An Erasmus semester changed my mind
Having just returned from my semester abroad at Stockholm University, I am perhaps an obvious member of the ‘yes to EU’ camp - and yet, I’ve only recently made my mind up. The Erasmus scheme, a European Union initiative running since 1987, fosters unity and cooperation by facilitating students’ exchanges to universities across Europe. I saw this first hand at Stockholm University, where there was a whole culture of ‘international students’ from all over the world, but especially from Europe. With fees ever-higher in the UK, and EU laws ensuring that no EU student is charged fees above those of a native student, greater numbers of UK students are even choosing to go abroad for their entire degree ( Guardian, 2013 ).
However, I still had my reservations about Britain’s membership of the EU. The fact that there are thousands of lobbyists, and 60% of them are for corporate interests, is a snapshot of the influence of multinational corporations in the European Union ( Lobby Facts, 2013 ); while the latest EU-US trade treaty (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP for short) is worrying for consumers and the environment alike. The EU’s so called ‘democratic deficit’ also puts me off – most parliamentary decisions are made without debate, and many important decisions bypass the parliament altogether. So when the surprisingly harsh conditions for the Greece-crisis-loan were announced, even though I heard this from Swedish news outlets on my Erasmus semester, I wasn’t sure I was in favour of the EU at all.
But I wanted to love the EU: I didn’t want to vote ‘no’ to Erasmus, no to protected rights, no to a united Europe.
What has made me change my mind? I considered whether Britain’s membership of the EU would have made an impact in these cases mentioned above – and I reckoned not. The UK doesn’t do much better on any of these counts domestically. The UK also has corporate interest problems, like lenient deals with big business, the latest case being Google’s tax payments ( BBC, 2016 ); it also has its own problems with democracy – the House of Lords, a whole chamber of our two-chamber parliament, is unelected; we support the IMF which carries out deals-with-extreme-strings like we saw in Greece. We shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater – an EU with flaws is better than no EU at all. Let’s not forget that there has been no war between EU members since the creation of the (then) European Economic Community in 1957. Moreover, to quote the name of a prominent pro-EU group, ‘Another Europe is Possible’ – we can reform the EU, but only if we stay in it.
Why is EU membership worth the costs? Amongst the bad, the EU does a lot of good for us all. Legislation protecting a host of rights (employment, social and environmental to name a few) means that we have basic safeguards no matter the domestic political climate. Although the European Court of Human Rights (a separate institution) defends the majority of individual rights, the European Union’s Court, the European Court of Justice, also plays a role. Being in the EU also allows the UK to access European Research Funding to open up PhD doctoral colleges, which is important both for academic advances that benefit society and also maintaining the UK’s large knowledge economy.
Personally, I am far better off in than out of the EU. I made friends all over our continent because of the Erasmus programme. I have more rights as a young woman because of the EU – an employer may not refuse to hire me in case I get pregnant, for example. I have a cleaner environment than I might without the EU, since my government is fined if it fails to provide clean air for me to breathe. I can travel with relative ease within the EU because no visas are required.
If you’re stuck on the fence about how to vote in the referendum on June 23rd, try considering what the EU really does for you, too.
Rosie Pearce
Rosie Pearce is a third year Politics and International Relations student at the University of Southampton. She founded the University's '
Young Greens
' society in 2015.
