So there's this idea that free movement is especially important for young Europeans and definitive of who they are and what they care about,
and that's an idea that I think pretty much we take on board as well and discover with our polling and interviews in this project.
But how true do you think it is that free movement is somehow unique to the generation of Europeans who are currently in the teens and 20s?
It's been very clear how valuable freedom of movement is for Europeans in general and for young Europeans in particular.
And one of the reasons why it's so important for young Europeans is that it actually is a condition for the main formative experience.
So as opposed to other generations that identify formative historical moments such as the fall of the Berlin Wall.
This generation doesn't really have a comparable moment, as we saw in the first episode of this podcast.
But what we have is a defining experience.
I find this idea quite provocative, that free movement might be to young Europeans what the fall of the Berlin Wall was to a previous generation.
I don't know what to think about that yet. What do you think about it?
Well, first of all, I think that it's. Interesting that one of the most important formative moments for one generation
is something to do with a wall that used to divide Europe and then falls,
and then the uniting experience in the following generation is precisely freedom to move.
So I think, again, this goes to show how freedom, liberty is so fundamental to our values in modern day Europe.
It's obviously a fundamental value at the core of the European Union.
And I think it's very interesting that it's reflected in the formative moments
of the generations that have lived during the life of the European Union.
I don't know. What do you think of that? This question of how free movement links up with freedom and liberty is really tricky.
And I'm not sure there is a simple way to really get that relationship.
But I do think that behind all of our poll results and all of our interviews,
that relationship probably is one that hangs behind many of our findings.
And I think looking at free movement as a formative experience is one way of trying to understand what's going on.
For young Europeans and. Whether it's a desire for freedom that leads them to really cherish certain rights and habits or whether it's a
set of historical changes that makes free movement as well as freedom a kind of practise the democratic practise.
And yeah, I think it's it's an open question that this episode opens up, but I think would also merit further exploration.
I'd like to add one more thought. This to me is perhaps one of the most interesting insights that was a takeaway for me working in this project,
which is a correlation between enjoying freedom of movement and then basically growing up with a more cosmopolitan identity,
which then very much opens the person up to Europe as a whole.
Freedom has always been, you know, as someone who studied political theory, a very dear concept to me, of course.
But I didn't really think about the implications of freedom of movement for one's identity and how formative it is.
And obviously, I mean, even myself, I've experienced the impact that it has on a person's outlook,
on the potential of their lives to be in touch with people from other parts of the world, not even, you know,
within Europe or any part of the world being exposed to different languages, realising that, yeah, there are little differences,
but then there are a lot of similarities and empathising a lot more and being
more interested in the history of other countries and being more involved.
You know, and something shows up on the news about a neighbouring country than perhaps you would have if
you'd never met someone from there or if you never met someone from similar countries to that one.
So I think that that made an impression on me.
Yeah. And that is also something that Louisa starts with right from the beginning of our discussion.
Maybe on that note, we can introduce our guest today who is, in fact, the research manager for the entire project.
So Louisa has had an academic background in migration studies at Oxford, where her research focussed on church asylum in Germany.
But she also worked for the German Agency for International Cooperation.
And as we speak, Louisa has actually just moved on to a new role, climate outreach, focussing in on that area.
So we're really lucky that we caught her at the end of her time with this project.
And it was a great conversation.
Hello, I'm Timothy Garton Ash, welcome to the Europe Stories podcast, what the young Europeans want the European Union to do and to be.
Over the last three years,
an amazing group of young Europeans have worked with me here at the European Studies Centre at Oxford University to answer this question.
And this podcast will present their findings.
Anna, Martin and Lukas say, have a series of conversations with the authors of our concluding report and give you their answers.
Louisa, tell us about, first of all, your role in your stories projects, we're kind of interviewing our boss here.
Yes, I'm the research manager for the Europe Stories Project.
So I do the day to day running, coordinating research tasks,
overseeing our communication with other partners, Bearder, polling partners or others whom we do.
But events with and past under the direction from Professor Garton Ash.
And then you guys deliver your great work. How did you end up managing this specific research project?
Well, I took it over from the Great Research Mentors and Workshop in August of September of last year,
and I had studied sustainable development and also migration studies.
