,580 --> 00:06:11,110 Her name is Mave, and she has been in Oxford working on graduate studies in migration. 47 00:06:11,110 --> 00:06:21,640 And she actually joined us this time from Denver, where she is now training in law school. 48 00:06:21,640 --> 00:06:30,010 So great to have both done and maybe here today, and maybe we're going to start a little bit with your backgrounds and what brought 49 00:06:30,010 --> 00:06:35,140 you in your work in research to this question of who are young Europeans? 50 00:06:35,140 --> 00:06:44,620 I can take that one if I think back to when I first joined the project, which was in January of 2019, 51 00:06:44,620 --> 00:06:49,630 and it was very much in its early stages and questions are still being formed and the ideas were there. 52 00:06:49,630 --> 00:06:56,460 But obviously of the specific research plan wasn't necessarily in the form that it is now. 53 00:06:56,460 --> 00:06:59,200 And the Darren Knauff conference. 54 00:06:59,200 --> 00:07:05,020 So that would be May a few months later during that conference, this idea of these formative moments came up, I think, 55 00:07:05,020 --> 00:07:09,340 through a Napoleon quote that Anna may remember I don't, 56 00:07:09,340 --> 00:07:14,770 but kind of something along the lines of what was the world like when you were 20 years old or something? 57 00:07:14,770 --> 00:07:19,930 So there's this quote that's attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, but we could not confirm that. 58 00:07:19,930 --> 00:07:30,430 It, in fact, is I goes something like, you can really know what a man is like if you know what the world was like when he was 20 years old. 59 00:07:30,430 --> 00:07:38,740 So there's this idea of basically the generation you belong to having these formative moments that then define how they see the world, 60 00:07:38,740 --> 00:07:43,660 and that ignited our curiosity about this generation. Perfect. 61 00:07:43,660 --> 00:07:50,170 Yes. So that quote precisely, I think, sparks this notion of formative moment, best, worst, 62 00:07:50,170 --> 00:07:55,960 etc. These kind of main questions that we've been asking interviewees ever since that May 2019 conference. 63 00:07:55,960 --> 00:08:01,570 And of course, you never know when you're starting a research project, how people will respond, which is, you know, 64 00:08:01,570 --> 00:08:08,380 part of the excitement and beauty of research, but also part of the the uncertainty that you may not get interesting answers, 65 00:08:08,380 --> 00:08:13,060 but I think we were all thrilled to find out that after that first summer of interviews, 66 00:08:13,060 --> 00:08:21,760 we really did get a very solid notion of young Europeans and this young generation in Europe just by asking these very simple questions. 67 00:08:21,760 --> 00:08:25,810 So I think for me, my research was rooted in migration, 68 00:08:25,810 --> 00:08:31,420 and what drew me to the project was freedom of movement and freedom of travel in the EU and obviously 69 00:08:31,420 --> 00:08:36,220 freedom of movement and travel for EU citizens and certain other people with particular privileges. 70 00:08:36,220 --> 00:08:44,230 So that sort of drew me in and then subsequently became quite a significant theme as those who have read the report will see. 71 00:08:44,230 --> 00:08:50,770 So it was really interesting to see how that evolved over time and became the most salient and popular 72 00:08:50,770 --> 00:08:57,940 answer to our question of what the single best thing the EU has done for you personally is almost everyone. 73 00:08:57,940 --> 00:09:04,810 I think our our statistic is somewhere in 60 or 70 percent of people talk about freedom of movement or freedom of travel. 74 00:09:04,810 --> 00:09:10,840 So anyway, I think it was heartening to see that these very simple initial questions more than 75 00:09:10,840 --> 00:09:16,590 two years ago now have led to some really interesting findings on young Europeans. 76 00:09:16,590 --> 00:09:22,300 Dan, tell us a little bit about your background. So what were you studying when you joined the project? 77 00:09:22,300 --> 00:09:27,400 How did you come to write about this particular chapter? Yes. 78 00:09:27,400 --> 00:09:34,300 So I'm joining from Oxford and I'm studying for a defensive ideology. 79 00:09:34,300 --> 00:09:43,630 So I do like a lot of polling research, so I've been working with lots of survey data trying to understand kind of attitudes. 80 00:09:43,630 --> 00:09:45,400 And some of my stuff is also on Europe. 81 00:09:45,400 --> 00:09:55,800 As also, I've done a bit about Brexit, trying to understand some of the reasons behind so many British people voting to leave the European Union. 82 00:09:55,800 --> 00:10:03,370 And I actually joined the project initially just to help a little bit with some of the polling, and then I was asked to kind of take it on. 83 00:10:03,370 --> 00:10:09,790 And I think it's a really interesting project. I find the polling given my background to be really interesting to me as well, 84 00:10:09,790 --> 00:10:19,360 because we're asking 13000 people across Europe 10 questions every few months then that four times now. 85 00:10:19,360 --> 00:10:22,420 And so it gives you a really good insight into the state of public opinion. 86 00:10:22,420 --> 00:10:28,610 And we get to ask some really interesting questions and through some of the stuff that doesn't often get asked. 87 00:10:28,610 --> 00:10:35,380 And the young European chapter in particular does a lot of the stuff that we've polled about. 88 00:10:35,380 --> 00:10:44,740 We split into age categories to have a look at how Europeans differ in their views according to their age, 89 00:10:44,740 --> 00:10:50,260 and linked to that, whether there's maybe some sort of generational effect. 90 00:10:50,260 --> 00:10:56,080 Our interviews with Europeans from different generations are essential component of the Europe Stories project. 91 00:10:56,080 --> 00:11:00,670 You can explore their answers about their formative, best and worst moments on our website. 92 00:11:00,670 --> 00:11:07,930 European Moments Dotcom Several of those moments mentioned throughout this episode are linked in the description. 93 00:11:07,930 --> 00:11:13,660 So what makes young Europeans different from other generations in Europe? 94 00:11:13,660 --> 00:11:18,140 How do you differentiate this generation from others? 95 00:11:18,140 --> 00:11:22,310 I think something that I've noticed through the interviews. 96 00:11:22,310 --> 00:11:29,090 Which I suppose might be a cliche answer, is just the degree of connexion that young Europeans have, 97 00:11:29,090 --> 00:11:36,170 regardless of whether or not they have partaken in Erasmus or living and working in another country. 98 00:11:36,170 --> 00:11:42,530 I think what we've found in our interviews is that those who lived during that period of divided Europe 99 00:11:42,530 --> 00:11:48,530 and experienced 1989 in the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification and all those things for them, 100 00:11:48,530 --> 00:11:53,090 the idea of crossing borders without a passport was revolutionary. 101 00:11:53,090 --> 00:11:58,430 It was huge. There are so many interviewees who were born, you know, 50, 60, 70 years that say, Gosh, 102 00:11:58,430 --> 00:12:05,240 it was amazing when we could go from Spain to France and not wait for four hours at the border. 103 00:12:05,240 --> 00:12:10,640 Whereas if you speak to interviewees born 90s early 2000s, that's just an assumption. 104 00:12:10,640 --> 00:12:11,630 Of course you can travel. 105 00:12:11,630 --> 00:12:19,820 Interestingly, I remember you'll remember this on it, too at the conference that we did in Berlin and November of 2019, just before the pandemic. 106 00:12:19,820 --> 00:12:21,800 In retrospect, really interesting time, 107 00:12:21,800 --> 00:12:28,040 we were talking about roaming charges and someone in the summer interviews had said that her best European moment 108 00:12:28,040 --> 00:12:34,160 was the fact that there's free roaming and you don't have to pay additional fees to go to another country. 109 00:12:34,160 --> 00:12:41,450 Whereas other people had said the end of World War Two or a Schengen agreement or Treaty of Maastricht multiple different things. 110 00:12:41,450 --> 00:12:46,580 And someone at the Berlin conference who I think he was born maybe 70s or 80s, said, How can you say that? 111 00:12:46,580 --> 00:12:50,840 How can you say that roaming is the best moment in recent European history? 112 00:12:50,840 --> 00:12:58,310 And some of the younger folks, this person was by no means old, but the maybe millennial and Gen Z folks kind of said, Well, you know, this is huge. 113 00:12:58,310 --> 00:13:04,790 Like if I had to pay every time I crossed the border, it would be such a nuisance it would really alter my experience of Europe. 