Year: 2019

A Sojourn in Suceava

Why a sojourn?

Most of my work since 1990 has been connected in some way with the development of the European Union, its policies, its enlargement and its trade agreements. In other words, the European Union has become a fairly central part of my sense of identity.

When my own country (the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) set itself on the path towards leaving the EU, I found myself becoming stressed to the point of cracking because of one simple fact: I know too much about the realities of EU policy and trade agreements to enable me to accept the situation in the UK. I needed a period of time in which to detach myself from the day-to-day political goings-on in my country, so as to be able to relax and get things in perspective. 

Why Suceava? ... and where is it?

Suceava is the administrative capital of Suceava county (Judeţul Suceava) in northeast Romania. I had visited it very briefly in 1992, for work purposes, and again in 2018 when my wife and I spent three days there on vacation. The city itself is unremarkable, though pleasant enough; its attraction as a tourist destination derives from the beautiful painted monasteries of the Bucovina region in which it lies.

I chose Romania as my country of sojourn for one very practical reason: I speak Romanian fairly fluently as a consequence of getting on for nine years’ cumulative work experience in the country. I did not know Suceava particularly well, so there would be a certain challenge in getting used to a new city. It had the merit of being on the cheaper side of average for the main Romanian cities. Most of all, though, it offered the chance to get to know better one of the local churches that we had attended while on holiday in 2018.

I rented a comfortable but fairly basic Airbnb apartment in Suceava’s Strada George Enescu. It had everything I needed to continue my work for the two charities with which I’m involved, was within easy walking distance of two supermarkets and a Kaufland hypermarket and had a very nice pizzeria only a couple of hundred metres away. Its staff never failed to make me feel welcome. It would require only a fifteen minute walk to get me to the city centre.

 

Initial impressions

I was met at Suceava airport by the pastor of the church that my wife and I had visited in 2018, which cushioned the impact to some degree. My immediate reaction on being left alone in the apartment at close to midnight on 27th October 2019 was to ask myself what on earth I was doing. Here I was, in an unfamiliar apartment, in an unfamiliar city in a fairly way-out part of Romania, for no other reason than that I had chosen to come here. Seven weeks of food shopping, cooking, washing, ironing and all the usual stuff lay ahead of me. I felt better after buying a stack of food in the local Kaufland because it reassured me that my language skills were good enough to avoid any comment about my origins. “I’m still in the European Union” I thought to myself “and if I do get into trouble I have friends here.”

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Daily life

I settled quickly into a routine of shopping, walking around the city, cooking (or eating out if I felt lazy) and laundry. I had frequent video meetings with colleagues associated with my charity work. Communication with my family could not have been simpler, thanks to the absence of any mobile phone roaming charges within the EU. Such a pleasant change from “the olden days”! The weather was for the most part very pleasant although we did have one very cold snap about four weeks into the period.

It took me a couple of days to attune my ear properly to the local accent but from then on I had absolutely no problem with communication. Nobody with whom I spoke, who did not already know that I’m British, made any comment, more probably out of politeness than because of the quality of my spoken Romanian. The apartment had no oven, only a gas hob and a microwave; so cooking sometimes involved a bit of experimentation. Nevertheless, overall I ate pretty well and the availability of good, cheap wine was a bonus.

Church activities

I found myself very much welcomed into three churches: Baptist churches in Suceava and Câmpulung Moldovenesc and an independent free church (Calea Bucuriei) in Iaşi. It seemed almost axiomatic that I would be asked to speak on each occasion or even asked to play the piano. I met some truly lovely people in those churches, who made me feel so at home that I quickly forgot the stresses that had driven me to Romania in the first place. One of the legacies of my visit to Câmpulung was a Romanian language version of one of my pieces of published choral music. Thank you, Ilie and Mihaela, for providing me with the inspiration to complete this and thank you, Mihaela, for making my day by describing my Romanian as “exquisite”!