So two of the the big themes that came through in the Europe stories project climate change and free movement were quite already to my heart.
And I like project management. So this seemed like the perfect project to combine all of my interests.
What do you think it is in your experience of growing up and studying and working
that has made free movement such a topic of interest for your work and for research?
Well, I first really started thinking about free movement and a critical and more academic way in my third year of my undergrad
because I was abroad in Singapore and I was quite randomly taking a module on migration and diaspora in Southeast Asia.
And one of our first tasks in this module was to go back into our own family history and see where migration plays a part in our family history.
And then I found out about my granddad fleeing the Red Army from Lithuania back
to Germany and spoke to my mom more about her father's experience of migrating.
And that was just really interesting. And that made me think about my background of moving abroad for periods of time,
be during high school to America or then to study to Scotland and then later to England.
And I think free movement is very interesting to people because.
A lot of people can personally identify with it, even if you don't have an academic interest in it.
And the way it's intertwined with personal histories, I think is just really fascinating.
You mention these experiences of thinking about migration and movement outside of Europe, so in Singapore and then also in the U.S., you mentioned.
How does that kind of framework or set of experiences where you're thinking about migration movement in different parts of the world,
help you understand your own perception and experience as a European who is living and also thinking about movement and migration?
I think it really enforces the European exceptionalism when it comes to freedom of movement,
while there's other examples of arrangements like the Schengen area that in Southeast Asia or the East Coast.
So this ability to just study, work and live even without having this particular purpose of stay anywhere in Europe as a European citizen,
I think really became quite apparent to me, because to go to the U.S., I need to have a study visa to go to school there and to go to Singapore.
Same thing. I got my my residence card because I was an exchange student and.
The idea that as a European citizen, you have the right to move and live anywhere you want without needing to justify your
existence in a certain country by working or studying or some sort of activity,
I think really showed me how unique that is worldwide.
What do you really mean when we say free movement and where do all the specific activities of travelling and working and settling fit into that,
maybe it would be great to get some clarification from you.
Yeah, absolutely. And our analysis, this is also something we found that people group free travel and free movement together and that
a lot of people who say free movement or freedom of movement is the best thing the EU has done.
For me personally, they often think of travel experiences. But from a legal point of view, free movement is the right of any U.S. citizen.
So somebody who has the citizenship of one of the EU member states to live, work, study and settle in any of the EU countries.
Free travel, on the other hand, is related to the establishment of the Schengen area.
And that means that you don't only need to be a citizen of a in an area to be able to move within that area without facing border crossing checks,
because if you get a visa, then you're not a citizen, but you can still move within all of the Schengen area.
So that's the difference for the checks versus being able to settle elsewhere.
Yes, and as you said, many interviewees are not really aware of this difference,
primarily of freedom of movement as freedom to travel, whereas it includes also freedom to settle and work.
Surprising is that nearly three quarters of Europeans agree that the EU would not be worth having without freedom of movement.
Is this what you were expecting or did it surprise you? To many people,
that is most tangible benefits they've had from the from the E.U. So it would make sense that rather than getting rid of certain tariffs,
they would cite freedom of movement as something that you done for them.
And that's the main reason they think it should continue to exist, especially with the EU wide polling being representative.
That is something that, like I said before, as an individual person, you can relate to quite easily.
But yeah, even so, I mean, almost three quarters. That was definitely very surprising.
So it kind of makes you think that with covid and travel restrictions, travel and movement restrictions, whether people thought, you know,
might as well get rid of the EU in that time as well,
is that your sense that there might be some loss of legitimacy, specifically due to travel restrictions on Cuban?
So we didn't really have data on this. I'm just thinking out loud here, but I don't think loss of legitimacy, but especially because the.
Pressing for a coordinated response, which then wasn't coordinated,
I think made people realise the importance of the nation state again and Europe and how autonomous states still want to act,
especially when it comes to, quote unquote, protecting their own citizens.
For Elena, a Romanian master's student we interviewed, a pandemic was the worst moment in recent European history before the health pandemic.
I don't think we have realised how much freedom of movement we have and how important health is.
How do you think young Europeans, as opposed to other generations, value freedom of movement differently or experience it differently?