114 00:13:04,790 --> 00:13:09,650 So I think for young Europeans, this degree of connexion and ease, to be honest, 115 00:13:09,650 --> 00:13:14,810 and I don't know that their resentment from older Europeans towards younger people, that it is easier for them. 116 00:13:14,810 --> 00:13:20,970 I don't think so. We haven't really found a lot of that in our interviews, but I think they really feel. 117 00:13:20,970 --> 00:13:25,030 European in the sense that they can just travel and move with such ease. 118 00:13:25,030 --> 00:13:29,220 So I think it's that degree of connexion. 119 00:13:29,220 --> 00:13:35,850 I've had many formative European moments having travelled throughout my life in Europe, but a key one, of course, was writing. 120 00:13:35,850 --> 00:13:44,370 When I started travelling, I started to see Europe as a whole to travel abroad using only my idea do something unprecedented. 121 00:13:44,370 --> 00:13:49,440 Still, in the modern world, lots of really vivid memories of those first few experiences, 122 00:13:49,440 --> 00:13:58,460 you know, coming to realise how small the world is, but also how big the world is. 123 00:13:58,460 --> 00:13:59,840 So just to clarify, 124 00:13:59,840 --> 00:14:07,790 what are the age brackets that we are using when we're speaking of young Europeans as opposed to middle Europeans and older Europeans? 125 00:14:07,790 --> 00:14:12,410 It's a surprisingly tricky question actually is how do you divide between the age groups? 126 00:14:12,410 --> 00:14:20,780 So the kind of the standard in access to audience that seems to be somewhat arbitrary and you just kind of split them in five attempts? 127 00:14:20,780 --> 00:14:28,580 But what we did here is we define them by basically what made was talking about there by 128 00:14:28,580 --> 00:14:33,740 trying to group them into the sort of generations who would have shared experiences. 129 00:14:33,740 --> 00:14:41,150 And so we've got 16 to 20 nine year olds is the young category and then 70 to 49 130 00:14:41,150 --> 00:14:46,190 is the middle middle age category and then 50 to 60 nine is the older category. 131 00:14:46,190 --> 00:14:50,350 I say 69 because in the polling data that's available, so you don't have it in the interview. 132 00:14:50,350 --> 00:14:59,570 Obviously, it's just upwards of 50. And we've done that sort of the 16 29 has done so that we're trying to kind of capture the group 133 00:14:59,570 --> 00:15:05,630 who aren't quite old enough to really have the Berlin Wall as their formative experience. 134 00:15:05,630 --> 00:15:09,260 And that's the group that we're trying to understand when we say about young 135 00:15:09,260 --> 00:15:14,780 Europeans and exactly as many of our data suggests that basically this group, 136 00:15:14,780 --> 00:15:24,620 they don't have one formative moment that they can remember as a collective, but rather lots of kind of individual personal conveniences. 137 00:15:24,620 --> 00:15:29,960 And I think it's easy to dismiss that and say, well, you could less time at the airport. 138 00:15:29,960 --> 00:15:37,850 It doesn't matter. But it the other way of thinking about it is if you have like an amazing trip around Europe or if you've gone on Erasmus, 139 00:15:37,850 --> 00:15:44,960 the three months or all of these things that are really most experienced by our generation now. 140 00:15:44,960 --> 00:15:50,010 Those could be really formative in your own life and change how you think about Europe. 141 00:15:50,010 --> 00:15:56,750 And so, yeah, that's how we define them. So the roaming charges can come across as a very superficial concern, 142 00:15:56,750 --> 00:16:06,170 but I think it speaks to a very tangible experience of moving in this continent and having 143 00:16:06,170 --> 00:16:11,270 our experience be in the continent as as opposed to just specifically in your country, 144 00:16:11,270 --> 00:16:16,160 with your own language, with people, with the traditions that you come from. 145 00:16:16,160 --> 00:16:21,710 And so feeling having this cosmopolitan experience seems to define this generation very clearly, 146 00:16:21,710 --> 00:16:28,840 as we will discuss throughout our conversations today. 147 00:16:28,840 --> 00:16:36,670 A good example of this is Anthony, a Polish communications consultant who was in Belgium at the time we interviewed him. 148 00:16:36,670 --> 00:16:41,890 Listen to what he had to say when asked how he personally benefited from the EU. 149 00:16:41,890 --> 00:16:52,000 I think that the most important thing that the EU has done for me is giving me the ability to work and live in different countries very easily. 150 00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:59,020 That meant that I was very easily able to get a degree in the UK and move there, 151 00:16:59,020 --> 00:17:11,490 which opened up so many opportunities for me academically and professionally that I wouldn't have had otherwise. 152 00:17:11,490 --> 00:17:22,470 So I've got another slightly tricky question, which has to do with the age period and cohort model that we're using, 153 00:17:22,470 --> 00:17:31,020 at least as an inspiration for some of the analysis. So just to be frank, before working on this report, I had never heard of this model. 154 00:17:31,020 --> 00:17:40,920 And I suppose we're employing it to try to make some sense of the different variables and processes that are shaping young Europeans experiences. 155 00:17:40,920 --> 00:17:48,880 Can we just get a basic introduction to what this model is and what we're trying to do to this aggregate these factors? 156 00:17:48,880 --> 00:17:59,320 Yes, sir. So the age period kind of model comes from demography, and it's also often referred to as the APC problem. 157 00:17:59,320 --> 00:18:06,430 The three different ways you can see differences between age groups over time. 158 00:18:06,430 --> 00:18:12,520 And there are three possible ways in which opinions can change over time. 159 00:18:12,520 --> 00:18:17,260 So the first and the simplest is just it's called a period effect, 160 00:18:17,260 --> 00:18:23,860 and it basically means that in a specific period of time, everyone might change their opinion by a little bit. 161 00:18:23,860 --> 00:18:28,420 So maybe everyone becomes a bit left wing and over time. 162 00:18:28,420 --> 00:18:30,320 And I think that you can definitely see this. 163 00:18:30,320 --> 00:18:39,200 So you see, like every single person in Britain today on average, is a bit more liberal than they would have been in 1950. 164 00:18:39,200 --> 00:18:47,170 Second thing you can have and you can have an age effect, and so over the course of your life, your opinions can change. 165 00:18:47,170 --> 00:18:52,120 So this would be kind of the classic idea that you become more conservative as you get older. 166 00:18:52,120 --> 00:18:59,110 And then the third possible option is a cohort effect. And this is the one that I think a lot of people most interested in, which is the idea. 167 00:18:59,110 --> 00:19:03,820 And this limits to what was said earlier about defining a generation that your 168 00:19:03,820 --> 00:19:08,650 cohort is obviously the people who were born around the same time as you, 169 00:19:08,650 --> 00:19:12,640 that you might all share something that you carry through for your life. 170 00:19:12,640 --> 00:19:17,440 And so you might think that if you're in the cohort that grew up and then we're coming 171 00:19:17,440 --> 00:19:23,590 of age at the time of the Berlin Wall that might shape your attitudes for life. 172 00:19:23,590 --> 00:19:34,030 And so it's I call it a problem. It can be a problem because it's actually surprisingly difficult to disentangle these because what you 173 00:19:34,030 --> 00:19:41,050 can end up with is maybe an age and a period effect can actually look like a cohort effect in the data, 174 00:19:41,050 --> 00:19:47,710 but we're not convinced that too much. I think we use them, at least in this report and in our chapter, 175 00:19:47,710 --> 00:19:55,630 more to try and like we don't try and disentangle them in the sense of statistically pulling these apart, 176 00:19:55,630 --> 00:19:59,860 but rather as ideas for what could be happening. 177 00:19:59,860 --> 00:20:09,190 And so when we find, for example, the across the board, everyone seems to be pretty concerned about climate change, 178 00:20:09,190 --> 00:20:14,020 we're describing that is more of a period effect in the sense that it's clearly not just the case, 179 00:20:14,020 --> 00:20:17,830 that young people are being socialised to be concerned about it, 180 00:20:17,830 --> 00:20:22,870 but rather this seems to have been a shift in the last 50 years towards some serious 181 00:20:22,870 --> 00:20:27,790 concern about climate change and towards privatisation of tackling climate change. 