By voting in the European elections, everybody with an EU-28 nationality, including workers in ship supply companies, their partners and their affiliates living in the EU, get to choose the 705 members who will represent them in the European Parliament until 2024. As with all elections, voting in the European elections is about choosing your future, our joint future. It is about choosing what kind of Europe we want, including the kind of economic and trade policies we want. Voting in the EU elections is about taking control. Some people voice these days an anti-European sentiment, claiming that the introduction of the Euro was a failure and Europe is too much in the veins of the European society, interfering in matters like the thickness of tea pot walls, how straight a banana should be and everything in between. Yes, maybe Europe is interfering too much in Europeans’ daily life or maybe it should be even more.

 

But Europe is there and Europe is there to stay, interfering less or more in our lives, but interfering. As we speak, we see what issues a country has to deal with after deciding to leave the EU and this phenomenon has caused a lot of Eurosceptic parties throughout the continent to reconsider their wish to say goodbye to “Brussels”. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, achievements of “Europe” is that for 75 years we have been living in peace in this part of the world, after having had, for centuries, bigger and smaller, longer and shorter, wars. Apart from the older ones, present decision makers tend to lose sight of that achievement, and have a tendency, together with younger generations, to take this status quo for granted. However, we all know (look at the dissolution of former Yugoslavia, the Killing Fields in Cambodia, the civil wars in modern Africa and the like) a civilised layer on society, ensuring civilised behaviour and mutual respect, can be very thin.

 

Yes, “Europe” has made mistakes and it will continue to do so, but let’s keep talking. And let’s keep voting, when we have the possibility. The European Parliament is coming closer and closer to the people, certainly after the Treaty of Lisbon. And it was Winston Churchill who said: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”. The fact that it is claimed he was quoting some unknown source, does not diminish the important meaning of the words.

 

Regardless of what you think should be the right way: VOTE !! It is important that we continue to be actively involved in “Europe”, for our general well-being, for society, economy and, as important, for the European Ship Supply.