In our chapter, we talk about the fact that free movement, which I'm now taking together with free travel,
we found data from the Eurobarometer that two in five people had never even travelled to another European country.
And this was particularly high amongst older Europeans.
So those aged 55 plus and a lot lower amongst younger Europeans.
And so I think for young Europeans, especially,
free movement and free travel are incredibly important also in relation to your schemes such as Erasmus,
the Discovery Youth Scheme, but also incentives like integrating.
Those were cited as very formative experiences for young Europeans, and I think as such, they valued even higher than the average European population.
Yes, and I think one of the clearest suggestions that came out of the interviews we did is that there's a link between the
experience of travelling and the formation of identity as primarily European or at least very strongly European.
This doesn't conflict with their national identities, but there seems to be a coincidence,
at least between the experience of travelling, which is very formative,
and then the connexion they feel to Europe as a whole, to other Europeans from other countries,
especially those who experienced Erasmus like programmes.
So there is a. I my mind is still hovering over the fact you mentioned that two out of five.
Respondants European respondents have not travelled outside of their own country,
and I wonder what to make of that fact and just to see what you think.
One of the. Sceptical voices in my head is concerned that we might too easily fit free movement into a progressive trajectory of European history,
and it does seem that on the aggregate that our findings in the interviews, in the polls confirm that.
But there's also this question of stratification and whether the different kinds of
Europeans are going farther apart from each other and the social consequences of that.
So I guess whether you think that free movement in itself,
the fact that some or many Europeans move but not all across borders to settle into work and to travel.
Hmm. Might lead to further stratification and also whether a certain narrative or a
certain way of talking about free movement might also not include everyone,
even when it tries to just wonder what your views are on that.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in our data, the polling data, which also captures rural, rural versus urban divides,
actually, whenever we checked for that variable, it wasn't significant,
which I think is kind of counterintuitive because you think, you know,
there's this bunch of people who feel very disconnected from Europe, who live in the country.
And then there is the metropolitan liberals who jump from one city to the next.
And actually a Eurobarometer found that it's only four percent of the European population who actually cross a European border more than once a month.
So I think. It's actually a much smaller minority than one might assume.
But yes, there's definitely socioeconomic factors and whether or not you benefit from free movement and this is also
something we call for in our demands that the EU is more proactive in bringing the schemes that it has,
such as Erasmus Discovery, EU, the European Solidarity Corps, to areas where uptake is very low.
And especially with regards to Erasmus, I think because although you there are, of course, working opportunities through Erasmus,
but I think it is very much branded as this university experience that especially people who study certain subjects enjoy.
Rather than something that almost everyone is eligible for, and that's definitely a communication issue,
I mean, if you want to bring Europeans together, we have to get them from all corners of Europe, I think.
Right. And other than this discrepancy between generations and their use of freedom of movement,
as well as perhaps between class or at least different segments of the population.
There are also differences amongst countries, right? Yeah, that's very interesting dynamic as well, because, I mean, we asked people in our polling,
what are the most important things that you has done for you personally? And then freedom of movement was one of them.
So we had this question which sort of asked for personal benefits.
And a lot of people said, you know, I've been able to travel and able to use free movement or, you know,
I have not roaming charges or whatever, but the amount of people who said they hadn't benefited was actually surprisingly high.
But generally, people supported free movement and loved it.
But then when we asked the question of whether someone thought free movement had had more costs than benefits for one's country,
sort of on the country level, people were a lot more divided about the benefits versus the costs.
And actually more people thought, I think thirty seven percent or thirty eight, that free movement had had more costs than benefits for the country.
So I think this discrepancy between people enjoying it for themselves and liking the idea of other people having free movement,
but then on a societal scale saying, oh, no, actually all these administrative systems,
people moving around all the time, maybe that is not so beneficial. Paint a more complex picture of a free movement in Europe.
Our interviews with Europeans from different generations are a central component of the Europe Stories project,
you can explore their answers about their formative best and worst moments on our website, European Moments Dotcom.
Several of those moments mentioned throughout this episode are linked in the description.
How do you think the experience of freedom of movement or the extent to which different segments of the European
population or European citizens experience freedom of movement affect their perceptions of asylum seekers,
how well guarded the external border of the European Union should be?