182 00:20:27,790 --> 00:20:35,020 And so that can't just be explained by a simple change as you get older or change because your generation, 183 00:20:35,020 --> 00:20:37,090 but that's something that's happening across the board. 184 00:20:37,090 --> 00:20:44,740 When we look at something like the freedom of movement and the fact that young people are much more likely to have benefited, 185 00:20:44,740 --> 00:20:48,310 I mean, we can't say yet whether that's an age or a cohort effect, 186 00:20:48,310 --> 00:20:54,430 but we can say that it's one of those because it's not across the board and that maybe 50 years from now, 187 00:20:54,430 --> 00:20:59,890 we'll see that young people look more like our older generations do now. 188 00:20:59,890 --> 00:21:04,630 Or maybe they'll actually carry that with them as a cohort effect and will actually be defined by 189 00:21:04,630 --> 00:21:11,560 freedom of movement and their relationship to the EU will be defined by their experiences now and then. 190 00:21:11,560 --> 00:21:19,780 One final example could be COVID pandemic, and we talk a bit about this in the chapter as well that it does seem to have affected different 191 00:21:19,780 --> 00:21:26,990 generations differently by its very nature and by the response that governments have offered. 192 00:21:26,990 --> 00:21:30,300 It affects you differently based on the stage of life, you ask. 193 00:21:30,300 --> 00:21:38,560 So if you're already retired, the whole concern about the loss of income is going to be a lot less than if you're maybe a middle aged adult. 194 00:21:38,560 --> 00:21:43,960 If you're just starting out as a student, you might just have lost a lot of experience at university. 195 00:21:43,960 --> 00:21:47,710 There are also the health effects of COVID and massively specified by age. 196 00:21:47,710 --> 00:21:52,690 And so we we wonder, and this is really not going to become clear for a while, 197 00:21:52,690 --> 00:21:58,930 but we do wonder whether this will have some generational effects that we're going to see going forward a decade from now, 198 00:21:58,930 --> 00:22:04,540 a few decades from now and how different generations think about the EU? That's wonderfully clear. 199 00:22:04,540 --> 00:22:07,710 Thanks. Then I'm already learning things early on in our conversation. 200 00:22:07,710 --> 00:22:16,450 Let's get a quick question on your own response to kind of applying the APC model to 201 00:22:16,450 --> 00:22:24,400 our findings and whether there were specific suggestions coming out of our interviews 202 00:22:24,400 --> 00:22:29,350 in our polls that surprised you in terms of assumptions about the relative weight of 203 00:22:29,350 --> 00:22:37,220 these three factors that might not actually appear on the surface as they actually are. 204 00:22:37,220 --> 00:22:41,950 It may be just because I'm not familiar with climate change data is debut the phone's data, 205 00:22:41,950 --> 00:22:47,560 but I was really quite surprised by how many of the older generations seemed actually to be 206 00:22:47,560 --> 00:22:54,100 quite in line with the younger generations and recognising that climate change is a threat. 207 00:22:54,100 --> 00:23:00,640 But also the thing I really found surprising with some of the questions where we tried to probe sacrifices and we tried to say, 208 00:23:00,640 --> 00:23:06,760 you know, would you be willing to have a ban on short haul flights or something like that? 209 00:23:06,760 --> 00:23:11,260 And you still get like really quite surprising levels of support from people who are 50 and over? 210 00:23:11,260 --> 00:23:18,430 And I think that this somewhat contradicts the narrative that you sometimes see in the media that this is sort of a young person's, 211 00:23:18,430 --> 00:23:22,060 you know, it's just these kind of millennials who are following Greta Thunberg. 212 00:23:22,060 --> 00:23:24,640 I think that actually, if you look at the data, I mean, 213 00:23:24,640 --> 00:23:28,870 it is true there are some generational differences and young people are sometimes more concerned, 214 00:23:28,870 --> 00:23:33,370 but it's really not as stratified by age as I thought it would have been. 215 00:23:33,370 --> 00:23:38,610 I would say similar strands come out of our interviews. I was just looking at our statistics, so we've. 216 00:23:38,610 --> 00:23:44,580 On over 200 interviews since we started in May of 2019 and 29 percent, 217 00:23:44,580 --> 00:23:52,620 almost a third of the interviewees lists climate policy or climate action as kind of their main priority for Europe in 2030. 218 00:23:52,620 --> 00:23:58,290 And just as Dan has spoken about in the opinion polls, but similar in the interviews. 219 00:23:58,290 --> 00:24:04,770 So regardless of age, everyone is concerned about this. And I mean, you know, just a few days ago, we're in mid-August here. 220 00:24:04,770 --> 00:24:07,260 So whenever this podcast is published, but early August, 221 00:24:07,260 --> 00:24:15,840 the IPCC report that was released that once again drives home that climate change is a huge, huge issue that is driven by humans. 222 00:24:15,840 --> 00:24:23,340 And you know, things need to be done to use passive voice and young Europeans want to know who is going to do those things. 223 00:24:23,340 --> 00:24:27,690 But I think also it's Dave has mentioned middle aged and older Europeans also want to know. 224 00:24:27,690 --> 00:24:31,680 So I think people that are considered, quote unquote middle aged or old now, 225 00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:37,290 they were the ones in the 60s and 70s that were changing so many aspects of our society. 226 00:24:37,290 --> 00:24:41,730 So I do think Dan makes a really good point that in the media, you know, that's not typically talked about. 227 00:24:41,730 --> 00:24:46,370 I think the young get this reputation of activism, but I think that. 228 00:24:46,370 --> 00:24:49,520 A lot of middle aged and older people, particularly in Europe, 229 00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:54,290 are very concerned about climate change and I think also about, you know, keeping the EU together. 230 00:24:54,290 --> 00:25:06,810 So I think it'll be interesting to see how those things evolve as we continue in the pandemic world and hopefully eventually post-pandemic world. 231 00:25:06,810 --> 00:25:12,300 Yes, hopefully a very close post-pandemic world. 232 00:25:12,300 --> 00:25:20,070 Yeah. The point about activism in different generations, actually so nicely into the next question I have for you. 233 00:25:20,070 --> 00:25:29,400 It's kind of also goes back to something that maybe has already touched on, which is the formative moment differences between generations. 234 00:25:29,400 --> 00:25:37,050 So there seems to be a period effect that helps define older generations prior to 1989. 235 00:25:37,050 --> 00:25:44,680 And then the definition of the younger generations experience is much more based on the cohort effect, the personal experiences they have growing up. 236 00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:46,870 Did this surprise you in any way? 237 00:25:46,870 --> 00:25:53,130 For instance, did you expect that something like the financial crisis would have been more formative for this generation? 238 00:25:53,130 --> 00:26:00,900 I think particularly with our interviews. I was frankly shocked that the financial crisis didn't come into play more. 239 00:26:00,900 --> 00:26:05,370 And I think obviously, you know, that can speak to to some of the weaknesses in our research, 240 00:26:05,370 --> 00:26:10,090 which obviously this selection of interviewees is by no means a representative sample. 241 00:26:10,090 --> 00:26:14,850 You know, it's 200 people that are predominantly highly educated, pro-EU. 242 00:26:14,850 --> 00:26:17,280 That's obviously a very specific subset of society. 243 00:26:17,280 --> 00:26:23,310 So I think that's a really important thing to to keep in mind when reading the report and when thinking about the research findings. 244 00:26:23,310 --> 00:26:32,370 But I think it's interesting to see over time, you know, three years ago, would the financial crisis have been more of a salient moment? 245 00:26:32,370 --> 00:26:37,140 But now that the pandemic has created this other financial crisis, do people talk about that more? 246 00:26:37,140 --> 00:26:42,870 Interestingly, COVID has been listed for us as a formative moment, a best moment and worst moment. 