 

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Community and Shared Citizenship

Never at any point in my sojourn did anyone treat me as a foreigner. Never. Not even once. I had various ad hoc conversations with people in supermarkets, in stations, on trains, in taxis, in restaurants and in the apartment itself (with my Airbnb cleaning lady, who has been a real gem): and as far as I am able to judge, people regarded me as just another Romanian, albeit one who might have lived abroad for several years. It wasn’t just the language although obviously a person with less than fluent Romanian would have a different experience in some respects. It seemed to me that there was a genuine sense of “being in this together”.  Many people expressed grave concern regarding the political situation in the UK and quite rightly so in my opinion. Yet the overall feeling was one of exhilaration, of enthusiasm for a shared set of values even if the implementation might be flawed. I can say with my hand on my heart that I felt truly at home. I lost count of the number of times that people encouraged me to buy a house here.

Yes, I missed my wife and family. I would be less than human if that were not so. In compensation I learned that the European community (sic) is very real – if you will open your mind, set aside any preconceptions and interact with people as people, just like you and me.

You’ve got to love Suceava.

Epilogue

I travelled back to the UK on 14th December 2019. A few days later the front doorbell rang here at our home in the west of England. It was an Amazon guy, who needed a photo ID in order to deliver a bottle of whisky. My passport was still in the hall, so I showed it to the man, explaining that I’d just got back from Romania. “Really?” he said, “I was born in Romania.” I switched into Romanian. “Where from?” I asked. “Iaşi” he replied. I told him (still in Romanian) that I was in Iaşi a few weeks ago. “So how come you speak such good Romanian? I mean, it’s not just good it’s … grammatically perfect!” I told him I’ve worked in Romania on and off since 1990, adding that I’d just spent seven weeks in Suceava. He looked totally bemused. “I was born in Suceava” he said. I told him that I had an apartment on Strada George Enescu. At this point he was silent for half a minute, staring at me. Then he said, “I was born in Strada George Enescu.”

Eurobarometer 2019

Every year the European Commission does research in every country in the EU to find out the opinions and feelings of EU citizens. Sometimes it’s what they might consider ‘good news’ sometimes ‘bad news’. What can definitely be said is that it’s not propaganda. 

The results are published every August. Here are the results for this year’s survey.

One thing that has been of concern to all EU citizens is how much one can trust the EU, their own national government and their own national parliament. It’s been pretty level for the last few years with a very slight right in trust for the EU. This isn’t surprising as there were EU elections this year so people would look at the European Parliament more closely. 

What is also unsurprising is the country spread from 72% trusting the EU in Lithuania to 29% trusting the EU in the UK. Only 5 of the 28 countries have more than half the population distrusting the EU.

However, although there is some distrust the overall image of the EU is increasing – and quite dramatically.  Since the low point in the first half of 2016 it has risen from 34% to 45% and the negative image of the EU dropped from 27% to 17%. 

And looking at the future of the EU the trend is even higher. Now 61% of EU citizens are optimistic about the future of the EU and 34% pessimistic. All except the UK and Greece have half the or moe of the population optimistic about the future of the EU!

The most dramatic change though is how much EU citizens believe their voice is heard in the EU. Since 2004 those people who believed their voice was not heard were in the majority, with at the highest point two thirds of EU citizens believing their voice was unheard. 

This has now switched. In this survey 56% believe their voice heard and only 39% believe their voice unheard. The countries that have the lowest perception of their voice being heard are Cyprus, Latvia, Greece and Estonia where less than one third feel their voice is heard.

Along with that there is an increasing  satisfaction with the way democracy works in the EU. Again this year being a European Parliamentary election year that is hardly surprising. People see how EU democracy works first hand!

Right across the EU a majority of the population are citizens of the EU. This is internalising the factual truth of being one. Since the autumn of 2018 the feeling of being an EU citizen has increased in 22 of the 28 member states. In Cyprus this rose dramatically by 8% to 73%. 

