Blogging about the EU seems to be like being the only one with a costume on a costume party - everyone was lazy to prepare, so they just came for the open buffet. Thus people either ignore you, wonder why you bother or wish they had the time and will to do it too. In many cases my readers applaud my persistence, but few will start digging for themselves. I found out that even those who are eager to vote, know very little about the EU, let alone the EP - not even who the candidates are. For many, eu-bloggers are uber-political - hence boring - because of the complexity of inter-member relationships and interests in the EU. So here is what I did to spice things up since January:
First, of course, I blogged in ThinkAboutIt.eu. My goal was to show a bit of the Bulgarian political reality and the target public was you - other Europeans. We know so little about each other, that we often forget how common our problems are. I got a glimpse of that on the TH!NK meeting in January and thought I should show my view of Bulgaria and what make our politics tick.
In my Bulgarian blog, I wrote a series of articles about the TH!NK initiative to ease in the idea that bloggers can and are making a difference all over Europe. I posted them well before the official beginning of the election campaign. As it turns out, the Bulgarian blogger community didn’t need much of an incentive - we have hundreds of blogs about the elections and several blogger candidates for both the EP and national elections. That is why I added “make that a thousand” - many more are doing the same as I do. It is however not as much a group effort, as a combination of many small pushes by hundreds of young and enthusiastic people.
That’s why I decided it is a good idea to write what the Bulgarian youth though about the EU. I took a series of interviews from people in their early twenties. Some of those interviews you can find here them. As I expected, the opinions are not as uniform as the media likes to present. Usually everyone between 18 and 28 in Bulgaria is put in the same group of political preferences. There are however big differences in views about the EU and where we should go with it. The only common denominate is the poor knowledge about EP affairs, but also the keen interest to learn.
I’ve put probably most effort in the ongoing campaign to allow my own community to vote. I live and study in Hessen, Germany and several thousands of Bulgarians live in the region. At least 100 people should register so that a voting section is opened in Frankfurt. That may not seem like much, but consider how hard is to make people go out and vote, multiply that by a hundred and you will see why only a few went though the cumbersome procedure that was devised by our EP election committee. We gathered all the requests, 60% of which were my contribution, but still it is not clear if we will be allowed to vote. Note also that there is no electronic and postal voting. I’ve spend 2-3 hours every day on the phone, Facebook and Skype for the part few weeks to persuade people to vote and talk to the officials in charge. I’ve also been invited to be part of the election sub-committee in Frankfurt and inspect the election process, so, as you may guess, there will be quite a lot of blogging on that as well.
I’ve used the Flip camera I got from EJC to make a number of video posts explaining the problems of voting abroad and details about the voting procedure like preference voting, required documents and so on. Some of the clips were played on TV and discussed with election committee officials and party candidates. More are coming up as news pile up and official instructions are changed in the last possible moment.
Finally, I started a series of interviews of MEP candidates from different parties. Unfortunately I haven’t had the time to translate them here. So far I’ve published 6-7, I have 4 more on notes and I am awaiting 12 to be answered. I actually have requests from parties that wish to be interviewed, which surprised me. I try to ask questions we don’t get to hear in the ads and debates like: “What comes first - EU or Bulgaria?”, “What do MEPs actually do in your opinion?”, “What do you think you lack as experience to be a MEP?” and so on.
Of course, there are dozens of campaigns in the internet, which earge people to vote and be active. I take more or less active role in several. One is the video collection “Bulgaria is yours. Vote!” named after the blogger group “Bulgaria is ours“. There we speak out our reasons to vote and end the clip with the same message. The other one is similar, but as a blog plugin that rotates all the messages, when you open my blog. I also created a special page, where I gather links to external resources and campaigns in Bulgarian for the European Parliament Elections and the EU. Many of them are on Twitter, where some parties, newspapers and individual candidates are surprisingly active.
Unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to translate everything and post it here. As I noted however on our meeting in January, to make an impact, one should target his/her efforts where they will have the greatest potential. In may case that is the Bulgarian community in Hessen, Germany and my readers on Yurukov.net. I know it worked for quite a few, because I noticed very heated discussions in political forums. Unfortunately only a small percentage really talked about the EU itself. Our focus on internal politics is something we need time to escape from. Time however is one thing we have, as we Europeans are stuck with each other for quite a long time.
(13 votes, average: 4.15 out of 5)
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Bravo! Honestly: Bravo!
But what we have to make sure is that we keep up these efforts after the elections, that we find ideas how we can make these efforts sustainable for the future so that in five years we won’t start from the scratch.
We have to find ways how we can better interrelate, how to connect our projects, our ideas. Next time, these things have to bigger, they have to start earlier, they need to reach out to larger audiences.
This time people like you have set the example what you can actually reach with commitment and personal investment - and now we have to promote these examples to make them a more common way of investing oneself in this joint European society.
In any case: Good job!
Thank you very much. I really want to continue writing on the topic, but I don’t know where my mind will be in a few months. I thought of creating a separate political blog and several of my readers have also called for that, because in the past 2-3 months I write only about politics. I decided not to however, because my blog is about what I think at the moment. Now that is EU and the elections. Next it will be the Bulgarian Parliament Elections. Then - I don’t know. Plus I don’t have the time to support another blog.
I think we need to persuade people that the EU is not an exotic topic. I wrote an article about that last month.
I can’t promise that I will still find all this interesting after a while and write about it, but the contacts I made in the process of reporting the elections could help a lot. There is a big chance I will know several of the new Bulgarian MEPs and the communication will be a lot easier.