247 00:26:42,870 --> 00:26:49,230 I think everyone has a different perspective on it, which goes back to Dan's point about how COVID will be perceived. 248 00:26:49,230 --> 00:26:55,860 And indeed, a demographer who spoke with us on a webinar, John Dowd talks about how uncertain it is. 249 00:26:55,860 --> 00:27:00,900 You know, how will COVID impacts different groups, different generations, different slices of life? 250 00:27:00,900 --> 00:27:04,260 Again, this notion that we briefly talk about in our chapter, I think, 251 00:27:04,260 --> 00:27:10,020 but people will say it's the best moment because it brought everyone to attention and we realised, 252 00:27:10,020 --> 00:27:15,750 you know, how many privileges we have and how, you know, solidarity can can really come into play someone. 253 00:27:15,750 --> 00:27:22,110 I think it was a Portuguese law professor that you may be interviewed said despite all the problems, the vaccine rollout was incredible. 254 00:27:22,110 --> 00:27:28,770 You know, they made this vaccine to deal with this virus in a very short period of time in comparison with other places. 255 00:27:28,770 --> 00:27:33,930 And even though obviously you had all kinds of problems, what would it have looked like if it were national governments managing that? 256 00:27:33,930 --> 00:27:36,930 You know, would it have been even worse? Who's to know? 257 00:27:36,930 --> 00:27:42,150 Right, we can't predict these things, but I think on the other hand, people obviously mentioned COVID as a worst moment. 258 00:27:42,150 --> 00:27:50,910 I think it echoed a lot of the financial crisis with Italy and then later on Spain in the early days of the pandemic, suffering disproportionately. 259 00:27:50,910 --> 00:27:56,160 And I think some people viewed the EU's response to that as lacklustre. 260 00:27:56,160 --> 00:28:02,370 It's been interesting to see different elements coming out. And you know, we've done these interviews over two years. 261 00:28:02,370 --> 00:28:05,160 Obviously, in May of 2019, we're not talking about COVID. 262 00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:16,940 So seeing how answers have evolved, even just in the time that we've done the interviews, it's particularly interesting. 263 00:28:16,940 --> 00:28:21,800 That law professor who may've was referring to is Miguel Politis Maduro, 264 00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:29,420 a former minister for regional development in Portugal and former advocate general at the European Court of Justice. 265 00:28:29,420 --> 00:28:34,070 We interviewed him during the second wave of the pandemic in early 2021. 266 00:28:34,070 --> 00:28:37,040 Here is his comment on the vaccine rollout in Europe. 267 00:28:37,040 --> 00:28:47,840 With all the difficulties, with all the time delay, the answer that the European Union has been able to provide to the pandemic. 268 00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:55,430 If you think about the European Union has no competence in the health area and still it has managed to 269 00:28:55,430 --> 00:29:03,890 provide vaccines and to support its member states in acquiring vaccines and to do it in a way that is fair, 270 00:29:03,890 --> 00:29:07,820 balanced and is equal to all the member states. 271 00:29:07,820 --> 00:29:15,350 We are having more access and more easier access because of the European Union, and we are being more equal, 272 00:29:15,350 --> 00:29:29,270 balanced and fair accidents to citizens in all member states because we have the European Union. 273 00:29:29,270 --> 00:29:40,190 Then were you surprised by the fact that what defined this generation ended up being much more personal experiences than actually a period effect? 274 00:29:40,190 --> 00:29:45,950 I don't find it that surprising because as swear, there's two parts to it. 275 00:29:45,950 --> 00:29:51,650 One is whether because you have to distinguish between informative and worst moments. 276 00:29:51,650 --> 00:30:01,250 I mean, we ask both of those questions in interviews. And so it would be quite a bleak response to suggest that your formative moment 277 00:30:01,250 --> 00:30:05,570 in the European Union was like the near collapse of the economic sector. 278 00:30:05,570 --> 00:30:18,230 So I think for me, if you remove the bad stuff that hit all of Europe, there's not really a sort of fall of the Berlin Wall moment for our generation. 279 00:30:18,230 --> 00:30:23,960 It's just lots of small or large conveniences. 280 00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:28,700 And even with something like the financial crisis. 281 00:30:28,700 --> 00:30:35,210 Your experience is quite country level, same with COVID, I mean, the restrictions vary between countries. 282 00:30:35,210 --> 00:30:40,490 The vaccine rates also varied even though the procurement programme was EU wide. 283 00:30:40,490 --> 00:30:44,900 And so I suppose it's maybe a surprise when the face of it, when you really think about it. 284 00:30:44,900 --> 00:30:54,230 What else could that be? I mean, if climate change, if it was a real concerted effort by the EU, I could completely see that being a formative moment. 285 00:30:54,230 --> 00:31:04,520 But yeah, I think the next big, formative moment that hit everyone across a generation is maybe yet to come. 286 00:31:04,520 --> 00:31:08,360 And just one last question about how we define this generation. 287 00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:14,630 Did it surprise you at all? Or how do you explain that this seems to be the first generation that has 288 00:31:14,630 --> 00:31:21,590 formative moments is more defining than collective and historical experiences? 289 00:31:21,590 --> 00:31:29,240 I think that in the sense of a collective experience, if you think about that generation that did experience 1989, 290 00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:31,820 and I'm sure that people would would argue with me on this, 291 00:31:31,820 --> 00:31:43,430 which is obviously welcome, but you know, is there anything in the past 30 years on an international or at least EU level that had the same impact? 292 00:31:43,430 --> 00:31:50,870 I would personally argue that, probably not. And maybe that's because I'm biased by these interviews that we've had and that I've listened to. 293 00:31:50,870 --> 00:31:56,450 But I think that if you look at the timing of that in the 90s was when all of the Erasmus programmes 294 00:31:56,450 --> 00:32:01,310 really gained traction and people began to take advantage of freedom of movement and free travel. 295 00:32:01,310 --> 00:32:06,620 So I think even just a historic sense or in a historic sense, pardon me, 296 00:32:06,620 --> 00:32:13,430 it really makes sense that about 34 percent around a third similar to the climate question 297 00:32:13,430 --> 00:32:21,110 less travel or Erasmus as their formative moment on the front in the fall of the Berlin Wall, 298 00:32:21,110 --> 00:32:29,840 comes in after that at a much lower. I think that's from 10 percent of people list that, but I think that if you think about the past 30 years, 299 00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:38,420 it's hard to identify such a drastic and common historic moment where so many people have been able to partake in travel and Erasmus. 300 00:32:38,420 --> 00:32:42,920 And maybe that's the comment about the EU being able to democratise travel. 301 00:32:42,920 --> 00:32:48,620 Not to say that it's accessible to everyone, but I think Erasmus made it accessible to so many more people, 302 00:32:48,620 --> 00:32:54,020 whereas if you didn't exist, you'd be paying exorbitant fees to study in other countries. 303 00:32:54,020 --> 00:32:58,550 And I think people are realising that now, obviously with Brexit, we've had a lot of interviewees talk about that. 304 00:32:58,550 --> 00:33:06,890 So I think it is helpful to think about it also in a historic sense, if you think about the timeline of the past few years and sadly, 305 00:33:06,890 --> 00:33:16,340 I think it would be so beautiful if COVID had a November 1989 moment when everyone finally could take a deep breath and say, Oh my gosh, this is over. 306 00:33:16,340 --> 00:33:20,940 But obviously, as we're seeing now, that that is very unlikely to happen. 307 00:33:20,940 --> 00:33:26,150 And also, I think we are something like, have you personally benefited from free movement? 