Is there a correlation here? So we didn't test for correlation.
That said, there is lots of data out there that the higher the percentage of immigrants in your area,
the more likely you are to be accepting of immigrants.
And I think that holds true whether they're from other EU countries or whether they're from outside the EU.
But in general, I think. Really, the data points to how supportive people are of even extending free movement rights to third country nationals.
I think what we found in our polling was that with regard to external borders,
people are very concerned about illegal and criminal activity and sort of having an orderly process by which people can enter the EU.
But when it comes to whether the safety of asylum seekers should be prioritised, for example,
by Frontex, young Europeans were a lot more supportive of that than old Europeans.
And then, on the other hand, preventing illegal entry into the EU.
Older Europeans were a lot more pro than younger Europeans.
So I think that shows a shift in understanding of the extent to which we need a hard external EU border to have the quote unquote,
soft borders within. And I think that came through in our interviews as well.
Definitely, just a quick note.
We will have links in the podcast description to these results that we've been discussing, especially the Europe stories polling,
as well as links to relevant interviews that illustrate what we've been discussing so far.
So on this theme of an external border,
there's a passage in the chapter that I found very striking that talks about the paradox of
Fortress Europe being born with the signing of the Schengen Agreement in nineteen eighty five.
I'm going to read the passage of the booklet with the nineteen eighty five Schengen Agreement was born.
The paradox of Fortress Europe, a mixture of freedom and security that led to the establishment of Europol in 1994 and of Frontex,
the European border and Coast Guard agency in 2004. And you go on to discuss more of what Frontex does and how that might link up with
some of the debateable points about the necessity and nature of our external border.
So what is this paradox, this mixture of freedom and security and where we now I think as we trace in the
chapter the going from freedom of movement as a means to an end to an end in itself.
We see that the the EU, both the people, but also those making European laws,
found that the free movement of its people is a right that every European citizens should enjoy.
But as that move forward, that's when the tighter border controls and later on fences were erected.
I think the freer and more liberal progressive the thinking became in Europe,
policymakers felt that this meant that we had to have those borders sort of on the fringes of Europe, pushing out the.
Restrictions, if you will, and I think. That's at least my understanding of the paradox that is being talked about,
their freedom of movement is one of the cornerstones of the European Union as we know it now.
It wasn't founded as such, but does it remain the same notion as it was in the days of the founding of the European communities and so on?
Or has it evolved?
I think it definitely has evolved from being a necessity to allow workers to move within Europe and to fill labour shortages to especially
young Europeans and understanding it as a as a right that is just part of who they are and just travelling anywhere in Europe.
You just don't think about whether you need a visa because you don't.
So is that even a question? And I remember when I first left Europe at 16, I had never filled in a visa application for anything.
It was like, OK, like I actually need to go to the embassy now.
And I didn't have a passport at that point. I just hadn't needed one.
And so I think this understanding of of course, there's freedom of movement that's taken it for granted.
To the extent that we found that you couldn't imagine Europe without it. I think this is a massive step from what it used to be.
But at the same time, it's not as if people either have access to free movement or don't.
So. Something we focus on in our chapter as well is this idea that it's a spectrum
to which extent a person has access to free movement in terms of travel,
work, study and living elsewhere.
At the one end, you have European citizens, people who are nationals of a member state, and they can enjoy free movement in its entirety.
But then you also have residents of European member states.
And so if they want to move to another country within the EU, they then have to apply for another residence permit.
They have to prove certain levels of integration, be that like language skills or certain certificates to be able to move on.
So free movement is a right that the EU distributes and it distributes it unequally depending on your status in society.
So if you're a citizen, you get the whole package and then if you're a resident, you get some of it.
And then at the other end, there's the third country nationals. If you're a student, then that's still pretty good.
Even if you're from outside, you know, at least you can travel and you can study and then sometimes even stay on to find work.
But then at the very end of that spectrum, we have third country nationals living in the EU, such as asylum seekers who.
Aren't even allowed to leave their city boundaries while they're awaiting the outcome of their asylum application.