But being an EU citizen is more than just a feeling. The survey asks which of a list of attributes of  the EU are the most positive. The two leaders by a long way are the free movement of people, goods and services and peace among the member states of the EU.

Alongside the attributes of the EU are our achievements as a community: Cheaper calls when using a mobile, improved consumer rights and other cross border protections. 

Of course as well as achievements there are concerns: Immigration, climate change, the economic situation, terrorism and so on. Immigration though still the leader dropped 6% as a concern, to the point that it is now only one of the two top concerns for one third of EU citizens.

Looking at this over the past five years one can see that concern over immigration started lower than today, peaked and is now on a downward trend. Similarly terrorism. 

But rising now, are climate change and the environment. If the trend continues these will be the primary concerns over the next few years.

Although immigration is the number one concern for the EU as a whole, at the national level it is down to number five. This probably means we can expect to see that drop further in the coming years. 

At the national level the environment and climate change are rising, but the two top issues are unemployment and the cost of living. These are normal peace time concerns.

Although those are the concerns looking back over the past five years there are dramatic changes. In 2004 nearly half EU citizens were concerned about unemployment!

Economically about half of EU citizens believe that the EU economy continues to be good and just over one third believe it to be bad. 

However, when asked about the Euro as a currency more than three quarters of those in the Euro zone are for the currency and nearly two thirds of those outside the Euro zone are for the currency. In seven countries, all outside the Eurozone, the majority of EU citizens responded against the currency.

Overall the Eurobarometer appears to show the EU in a more positive light than at any time over the past decade!


The Tale of Two Soldiers

‘This is the tale of two soldiers who have never met and who were supposed to kill each other 75 years ago on this beach – one fighting for Fuhrer and Fatherland  – Paul Galt aged 18 on D-day; the other fighting for king and country – Harry Reid barely a year older…’

So started the Channel 4 film bringing together two men in their 90’s, one German, one British. 

The British soldier joined the Salvation Army after the Second World War. But despite being committed to forgiveness he was not sure what he’d say to the man who had been on the Normandy beach trying to kill him.

Paul Galt, the young German soldier who surrendered to an American tank crew, spent D-Day 2019 at the German War Cemetery in Normandy where the black stone crosses marked the final resting places of those vanquished. Paul’s post war life was not easy – their German village assimilated into Poland where his farming father was killed by Russian soldiers and his sister raped. Paul himself was a prison of war in Scotland where he learnt English.

We are partners together in the rebuilding of the world…

When they did meet it was Harry who greeted Paul with these words: ‘I’m so glad to see you and to hold your hand and say bless you… once we were on a different sides but we are partners together in the rebuilding of the world.’

75 years ago did Harry expect to ever meet his enemy? ‘My common sense told me that there were people very peacefully minded and their voices are so often silenced.’

Channel 4 then went on to interview two more soldiers, this time both British and asked them what young people especially should take away from this occasion. Without hesitation Dickie Forrester responded,  ‘Don’t go to war ‘coz it doesn’t get you anywhere… absolute waste of time.’

Bill Gladden responded, ‘There are lots of youngsters laying out there in the cemetery… in their nineteens and twenties killed or maimed… we don’t want that happen again.’

‘Now we are friends…’
‘We are more than that, we are brothers’

The challenges and benefits of dual-nationality

Globalisation has brought its challenges. One of those challenges is that of dual-national marriages. Falling in love with someone from a different country may make you unwelcome as a couple in either country. Sometimes, it takes years to resolve where you can live in the world, which can be especially hard on the  children involved. I am the product of a mixed family, but for me, my citizenship has made it a lot easier, possibly even a blessing. EU citizenship makes it easy for people from Member States to fall in love and live almost anywhere in Europe.

My British mother and French father taught my brothers and me the pleasures of multilingualism and travelling, as they have now worked for decades as university lecturers with backgrounds in modern languages, before later specialising in law and economics, respectively.