308 00:33:26,150 --> 00:33:36,790 And it was something like over 50 percent of people who are over 50 said no and then uses the young think the young people with something like 20, 309 00:33:36,790 --> 00:33:41,390 30 percent or something said no. And there's two readings of that. 310 00:33:41,390 --> 00:33:48,620 One reading is that older people just haven't had the chance to benefit, and I think that's probably feeding into that. 311 00:33:48,620 --> 00:33:56,390 Partly, as you've mentioned, Erasmus also just better off today than we were 40 years ago. 312 00:33:56,390 --> 00:34:04,400 So, you know, getting on a plane and going to Spain or something, is it more feasible for more young people? 313 00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:08,030 Speaking countries are going to have to fight to keep it and that sort of thing. 314 00:34:08,030 --> 00:34:16,280 But the second part of that is whether there's maybe also just like the older people have benefited but just haven't realised it because, you know, 315 00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:20,120 it's kind of crazy that if you are like 55 and living in Europe, 316 00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:25,670 if you haven't benefited from a person at all, have you just not travelled in Europe too? 317 00:34:25,670 --> 00:34:29,690 Or do you just not view the ease with which you can do that as a benefit? 318 00:34:29,690 --> 00:34:33,890 Or is it actually that you just didn't even count that as a personal benefit? 319 00:34:33,890 --> 00:34:41,360 And that's just a different threshold? And so that might also feed in to this generational divide. 320 00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:49,280 And maybe also because the ease with which you can travel in Europe has come in gradually and it's changed piece by piece. 321 00:34:49,280 --> 00:34:58,130 If you're older and you've seen what's happening over time, you might not attribute the end product to the freedom of movement within Europe. 322 00:34:58,130 --> 00:35:01,840 But if you're young and you try travelling to the US. 323 00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:09,040 As opposed to just going and studying in a city, in a country next door, the difference is really quite stark. 324 00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:17,140 One thing to add quickly, as well as the and I'm sure they'll speak about this and they do write about it in that freedom of movement chapter. 325 00:35:17,140 --> 00:35:19,790 But the difference between freedom of movement and freedom of travel. 326 00:35:19,790 --> 00:35:26,890 So those that have taken part in being able to go on a city break to Prague for the weekend versus young people that have been 327 00:35:26,890 --> 00:35:34,840 able to work in their industry and a key area of their industry because they're able to work in Brussels or Paris or whatever. 328 00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:44,110 So I think thinking about that for for older people as well that prior to to the freedom of movement, it was incredibly laborious. 329 00:35:44,110 --> 00:35:50,410 And Dan makes an excellent point. I think so many of our interviewees have talked about travel not only with the EU as their formative moment, 330 00:35:50,410 --> 00:35:59,170 but travelling outside of the EU and realising how frustrating it is. 331 00:35:59,170 --> 00:36:05,170 We interviewed Esther Nova, a Hungarian lecturer and a writer, while she was spending a month in Portugal. 332 00:36:05,170 --> 00:36:13,330 Incidentally, Esther perfectly epitomised the sentiment and freedom of movement opening up the borders. 333 00:36:13,330 --> 00:36:21,010 If if you are from a country that has a recollection of closed borders, the Iron Curtain for all these visa requirements, 334 00:36:21,010 --> 00:36:28,780 then you know the difference between having closed borders or open borders, isn't it Washington's zone? 335 00:36:28,780 --> 00:36:33,370 And it's not just about whether your passport gets charged, it's that you're allowed to go. 336 00:36:33,370 --> 00:36:37,690 You have to move somewhere, you're allowed to work there, you're allowed to experience that. 337 00:36:37,690 --> 00:36:51,110 Then you don't have to tell anyone, then report to any authorities and they don't get to harass you. 338 00:36:51,110 --> 00:37:01,420 So I've got a. Reflective question on what we really can say about young Europeans just to 339 00:37:01,420 --> 00:37:07,370 push you both a little bit on this question of the generational differences. 340 00:37:07,370 --> 00:37:12,860 So you begin this chapter with a very well-written, I must say, 341 00:37:12,860 --> 00:37:21,580 historical sweep of the idea of a united Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War and then these epochal events of the Berlin Wall, et cetera. 342 00:37:21,580 --> 00:37:28,830 And I just can't help but wonder how much of this can really only be captured in hindsight. 343 00:37:28,830 --> 00:37:32,310 Even though obviously people were experiencing those events in the moment, 344 00:37:32,310 --> 00:37:40,710 but that sweep really is something that perhaps is best captured 70 years, for example, after the Second World War. 345 00:37:40,710 --> 00:37:47,010 And I wonder when we're discussing the relative weight of collective versus personal experiences, 346 00:37:47,010 --> 00:37:52,890 whether young Europeans might now respond that the personal weighs more heavily. 347 00:37:52,890 --> 00:37:56,280 But perhaps when they are no longer young Europeans, 348 00:37:56,280 --> 00:38:02,550 they will realise that what made them young Europeans was perhaps a shared experience of financial crises and austerity, 349 00:38:02,550 --> 00:38:08,940 or perhaps generations see with COVID. Not that we will be able to figure that out today, 350 00:38:08,940 --> 00:38:14,340 but I'm just wondering what your perspective is on that question of what we can really say 351 00:38:14,340 --> 00:38:18,930 when we are young versus what we know about young people when they are no longer young, 352 00:38:18,930 --> 00:38:23,250 which might be too late? Yeah, no. That's a good question. 353 00:38:23,250 --> 00:38:30,360 I mean, as you say, there's a limit to what we can say because we also don't know what our older generation would have answered. 354 00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:38,790 In 1950, I have a hunch that in 1950, World War Two would have been more on people's minds than personal travel experiences. 355 00:38:38,790 --> 00:38:42,640 I do take the point that our young generation is definitely looking back on it. 356 00:38:42,640 --> 00:38:51,630 That's a bit idealistic if there's a narrative afterwards as well. If a myth grows up about the EU working for their vaccines, I say myth. 357 00:38:51,630 --> 00:38:58,020 I mean, that's true. Don't get me wrong. But if that turns into the narrative that people really imbibe, 358 00:38:58,020 --> 00:39:04,470 I can definitely see that happening with the I push back slightly to the premise because there's 359 00:39:04,470 --> 00:39:08,640 a sort of premise in what you said that if people are just remembering and remembering it, 360 00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:16,920 in hindsight, it doesn't matter. And I think that's not true. I mean, if you have a really proud European and you identify as European, 361 00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:21,150 which like 70 percent of the sample, did a thing great some or maybe even higher. 362 00:39:21,150 --> 00:39:28,560 And if you if that needs you to be supportive of the European Union and its institutions, et cetera, et cetera, 363 00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:34,590 it sort of doesn't matter if that's because you've got a formative moment that you've 364 00:39:34,590 --> 00:39:41,100 thought about the entire time or if that moment has grown up later as part of the narrative. 365 00:39:41,100 --> 00:39:46,470 But my understanding is that one of the motivators behind the whole Europe Stories project was to 366 00:39:46,470 --> 00:39:53,250 try and get the kind of narratives that surround the European Union in a more Bottom-Up approach, 367 00:39:53,250 --> 00:40:00,720 rather than trying to describe what the European Union is asking, how people feel about it. 368 00:40:00,720 --> 00:40:11,280 And so it may well be true that in 1950, World War Two was not fought by the majority as a European moment. 