And so this is something that we draw attention to in the report to show that the EU isn't this Disneyland of free movement,
but actually there is very much a hierarchy of who gets to go where and for what purpose.
Yes, and with regard to what the U.S. is doing and not doing with regard to freedom of movement in this,
by the way, is reflected in our interviews quite often,
is precisely the idea that the EU has not been doing enough in addressing the migrant crisis for lack of a better name.
So could you clarify a little bit how the European Union defines freedom of movement as a freedom?
Yeah, sure. So in terms of what the EU is and isn't doing,
one of the main points of our chapter is to say that the EU perceives a free movement as a negative freedom,
which is to say that its role is to remove barriers and that's it.
However, because of all the data we have on unrealised migration aspirations within the EU,
we suggest that free movement should be conceptualised as a positive freedom by the EU,
which means that rather than just removing barriers to freedom of movement for its citizens or residents,
it should actively put measures in place that allow people to realise their migration aspirations and actually move and settle abroad.
Because a survey done in twenty seventeen showed that about a third of Europeans
would like to move permanently to another country if they had the chance,
which is in the global comparison, a lot higher than the average, which I think set at 15 or 17 percent.
So that's quite something we asked Evelin.
She an Austrian student and international law, what is the most important thing the EU has done for her personally?
The possibility to me to be a citizen so I can prove I can live and work in other member states.
I mean, it's a lot of possibilities. And you don't you don't you obviously don't have the rights.
So, Louisa, just now you were talking about these different degrees of freedom of movement and how
that reflects a certain hierarchy of citizens and residents and third-country nationals.
And one of the really interesting suggestions that you make in the conclusion is that.
It would be good for the E to extend the right to free movement to third country nationals who are also EU residents or who were registered in the EU.
Could you just spell out a little bit what that involves and why you think that's a good idea?
Yeah, definitely.
So first of all, it comes from the finding that the large majority of Europeans support free movement not only for themselves, but also for others.
So this is directly derived from what we found with the Eurobarometer found.
And in a sense, there are several reasons for why extending free movement rights to residents is a good idea.
One is specifically related to asylum seekers.
So with the Dublin system having to claim asylum in the country that you first arrive in, it means that some countries are particularly overburdened.
But even more so, asylum seekers might have very good reasons to move to a different country in the EU.
That does not happen to be a border country.
And so if they have the prospect of being given freedom of movement after two years or so of residence in the country that they first arriving,
this would probably lower the numbers of secondary movements, which is when someone enters the EU into a country.
And then rather than staying there to claim asylum, as they should by law,
they move on to another country and claim asylum there just to be sent back to the first country.
So that would cut off those administrative processes, but also the well, the danger that is involved in smuggling people within the EU.
And secondly, on a more aspirational level, a lot of people, certain evidence suggests,
become citizens of an EU member state because it allows them freedom of movement rather than for reasons.
There are more traditionally associated with citizenship,
such as feeling belonging to a community and to a country and your identity being bound up with a certain country or place.
And so if freedom of movement was available to residents after two or three years anyways,
then probably those citizenship applications would go down slightly.
But those people who are applying to citizenship then actually want to because they identify with
a certain country rather than for the instrumental reason of getting access to free movement.
This chapter does not focus as much on asylum seekers and policy related to that concern as other freedom of movement
topics joined to briefly explain the focus of the chapter and why you chose to focus more on one part of this broad topic,
as opposed to a very hot topic, which is asylum seeking.
Well, there were several reasons for it.
One being that, you know, in our interviews, a lot of people cited freedom of movement and they already had access to it.
And that's sort of a formative moment or the best Europea moment or whatever.
And so that is the phenomenon that we were going to look into further, both in our analysis of the interviews, but also in our polling.
We asked a lot about whether people had benefited from freedom of movement or what they
thought of freedom of movement in general rather than in relation to asylum seekers.
And secondly, in terms of Europe stories, this is a project that is looking inward more than outward.
And because there are still a lot of barriers to free movement within the EU and quite the imbalance
between east and west and north and south in terms of who actually practises free movement,
we felt that that was more of a of a necessary focus of the chapter.
We would have loved to include asylum and a common European asylum system,
but that warranted an entire chapter of its own and more representative polling on what people think about that,
which is being done a lot on national level, but also is very.