I first enjoyed freedom of movement as a new-born baby in 1992 when visiting relatives in northern France, an inevitability of growing up in a bilingual Franco-British household. From a young age, I was made aware that the relationship between the English and other nationalities is not always straightforward. I was pestered upon countless occasions for being ‘the French kid’ in school, despite being known as ‘the British guy’ everywhere else in the world!

My parents, on the other hand, reminded me many times of how lucky I was to be a dual national. Back then I found this hard to believe, for a variety of reasons, but I now embrace it thanks to the many opportunities that have since come my way.

I was pestered for being ‘the French kid’ in school, but ‘the British guy’ everywhere else in the world!

I learned Spanish in secondary school, and was able to pick it up quickly with my existing knowledge of the French language. I was even given the chance to put my conversational skills to the test when attending a week of work experience in a music shop in Segovia (Spain), an incident that gave me a taste for an adventurous life of living abroad. Alongside this, I began to attend extracurricular German classes in 2004.

The years flew by and I went on to study a bachelor’s degree in Modern European Languages at the University of Liverpool in 2010, aiming to increase my chances of finding work further afield at a later stage. After finding out about Brazil’s growing economy and the fast development of Portuguese-speaking nations such as Angola, I picked up Portuguese from scratch whilst studying French and Spanish at a higher level. With my previously acquired knowledge of two Latin-based languages, Portuguese came to me quite easily, despite the not-so-obvious initial difficulties in pronunciation. These languages have since functioned as a gateway for dabbling in other Latin-based languages, including Catalan, Italian and even Romanian.

Students were encouraged to partake in a two-part ‘year abroad’, an essential requirement to boost our language abilities from intermediate to advanced level, before reaching our fourth and final year of undergraduate study. I chose to teach English as a Comenius Assistant at a secondary school situated in Porto (Portugal), with financial aid from the British Council.

Once I had made my own diverse group of friends and regained confidence, life abroad became easy and enjoyable.

I then studied translation and literature on the Erasmus scheme at the Universidad de Alicante (Spain). Erasmus is an EU-funded scheme with a number of programmes, one of which provides participants with a monthly bursary to support their student lifestyle in a different country. This was the first time I was away from England for more than a couple of weeks, having to immerse myself into another culture. It was of course a little daunting as I missed my family and friends, combined with the unfamiliarity of these two cities, and worrying constantly about making grammatical errors in speech. Once I had made my own diverse group of friends and regained confidence, life abroad became easy and enjoyable.

My first graduate role was in international sales for a small company based in Yorkshire, specialising in exports to France, Germany, Ireland and Spain: a prime example of an SME that relies on free trade with our neighbours. Cold-calling was not really my strong point, and I struggled to gain an interest in the pest-control products we were manufacturing, but I got to travel on a monthly basis to visit clients across Europe, which was very exciting and helped me progress my cross-cultural communication skills, from conversational to being used in a business context. It was at this point that I felt the need to study at postgraduate level, in order to broaden my professional horizons.

In 2015, I enrolled in a three-part multilingual master’s degree in European & International Business Management at the Universidad de Deusto (Spain), Audencia Nantes Business School (France) and Bradford School of Management (United Kingdom). I focussed on marketing, combining my expertise in business development with the best of my creative side. My EU citizenship has allowed me to study and work throughout Europe without any bureaucracy constraints; I have seen the difficulties imposed on classmates coming from East Asia, North Africa and Latin America when it came to dealing with an exhausting visa process.

I also experienced this stress first-hand when completing a short internship in Shanghai (China), which led onto working for one year in a Hong Kong law firm. I did find, however, that being in possession of an EU passport was very useful for travelling around the Asia-Pacific region, enabling me to discover cultures, try new foods and make everlasting friendships.