369 00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:15,120 But I wonder how much that makes the difference. Really interesting question, Lucas, 370 00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:19,590 and I think I would bring up the idea of looking back at the past through rose coloured 371 00:40:19,590 --> 00:40:24,540 glasses and remembering perhaps the very best and the very worst of the past, 372 00:40:24,540 --> 00:40:30,150 however many years or in your recent memory or recent European history. As we talk about in these questions and so, 373 00:40:30,150 --> 00:40:39,510 so many people in our interviews talk about either post-World War Two or post 1989 as the time when Europe was peaceful after that, 374 00:40:39,510 --> 00:40:45,300 like, we don't have any memory of any conflicts in Europe. After that was clearly we passed the Yugoslav wars. 375 00:40:45,300 --> 00:40:53,130 We have the troubles in Northern Ireland, like there have been plenty of instances of violence and division, 376 00:40:53,130 --> 00:41:02,330 plenty of instances of, I would say, the exact opposite of peace. 377 00:41:02,330 --> 00:41:11,240 In historic terms, I will say the most important moments for the European Union was the fall of the Berlin Wall, 378 00:41:11,240 --> 00:41:18,590 when the Wall came down and when the challenge was how do we unite the existing western part with the eastern part? 379 00:41:18,590 --> 00:41:28,010 That was for me the moment where Europe really mattered, witnessing those events and seeing young people there my age who had lived in an entirely 380 00:41:28,010 --> 00:41:32,930 different world and had all these aspirations and hopes and were making change. 381 00:41:32,930 --> 00:41:42,300 It was really full of hope to the youth. 382 00:41:42,300 --> 00:41:47,730 Obviously, I think there's a national element to that if you weren't in Northern Ireland in the 60s, 383 00:41:47,730 --> 00:41:54,180 70s, 80s, you may not have cared or known so much about what was going on. 384 00:41:54,180 --> 00:41:58,950 Similar for a lot of other conflicts, if you weren't in that area at that time, social media didn't exist. 385 00:41:58,950 --> 00:42:01,770 We weren't all talking about the same thing at the same time. 386 00:42:01,770 --> 00:42:07,590 But I think that that is an interesting thing to consider when we think about young Europeans now. 387 00:42:07,590 --> 00:42:14,400 So in 20 years, I would argue that Brexit, depending on how that works out, I'm sure in the podcast notes, 388 00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:19,710 we can include the The Darren Dorf lecture from Catherine DeVries and this last May 389 00:42:19,710 --> 00:42:24,330 more she talks about Brexit benchmarking and how will we know what impact Brexit had? 390 00:42:24,330 --> 00:42:31,200 How can we see if they had stayed in? What would it have looked like versus, OK, be left thinking about young Europeans in 20 30 years? 391 00:42:31,200 --> 00:42:33,150 I do think Brexit will be salient, 392 00:42:33,150 --> 00:42:39,120 and I do think that travel will be feeling and I think because if nothing else provides a common thing to talk about. 393 00:42:39,120 --> 00:42:46,620 So if you put a bunch of Europeans in a room in a bar beyond, what's the weather like, you know, what are they going to talk about? 394 00:42:46,620 --> 00:42:52,050 And I think for older Europeans, and I think even in our chapter, we have a quote from a man who talks about, 395 00:42:52,050 --> 00:42:55,530 you know, for my generation, a fall of the Berlin Wall is this huge, huge thing. 396 00:42:55,530 --> 00:43:00,360 And I think if you put a bunch of young Europeans in a room in 20 years, 397 00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:05,490 I do think that they will talk about travel if even during COVID, it was taken away. 398 00:43:05,490 --> 00:43:11,880 So perhaps COVID in a way has brought to light the incredible privilege that Europeans do have in terms of movement. 399 00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:22,050 When all of a sudden borders are closed and you can't go to your hometown in Italy for the weekend from your job in Brussels or Madrid or whatever. 400 00:43:22,050 --> 00:43:27,330 So I think it's interesting to think about how memory works and the politics of memory. 401 00:43:27,330 --> 00:43:29,730 And why do we talk about what we talk about? 402 00:43:29,730 --> 00:43:35,020 Is it because it's in the media or is it because it's written in textbooks more and who are writing those textbooks and those kinds of questions? 403 00:43:35,020 --> 00:43:39,030 I think that'll be interesting to see. How is the history of this moment written? 404 00:43:39,030 --> 00:43:50,610 Who is it written by? And again, what will Europeans talk about in a bar in 20 years? 405 00:43:50,610 --> 00:43:59,880 This is an interesting point. How do we look back on a historical moment versus the experience of living through it when it happens? 406 00:43:59,880 --> 00:44:05,940 Listen to Carl Hines S.A., an Austrian composer and university professor living in Vienna. 407 00:44:05,940 --> 00:44:12,630 Looking back on one of the most formative moments for Europeans who lived through the Cold War in my childhood, 408 00:44:12,630 --> 00:44:18,660 Europe ended its 50 kilometres away from Vienna. 409 00:44:18,660 --> 00:44:24,660 So I had that feeling I was really living at the dream of the world, 410 00:44:24,660 --> 00:44:38,400 and I remember when my father made some excursions with us where he showed us the Iron Curtain and the watchtowers and the soldiers with the guns. 411 00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:46,260 And if it would move too closely towards the border, they would start directing their weapons towards us. 412 00:44:46,260 --> 00:44:54,390 So this was quite scary. And when the Iron Curtain fell in nineteen eighty nine, 413 00:44:54,390 --> 00:45:03,360 you can't remember how relieved there was a feeling that now the road opens and the SS to reach. 414 00:45:03,360 --> 00:45:12,120 It's beyond my horizon that I was not able to visit before. 415 00:45:12,120 --> 00:45:28,830 I think in general, for my generation, I haven't come to this thing because this gave us the promise of a new freedom. 416 00:45:28,830 --> 00:45:36,030 So far, we've talked about how this younger generation of Europeans is defined in terms of their formative moments, 417 00:45:36,030 --> 00:45:43,080 the shared experiences that they have now. I think it's time to move on to what young Europeans want. 418 00:45:43,080 --> 00:45:47,820 And perhaps the question I put to you at this point is how does the experiences 419 00:45:47,820 --> 00:45:54,540 that apparently define this generation influence the causes they care about? 420 00:45:54,540 --> 00:46:00,800 I would say it's definitely true that young Europeans seem to want action on climate change. 421 00:46:00,800 --> 00:46:06,740 It also seems to be true that they want freedom of movement to remain. 422 00:46:06,740 --> 00:46:16,790 And so this is from pre-COVID, so logically we would assume that they'd like it reinstated at some point fairly soon when feasible, 423 00:46:16,790 --> 00:46:21,950 regardless of the climate change puts a specific one on one of the specific age differences. 424 00:46:21,950 --> 00:46:28,790 The specific policies of what would you sacrifice? Tackle climate change is often where you get something more interesting, 425 00:46:28,790 --> 00:46:34,220 because if you just say, should we tackle climate change, you tend to get a lot of yeses. 426 00:46:34,220 --> 00:46:41,840 If you say, would you like us to ban petrol cars in the next 10 years, then you start to get some differences. 427 00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:50,330 Yeah, I think actually the tension between formative moments and hopes and policy priorities for the future is really interesting for us. 428 00:46:50,330 --> 00:46:57,590 I think the intersection of freedom of movement slash free travel, climate change and COVID is really interesting. 429 00:46:57,590 --> 00:47:04,160 So plenty of interviewees lists experiences of travel, Erasmus, et cetera, 430 00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:10,700 as their formative European moment, which we can assume involves some kind of transportation. 431 00:47:10,700 --> 00:47:18,050 Hopefully, it'll be a train. Realistically, it's probably via plane, and it's probably for most a short haul flight. 432 00:47:18,050 --> 00:47:25,760 So I think it's interesting to see for young Europeans, they've had this formative moment that revolves around carbon emissions, unfortunately. 433 00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:34,790 And we do have a number of results on the sacrifices that they're willing to make in terms of eating meat, car usage, et cetera. 434 00:47:34,790 --> 00:47:40,040 And I think COVID comes into that in understanding what the world is like without free movement. 