Reactive in terms of how people feel about asylum and refugees,
so that's why we chose to focus on freedom of movement within the EU rather than movement from outside to inside that, you know.
And it's worth mentioning that as far as freedom of movement goes,
this is one area where the EU is perceived to not be doing as much as in other areas.
I don't know if you want to add anything in terms of the perception of the EU with regard to what they're doing on that front are not doing.
In terms of migration of third country nationals, yeah, yeah, I mean, this is very much a personal opinion.
So I think I think a lot of people have. Very rightly lamented the fact that there is no functioning common European asylum system.
There've been a lot of different ways in which people have suggested how to go about that,
whether it's a group of the willing who take up and divide of however many asylum seekers between them or how to overhaul the entire system.
But yeah, because of how the EU works is very difficult, of course, to agree on something, especially something as sensitive as migration and asylum.
But that's no excuse not to fix it because it doesn't work, so. Lisa Leiter, our colleague at the York Stories Project, agrees.
Here's what she said she would like the EU to achieve by 2030. I think one really, really important issue that needs to be solved by 20, 30,
but I'd rather have itself by next year or tomorrow if could is a humane asylum and migration system,
because I think it's a shame that people are still dying every single day and the Mediterranean Sea.
It's a big EU failure. We not only for those people who are in need, but we also fail each other.
Something I found very striking about this chapter and this topic, Louisa, is that I mean, we're really kind of talking on a number of registers.
There's a very kind of conceptual and legal part about rights.
But obviously, as you mentioned at the beginning, free movement is also very salient and tangible for people.
It's something that they live out. And I was thinking about your experience at the visa,
and I was just also thinking about the chapter mentioning the importance of the abolition of roaming charges.
For many Europeans, a quarter of European citizens mentioned that the abolition of roaming charges
is one of the three most important things that the EU has personally and.
I mean, let's start with the basics. Why do you think that matters to people as seemingly very mundane and kind of pedestrian fact and convenience?
Yeah, I actually remember when we when we met with a polling group to decide on the answer options for that question.
We were discussing how what we wanted to put in there because there were suggestions about shorter
queues at airports or being able to just scan your your passport and go through the electronic gates.
But we ended up settling on roaming charges because I think a lot of at least the people on the team who are in their mid 20s mostly can
actually still remember a time when they were travelling in Europe and you had roaming charges and you always have to turn off your mobile.
I sounds old now, so I think that's something that, again, was very personal to people within the team.
And we were curious as to whether that was important for others as well.
It did surprise us that it was one of the top three things. But again, we had why why did it surprise you?
Well, there weren't like sort of 20 or 30 answer options, right.
So that's the other thing. But we did put it other for people to say something else.
If they thought roaming charges was too basic or too mundane to be called the personal benefit of the EU.
But, yeah, I think people really resonated with that because there was a little monetary benefit for them and.
It shows the lack of visibility of the EU on the individual level, that it takes something as I mean,
the grand scheme of things like roaming charges are a huge cost to anyone anyways, unless you talk on the phone for 10 hours a day from abroad.
But I mean, I've had some unexpected roaming charges in the past, and that was not fun.
And they were quite expensive compared to what I used to.
And to not think about that, not think about that when travelling,
I think makes the experience of going around Europe very similar to the one you have when you're going around in your own country.
And I think the the tentative explanation, at least that makes sense to my mind is, is that it is at the end of the day,
these very palpable experiences of everyday life that contribute to an experience of Europe as more holistic, if you will, or without barriers.
Basically, you know, there are there are several types of border, if you will.
There is definitely a language border which is increasingly overcome by a common language
that ironically will no longer belong to one of the member states in the union.
But I mean, still, that is related to first of all,
it's another generational divide because younger Europeans tend to speak English much more easily than older Europeans,
but also it's related to education and to a certain extent, privilege.
But that's one border at other borders, obviously, the physical borders, that is what people most have in mind when they think of free movement.
But then there are other ways in which we experience the borders. If you want to buy something on Amazon, there are advantages to it.
Amazon address you use, right? Whereas in the US you wouldn't have that problem.
I know that one interviewee mentioned this. His name is Sasha. And for him, having a more integrated common market would be the solution for that.