My EU citizenship has allowed me to study and work throughout Europe without any bureaucracy constraints

I have worked in various parts of the world since obtaining my masters, notably at a Scandinavian bank based in Luxembourg. I am delighted to say that, thanks to my EU citizenship, professional experiences, education and passion for multiculturalism, I landed my dream job of working for the European Commission last year, the civil service of the European Union. As a communications officer I liaise with the press and share news on the benefits that EU investment has brought each of its Member States, in an attempt to set the record straight at a time when one cannot always rely on the media to be accurate.

Personally, I have never been particularly patriotic, as I find it difficult to be proud of something that happened purely by chance. Even though my dual-nationality gave me some grief during my upbringing, I feel that it has provided me with a competitive advantage over my peers.

As well as the freedom to live, travel, study, work and later retire in any EU country, I am currently cohabiting with my Canadian partner in Brussels (Belgium), another right I enjoy as an EU citizen.  I am thankful for my EU citizenship, and believe in the ideals of the European Union at a time when protectionism is increasingly worshipped and isolation is celebrated. My EU citizenship is part of my core identity. It is who I am, and without it, I probably would not have moved out of my hometown, a feeling that chills me to the bone. EU citizenship makes falling in love and living together across borders something we can celebrate rather than fear.

Born into a bilingual Franco-British household, Olivier was raised in a multicultural context, an environment that provided him with a passion to discover the world outside England in the years to come. His goal is to learn all he can on the benefits of EU membership, from its investment schemes to citizens’ rights and freedoms, and share this information with his friends and family back home.

Cheaper calls and Emergency Alerts

From 16 May 2019 EU citizens will be better protected. The EU is putting in place a Public Warning System that will allow authorities to push essential information about threats to citizens via their mobile phones. This is also referred to as “Reverse 112” (112 is the number to call in any EU member state in an emergency), this system will be used whenever a natural disaster or terrorist act takes place so people know what to do to avoid dangers.

The purpose of this system having the technie name of European Electronic Communications Code (EECC), is to communicate information regarding potential hazards (man-made or natural) to EU citizens via their phones, through a geolocalised message-sending technology. This type of warning should allow citizens to evacuate or avoid a danger zone more quickly thereby reducing the chances of casualties.

This came as a result of two EU committees – the ITRE (Industry, Research & Energy) and the IMCO (Internal Market & Consumer Protection) working with the mobile phone companies throughout the Union to push alerts, be they a natural disaster like a flood, tsunami or volcanic eruptions, or man made like terrorism directly to mobile phones in the area concerned.

This comes in the middle of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Geneva. ‘We must respond to today’s challenges, but also think about the risks of tomorrow. The citizens of this world expect their leaders to act, and we simply can not bear the cost of inaction. EU is convinced that the implementation of an effective disaster risk reduction policy is essential to adapt to the effects of climate change and to face new emerging risks,’ said Christos Stylianides, Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, in a statement today on behalf of the European Union and its Member States.

Cheaper calls to other EU countries as of 15 May

Because the EU is a single market the digital realm is part of what we call the Digital Single Market. So on 15 June 2017 Roaming charges ended in the European Union. And now from 16 May 2019 the EU has fixed a maximum amount you can be charged for calling another EU country!

The maximum charge will be €0.19 (+ VAT) a minute for calls to another EU country, and a maximum of €0.06 (+ VAT) per SMS sent to another EU country. That’s not when you’re traveling and therefore roaming, that’s when you’re in your home country and calling another EU country.

The maximum price is only for personal use, i.e., for private customers. Business customers are excluded from this price regulation. So this really is the EU working for citizens rather than just a trading block!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVEl4_57vY0

So what happens if your mobile company is not behaving? If you think your mobile company has not respected your roam like at home rights or is charging you too much to call another EU country the first thing to do is to contact your mobile phone company and use the complaint procedure in place to contest these extra charges. But, if you are not satisfied with the response you can contact the relevant national regulatory authorities in your country, usually, your national telecoms regulator who will resolve your case.

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