435 00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:47,390 So obviously different experiences. But going from Ireland to France, I don't know what the current regulations are, 436 00:47:47,390 --> 00:47:52,930 but 1970 versus now, it would have been far easier three years ago now. 437 00:47:52,930 --> 00:47:56,630 Do you need to get a negative COVID test? Do you need to quarantine for five days, et cetera, et cetera? 438 00:47:56,630 --> 00:48:01,340 But I think young Europeans want to take action or on climate change, 439 00:48:01,340 --> 00:48:07,740 but we haven't necessarily acknowledged the impacts that we are having on the climate. 440 00:48:07,740 --> 00:48:14,900 Again, I think interviewees talk about how happy they are that they can work in Amsterdam, 441 00:48:14,900 --> 00:48:19,670 even though they're from small town Spain and they can go back and forth and have that opportunity, 442 00:48:19,670 --> 00:48:23,510 but still get to be with their family and then may list the climate as a main priority. 443 00:48:23,510 --> 00:48:27,260 But then you think about the impact of that in terms of carbon emissions. 444 00:48:27,260 --> 00:48:37,670 I'm not sure that we, as young Europeans say for the people who obviously are going to extreme and very admirable measures to address the climate. 445 00:48:37,670 --> 00:48:45,740 But I don't think that we have come to terms with how to deal with that. I think a lot of young Europeans would not be willing to give up a lot of the 446 00:48:45,740 --> 00:48:51,200 privileges that we have that have an incredibly bad impact on the climate. 447 00:48:51,200 --> 00:48:57,920 Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I also I can just add in a couple of just had a quick look and I'd say to listeners, 448 00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:03,620 if this is something that you find interesting about the age difference, this is definitely worth checking out reports. 449 00:49:03,620 --> 00:49:10,340 And as a general rule of thumb, if we've not really talked about age differences, they weren't very big because, 450 00:49:10,340 --> 00:49:13,970 you know, we're really interested in age differences that if there are big age differences, you tend to see it. 451 00:49:13,970 --> 00:49:19,490 And if it's not, normally, that's because there wasn't one, but just a seven and seven examples. 452 00:49:19,490 --> 00:49:28,670 The biggest difference I could find in terms of what people were willing to sacrifice was the vegetarian diets, 453 00:49:28,670 --> 00:49:33,320 as you might expect, but actually quite split by age groups. 454 00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:37,760 And so for people with just much less willing to accept. 455 00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:44,040 I think really something like we do accept vegetarian diets being imposed in schools, the workplace or restaurants. 456 00:49:44,040 --> 00:49:50,270 And over half of the old people were like, No, I had them, which I can sort of see. 457 00:49:50,270 --> 00:49:51,020 But like then, 458 00:49:51,020 --> 00:49:57,560 there were some surprising ones where it's really I just looked up the original graph because I couldn't believe there was no difference. 459 00:49:57,560 --> 00:50:02,340 So when should the EU go carbon neutral? 460 00:50:02,340 --> 00:50:13,990 So 59 percent of young Europeans said no excess emissions by 2030, and 60 percent of all Europeans said no excess emissions by 2030. 461 00:50:13,990 --> 00:50:19,590 So that can not create difference. And that's basically replicated across each of the different options we gave. 462 00:50:19,590 --> 00:50:27,150 And so there's just like real cross generational consensus on this major question. 463 00:50:27,150 --> 00:50:31,210 And like I say, I had to stop because I was pretty sure that would have been the difference. 464 00:50:31,210 --> 00:50:34,200 This seems like a simple question that we divide by age group, but really, 465 00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:42,150 we're finding a lot of agreement and where we see the differences tend to be more the questions about freedom of movement. 466 00:50:42,150 --> 00:50:48,180 Immigration brings out some differences personal benefits, climate change. 467 00:50:48,180 --> 00:50:57,160 We really find a fair degree of consensus across age groups. 468 00:50:57,160 --> 00:51:03,520 Andreas Graff, in his mid-thirties, is one of the many Europeans who expressed his concern in our interviews. 469 00:51:03,520 --> 00:51:08,500 He's a German think tank manager focussed on energy transition in Europe. 470 00:51:08,500 --> 00:51:12,940 When we asked what he wants the EU to have achieved by 2030. Here's what he said. 471 00:51:12,940 --> 00:51:21,820 This is easy because it's the message I'm telling everyone at the moment, which is that we must rise to the challenge on climate. 472 00:51:21,820 --> 00:51:30,910 And currently the European Union is being asked and the new commission elected president was up on. 473 00:51:30,910 --> 00:51:43,210 The line has proposed that Europe that European Union adopts a not only the goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, 474 00:51:43,210 --> 00:51:49,420 but also increasing its ambition on 2030 to show leadership in global climate negotiations. 475 00:51:49,420 --> 00:51:56,720 And we must rise to this challenge. 476 00:51:56,720 --> 00:52:06,190 Just to throw some of these findings about generational common ground amongst young Europeans in the context of European institutions. 477 00:52:06,190 --> 00:52:10,810 This chapter points out a number of very interesting things about how young Europeans might 478 00:52:10,810 --> 00:52:17,770 relate to the EU in terms of the level of trust to combat specific issues on climate, 479 00:52:17,770 --> 00:52:19,780 for example, you suggest that it's a priority. 480 00:52:19,780 --> 00:52:27,070 But whether they trust the EU as an actor capable of tackling this challenge is not necessarily the case. 481 00:52:27,070 --> 00:52:36,400 You also point to our March 2021 poll, in which 45 percent of respondents believe that the vaccine rollout had been handled badly. 482 00:52:36,400 --> 00:52:37,150 So we have these. 483 00:52:37,150 --> 00:52:46,060 I think this chapter gave me a sense of these different policy areas in which there are differential rates of trust in Europe's institutions. 484 00:52:46,060 --> 00:52:51,320 But if I could kind of push you a little bit outside of what the chapter said. 485 00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:59,420 Something I was left wondering at the end of it was how these different policy areas relate to each other in terms of 486 00:52:59,420 --> 00:53:08,000 does your trust or mistrust of your institutions in one area affect your overall trust or your trust in other areas? 487 00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:16,100 Everyone has some kind of policy priority, but most people aren't necessarily keeping tabs on all of their numbers on a checklist. 488 00:53:16,100 --> 00:53:20,690 So obviously, this falls a bit outside of what we've done empirical research on. 489 00:53:20,690 --> 00:53:24,350 But do you have a view on how these factors might relate? 490 00:53:24,350 --> 00:53:29,750 And if not, is there interesting research that we could do in the future to get a better sense of how these different 491 00:53:29,750 --> 00:53:35,570 areas relate to each other to form an overall picture of European institutions for young people? 492 00:53:35,570 --> 00:53:41,480 I mean, I would definitely say so. Trust, as you point out, is not something we've really looked into. 493 00:53:41,480 --> 00:53:47,900 We have to put in a fair amount to preferences about the institutions. 494 00:53:47,900 --> 00:53:54,440 My conclusion from that is basically that most people don't really know or care. 495 00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:57,080 Now that's that's maybe a slightly controversial thing. 496 00:53:57,080 --> 00:54:03,290 But I mean, for example, we asked consecutive questions like, do you think the European Parliament's really important? 497 00:54:03,290 --> 00:54:07,070 Everyone's like, Yeah, and then you say, Well, is it all secondary endpoints, the results? 498 00:54:07,070 --> 00:54:13,850 And everyone's like, Yeah, I mean, I interpret that roughly as I think most people don't really know a lot about sample. 499 00:54:13,850 --> 00:54:19,700 Don't know who. Actually, I have to admit I didn't know how they're embarrassing me, who gives the State of the Union address. 500 00:54:19,700 --> 00:54:26,870 And I think this is part of the problem with how we approach it so far when the delimitation is, 501 00:54:26,870 --> 00:54:32,090 I think at times been slightly optimistic about how much your average European. 