And this is a long comment to say that what explains these replies at the end of the day is they have a very evident effect in our everyday lives.
If we do, in fact, use our freedom to move within the.
Sasha is American. He lives in Barcelona and has been living and working in the EU since 2012.
Here's what he said he would like the EU to have achieved by 2030. For me,
the ideal is make the idea of a single market more true to the letter of what
that actually says instead of the approximation that we live in right now.
If I click on Amazon.com, for example, I'm directed to a website that works for each individual country.
But I look at it like I should be able to just go to Amazon.com and it doesn't like
the internal country division should necessarily matter for goods and services. And we're halfway there, but we're definitely not there.
See, your Verizon contract in Portugal has absolutely nothing to do with Vodafone in Spain or wherever else.
And I think that that's something that the EU should be striving to break down.
What do you recommend that you do to address East-West North-South divides and what comes to what we
were just speaking about actually the ability to use freedom of movement or access to this freedom?
Yes. So one of the main things that we suggest, which is quite easy to implement, is widening the existing programmes.
So the Erasmus programme, Discovery EU and the.
The European Solidarity Court and especially the discovery you and the European Solidarity Corps,
elevating those to the sort of prominence level of Erasmus,
I think would really help people to access these programmes from areas where there's not a lot of uptake,
especially with the discovery programme, as being a non educational programme.
We think that there's really a lot of potential to give people experiences of travelling Europe, of seeing other countries, seeing other cultures.
Why is this important, if you think? Well, our data suggests that those are the most formative European moments.
And so for European identity, you need to feel that you're part of Europe and there's no no better way to.
To feel part of Europe, then to experience it and travel is a great way to do that,
but especially we suggest extending the validity of tickets or proposing certain routes that are maybe less travelled or start in in
areas where there is not a lot of people taking part to show people that Europe isn't just Milan and Brussels and Berlin or Paris,
but that Europe is, as all of it, and encouraging people to see as much of it as they can.
I think really should be a priority of the EU in making its citizens realise what it means to be European.
I can see some people listening to this and thinking, wow, that's a very superficial thing to prioritise within Europe,
you know, just financing a young people's travelling desires and so on.
I mean, that's very cool. But is that really a priority?
So, again, I know you've already spoken to this a little bit, but if you could just like in a nutshell, say why,
why it is that important that people get to have this chance, especially when it comes to addressing social cleavages?
It's precisely about that. It's about having the chance to see that.
We're not saying, you know, everybody should travel and needs to travel and that's the only way to feel European.
But it is a great way. And so far, if you don't have the money or if in your hometown you've just never heard about it, then that's not right.
And so just making these these opportunities available to people I think is is incredibly important.
The reason I ask is, again, this came across to me very clearly in the interviews between those people who got to have this experience.
And I mean, by no doubt, it doesn't impact the value that people attribute to freedom of movement.
I think that's across the board valued. But the way they relate to Europe as a whole is different once you've had that experience.
But it's not just about Europe. It's about the prospects of the next generations,
because it really makes a difference whether you've been exposed as a young person to other cultures, other countries, other languages.
And I think that also increases the possibilities that you will use your freedom of
movement later on in life to perhaps work and and settle elsewhere for a while.
I think in relation to that, you enabling people to migrate to actually enabling people who want to migrate to actually do so is an important one,
because the EU has been quite complacent in the idea that as long as we remove barriers, this will be fine.
People can just go and migrate. But like not just European,
but worldwide experience has shown that if you don't have these networks and if you don't have the
money to just even find out what the administrative steps are to be able to move to another country,
you're probably not going to. And so. With a third of Europeans wanting to migrate if they have the chance,
I think there should be a lot more really easily accessible information for people just on the administrative steps,
like setting up the citizens advice, where you can just walk in and be like, so I'd love to move to Slovakia, how to go about it.
Like if you actually walk past a little shop that says, talk to us if you want to work in Hungary, come in and talk to us kind of thing.
Like think. And I think that's pretty important to emphasise, actually,
it's not just enabling young Europeans to study in another European country, it's also to work.
And there are some professional programmes that the EU promotes.
