What moves people in Europe? What do you have from the EU? Yellow-West protesters in France feel disconnected – unlike the people of Ireland who are benefiting from the upswing in their country.
„People are not motivated to vote in the European elections,“ says Michel Arnal. The truck driver is 51, married and has five children. He lives in Le Puy-en-Velay in the Auvergne in the heart of France. Every Saturday he puts on a yellow vest and protests like thousands of others in the country. Arnal is angry – especially at the so-called elite debates of the French government, which decides his life in distant Paris.
The city of Le Puy-en-Velay gained dubious fame last December: the yellow vests had set the prefecture on fire. As a result, President Emmanuel Macron traveled in a night and fog campaign.
In conflict with the EU
Michel Arnal does not think much of acts of violence, but they make people listen, he says. In Brussels, says Arnal, do not count his voice. For example, if we use glyphosate, we still use substances that are harmful to health, and Europe should ban them, but they do not want that, „he says. The EU Commission had sought a glyphosate ban. However, the member states successfully resisted.
How the complex EU legislation works does not matter to the Arnal family and their comrades.
For a fairer Europe
As a truck driver, Arnal experiences the EU every day behind the wheel of his truck. He wants a fairer Europe, one in which, for example, fuel costs the same in every country. When he hears on television about budgetary discipline and economic reforms, he does not suspect anything good. „We give our money to the EU, Europe has poorer countries like Greece and Poland, and what do we have, nothing!“ He says.
That France is doing better economically today than ten years ago does not change that for him. He feels detached, no longer as part of society. From the middle of the month Arnals 1700 Euro net nothing left.
„For the European Parliament, I wish delegates coming from below who are thinking of us: people who need to bite their heads, their work, their families,“ says Arnal, adding that he and his family will be present at the European elections on 26 May they do not know who they will cast their vote for, they just know: by no means for Macron’s party „La République en Marche“.
The Irish are doing well
A completely different picture unfolds in Ireland. After many billions of euros of EU funding, the introduction of the euro and access to the EU internal market, the Irish are doing well. Construction cranes rise into the sky in Dublin’s Canal Docks district. Hip young people bask in trendy cafes.
When Ireland joined the EU in 1973, the country was desperately poor. Today it has the second highest per capita income in the Union.
Inferiority complex filed
„The EU has taken Ireland forward and helped us grow up,“ says drone pilot Niall Caroll. „We used to have an inferiority complex over England, but today it’s very different.“
Caroll benefits from the construction boom in Dublin. His most lucrative clients include global corporations like Facebook and Google, which have built their European headquarters in the Irish capital. Officially, Facebook has settled there because Ireland is English-speaking and has a deep affinity with the economic power of the United States, the company said on request. But a decisive reason is probably the low corporate tax rate in Ireland. That is 12.5 percent.
Google recently acquired large parts of Dublin Harbor, and is currently building hundreds of new offices and homes for its global employees. Every few weeks, the companies at Caroll order new aerial photographs of the construction sites. For normal mortals, the glazed high-gloss quarters are priceless. A two-room apartment sometimes costs more than 5000 euros rent a month.