502 00:54:32,090 --> 00:54:39,350 It's going to be interested in the workings of Europe as opposed to just something very visible or just outcomes, 503 00:54:39,350 --> 00:54:48,240 even if they're not that clear outcomes of a process I think is going to it's probably where most Europeans stand. 504 00:54:48,240 --> 00:54:52,130 And I think there is stuff in the data say that even something like young people in 505 00:54:52,130 --> 00:54:57,590 particular think that authoritarian regimes are better equipped to tackle climate change, 506 00:54:57,590 --> 00:55:03,770 which I find quite shocking. But I think that suggests people are not that worried about institutions. 507 00:55:03,770 --> 00:55:07,310 I think trust is a very different ballpark because when you start talking about trust, 508 00:55:07,310 --> 00:55:13,580 you're talking about more of the sort of black box like, OK, you don't know what's going on and you don't really care. 509 00:55:13,580 --> 00:55:18,380 But do you trust that the outcome is going to be brought about by this black box? 510 00:55:18,380 --> 00:55:25,160 I think an element that comes up to when you present that image of the black box is your communications and transparency. 511 00:55:25,160 --> 00:55:27,260 So I think it's it's a question of trust, 512 00:55:27,260 --> 00:55:36,740 but it's also a question of understanding that if the EU isn't providing information about what it's doing for you in your own language, 513 00:55:36,740 --> 00:55:39,950 are you going to trust it? Doubtful. 514 00:55:39,950 --> 00:55:46,940 Or if they're not providing the same kind of information, whether we think about social media or news or whatever? 515 00:55:46,940 --> 00:55:50,390 I think the relationship there with your scepticism as well. 516 00:55:50,390 --> 00:55:55,760 I think that you one of their main weaknesses and perhaps from the perspective of growing up in the US, 517 00:55:55,760 --> 00:56:01,460 that I didn't have you politics in my school, which I'm sure a lot of Europeans perhaps don't have either. 518 00:56:01,460 --> 00:56:07,700 But to learn about you processes and how the EU functions is a task. 519 00:56:07,700 --> 00:56:14,120 It's not easy to say I am a fisherman and I have a particular query to figure out what 520 00:56:14,120 --> 00:56:19,130 policies are relevant to me or who I'm supposed to reach out to to speak about that. 521 00:56:19,130 --> 00:56:25,310 Again, at least to me, is not clear for everyone. Obviously in certain countries, it's a different story. 522 00:56:25,310 --> 00:56:33,730 But I think that probably plays a pretty significant role, and a lot of people in our interviews talk about that communication or transparency. 523 00:56:33,730 --> 00:56:38,030 And I imagine in the democracy chapter in the episode about tomography, 524 00:56:38,030 --> 00:56:43,700 hopefully you'll speak about the conference on the Future of Europe and the EU's efforts to involve people in communication and make 525 00:56:43,700 --> 00:56:51,320 the processes more transparent that I think our authors of that chapter would argue has probably thus far failed to some extent, 526 00:56:51,320 --> 00:57:00,680 but I think when thinking about trust. It's one thing if you don't trust a system because you know how it works, 527 00:57:00,680 --> 00:57:04,820 it's another thing if you don't trust the system because of this black boxes, Dan said. 528 00:57:04,820 --> 00:57:13,490 And is it an individual's responsibility to figure out how it works or is it a government's responsibility to include that in civic education? 529 00:57:13,490 --> 00:57:17,540 Apart from forming this coherent picture of young Europeans, 530 00:57:17,540 --> 00:57:30,990 I also wonder how working on this chapter shaped your coherent picture of your relationship to the identity of being a young European. 531 00:57:30,990 --> 00:57:39,000 Wherever you began before working on this project, I wonder where working on this has left you? 532 00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:44,270 It definitely made me realise how weird Britain is. 533 00:57:44,270 --> 00:57:49,650 I mean, that's coming also from talking to other Europeans being part of this project in general, 534 00:57:49,650 --> 00:57:54,540 but the experience of being young European in Britain is extremely different to the 535 00:57:54,540 --> 00:57:58,800 experience of being a young European where you can get in the car and cross the border. 536 00:57:58,800 --> 00:58:03,840 And so even with the freedom of movement, things, so we talked today about the trade offs. 537 00:58:03,840 --> 00:58:08,610 And while can you enjoy freedom of movement if you can't take flights? 538 00:58:08,610 --> 00:58:12,570 I mean, you could travel by car and by train. I'm OK. 539 00:58:12,570 --> 00:58:17,610 I know that the Eurostar from Britain to Europe. But that still feels like you're going abroad. 540 00:58:17,610 --> 00:58:25,690 And so I think this really. As always, it also made me realise to some extent what Brexit is not. 541 00:58:25,690 --> 00:58:32,230 Totally surprising. In the same sense that I found it at the time because that small town of the water, I think, 542 00:58:32,230 --> 00:58:42,460 does slightly undermine what we now know to be one of the real foundational reasons for being in the European Union for young people. 543 00:58:42,460 --> 00:58:46,180 So I think that changed my understanding of kind of my own relationship and how I grew up, 544 00:58:46,180 --> 00:58:52,810 and I really hadn't quite realised like, I always appreciate the European Union and slightly removed way. 545 00:58:52,810 --> 00:58:56,920 I quite like that. I didn't have to queue at the airport and I didn't. 546 00:58:56,920 --> 00:59:00,040 I didn't actually take advantage of Erasmus, but I knew people who had. 547 00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:08,110 But it was never quite as direct as seems to come out from the interviews and from the results. 548 00:59:08,110 --> 00:59:15,320 So I sort of realised to some extent that the British experience is maybe a bit a bit different. 549 00:59:15,320 --> 00:59:22,820 I think for me, it probably solidified my sense of responsibility to identify as European because obviously I did not grow up in Europe, 550 00:59:22,820 --> 00:59:30,080 grew up coming over summer and Christmas and whatever to to visit family, but didn't live here until after I graduated from college. 551 00:59:30,080 --> 00:59:35,180 So if you had asked me, you know, as a high school or do you identify as European, I would say, Well, not really. 552 00:59:35,180 --> 00:59:38,870 I didn't. I didn't grow up there. I'm not allowed to identify as European. In a sense. 553 00:59:38,870 --> 00:59:44,060 I can't claim that, but I think from living over there for four or five years and through this project, 554 00:59:44,060 --> 00:59:48,980 I think I have a responsibility to identify as European again, 555 00:59:48,980 --> 00:59:56,450 returning to the theme of privilege in terms of movement and rights and responsibilities as a person who possesses an EU passport. 556 00:59:56,450 --> 01:00:04,370 This is obviously my area of interest, but in terms of movement and the privilege to move and who has that privilege again in the sense of travel, 557 01:00:04,370 --> 01:00:11,390 but also in the sense of economic well-being and personal well-being, I think about conflict and all these kinds of things. 558 01:00:11,390 --> 01:00:32,870 I think this project has really solidified my sense of the privileges that are associated with being European and driven that home. 559 01:00:32,870 --> 01:00:39,470 Our guests today were Dave Moynihan and Dan Snow. We're also grateful to our funders, the Swedish Nobleman Foundation, 560 01:00:39,470 --> 01:00:44,930 the tights diphthong and the shift of MacArthur for making the Europe Stories project and podcast possible. 561 01:00:44,930 --> 01:00:56,120 A huge thanks to our podcast editor, Billy Craigan, our research manager Luisa Mello and our report editor Professor Timothy Garton Ash. 562 01:00:56,120 --> 01:01:01,340 A special thank you to Ellen Leach, said Lily Striker Mave Moynihan, 563 01:01:01,340 --> 01:01:10,190 Sophie Verité and Victoria Hansel for contributing to the podcast Production Music by Unicorn Heads and Ketter. 564 01:01:10,190 --> 01:01:19,340 Finally, thank you to the whole Europe Stories Project team. I'm your host, Anna Martens, and I'm your host, Lucas, to thank you for listening today. 565 01:01:19,340 --> 01:01:23,390 Join us for the next episode of the Europe Stories podcast, and until then, 566 01:01:23,390 --> 01:01:36,614 you can find out more about our research project at European Moments dot com.