But just in general,
creating those incentives for people to go work in different countries can make an incredible difference in their lives and their prospects.
And I think another thing that is important to think about is that.
Exchange is always a two way learning experience, there is communities that get someone from abroad and.
I think that's very important, too, just to be able to communicate and live with people that aren't all like you,
so it doesn't actually require everyone to go out and migrate,
but also it's to make it more acceptable to just offer traineeships or jobs to people from other EU countries in your hometown,
making this more of an exclusive experience, not just for the people who go out, but also the people who receive intra EU migrants.
Maria Pensa, it's a Polish high school student, participated in the Discovery EU travel programme.
Here's what she said about that experience recently.
I was the travel thanks to discover you and I visited a lot of museums and I saw the art and how similar the art was.
The art says a lot about the society.
So we had very similar problems in the countries wars about religion and war, about independence.
And I think that when I saw that, I definitely saw myself as European.
As we wind down this really helpful conversation, there is a kind of reflexive question that I want to pose to you,
and it goes back to something you said earlier about how it seems like in this time during the pandemic,
we see the nation state rearing its head again. And to be honest,
that that remark introduced a slight sense of pessimism and maybe because it seems
like maybe free movement is something we can only expect when times are good and,
you know, when we have these continental or even global difficult times like pandemics and wars,
then really we're going to expect things to really go south very quickly and free movement with it.
Two, I don't know. None of us can really predict the future and what kind of disasters will before this continent.
But I guess maybe the smaller question or the more personal one is, did working on this chapter, not just in the abstract,
but during this time, did it make you more hopeful or less hopeful about free movement as a project as well as a process?
Mm hmm. So I think luckily, maybe that's not a great reason, but there is always labour market reasons for people and goods to move.
So I think in that respect, we're on the safe side that there will be a level of free movement continuously.
I think there is a danger in that sort of came through when we analysed all the interviews,
especially when you think about free movement is the best thing that you has done for people, but the actual.
Critical engagement with it is very low, unless it is to a very large extent taken away from people,
they don't actually realise how much they value it.
If it's just an idea in the sky, which is one of the reasons we do encourage people to use their freedom of movement,
because then it becomes tangible and then it becomes.
An EU policy that that pertains to you and that you want to fight for and that that is important to uphold.
No matter what the situation is, because that's the idea, right,
that you should be able to live anywhere without having to prove that you can finance yourselves, that you have all these things ticked off.
But just by value of being a citizen of the EU, you have a right to be here and do what you want to do.
Then is Lotos, a Hungarian communications officer, echoed this sentiment when saying,
I think most people do not know what it means to be waiting in a long queue just to go to the other side of the border until the personal experience.
And so the fact that they can move freely, travel freely and freely, a true European.
Did working on this project change your view of young Europeans?
When I was in school, we learnt about globalisation and it was this great thing,
and you thought that things were going to keep progressing in that way and could keep getting better.
And then especially young Europeans have lived through quite a few things at this point, like.
Migration crisis, Brexit covid, there is a certain sense of.
Things going downhill, and that pushes some to cynicism of, you know,
there's nothing really we can do anyways and climate change is going to end us all anyways.
And I think the role of. Projects like these as to listen to people,
but also make them realise their own agency and their European stories and enable them to to take charge of their destiny and of Europe's destiny.
I mean, at one point we're going to be those fifty five plus and in the polls, you know, but what are we going to say then?
And I think we should ask ourselves those questions more.
And this project has definitely made me ask myself that question more.
It seems that.
Our guest today was Luisa Mello, a huge thanks to our podcast editor, Billy Kragen,
our research manager, Luisa Mello, and our report editor, Professor Timothy Garton Ash.
We're also grateful to our founders, the Swedish Nobel Foundation, the tights and the system.
MacArthur for making the Europe Stories Project a special thank you to Ellen Leach.
That Lily striker made Moynihan, Sophie Verité and Victoria Hansell for contributing to the podcast production music by Unicorn Heads and Ketso.
Finally, thank you to the whole Europe Stories Project. I'm your host on the margins and I'm your host.
Lucasta. Thank you for listening today. Join us for the next episode of the Europe Stories podcast and until then,
you can find out more about our research project at European Moment Starcom.