Brexited in Bologna: Eleanor Chapman

The first weekend of my year abroad in Bologna, I tried to use my Camcard for the reduced entry to the Pinacoteca Gallery which students at European universities can enjoy. I watched the steward’s brows furrow and lips curl before he flung my card on the desk, hands flying in the air in a typically Italian flurry, and spat ‘ma voi inglesi, siete fuori!’

‘You English, you’re outside!’ You have left the EU. You are no longer a European.

After a few blinks I started to argue: ‘well, no, not quite yet, actually…’, but the Italian for ‘parliamentary mandate’ didn’t immediately spring to mind, and eventually I just handed over the extra three euros and left him to the satisfaction of being a ‘proper’ European.

But of course this was much more than a quibble over three euros. I have always lived in a Britain within the EU. I have always envisaged a future within the EU. I have always identified as European as much as – if not more than – British. Brexit shook me deeply, as it did many, it didn’t seem ridiculous to be recently asked if Brexit was too emotional a subject to discuss.

I am part of the first cohort of British students to study or work abroad after the EU referendum. The experience of living in Europe as a ‘not quite yet, actually’ Brexited Briton has been an odd one. In a bar, or on a bus, or sitting around the kitchen table, my accent will inevitably provoke a (always hilarious) ‘Brexit, eh?’ jibe. I’m never quite sure how I’m expected to react to these transnational prods: I am, unsurprisingly, aware that the UK voted to leave the EU, and I am, unsurprisingly, not overly thrilled about it. But my understanding of what exactly ‘Brexit means’ is as murky as anyone else’s.

“Being European is not 12 stars on a passport, but the striving for “a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail”

Living in Europe in this ‘midway stage’ after the referendum, while the form of a post-Brexit Britain is still so unclear, leads to some identity probing. However, interactions with other (I can still say ‘other’?) Europeans, have allowed my sense of being European to settle a little. Reactions to Brexit – from a Trentino wine merchant gleefully rubbing £50 notes together when the exchange rate rose immediately after the referendum, to a Neapolitan student of medieval Scandinavia, fearful for his academic future – have helped me realise that being European is not 12 stars on a passport, but the striving for ‘a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.’ The values at the heart of the EU, laid out in the Treaty of Lisbon, ‘the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities’, which formed the basis of mine and many others’ European identity, have not been obliterated by the Brexit vote. In this sense, I am not fuori – although Brexited, I remain a European.

Identity Crisis: Livia Fries

The ongoing European Union identity crisis has brought to the fore the need to reconnect with values attached to the European project. My relationship with Europe is a deep-rooted sentiment which I had never come to question before arriving in Cambridge: I am a French and Italian citizen, who’s lived in Brussels and is now studying in the United Kingdom. And  I can’t understand why a country would want to withdraw from an entity it has helped to build. Arriving in the UK, I realised that friends referenced my origins as ‘European’, as opposed to theirs being ‘British’. My accent was European, where I came from was Europe.  Just as I have never questioned my status of European citizen, I have never thought of an all-encompassing European identity which would override my attachment to my country. Probably most of my friends back home feel the same.

“Euroscepticism is no longer a British prerogative, expression of a proud island – it is a continent wide movement.”

On January 24th, the EU released its third Citizenship report to highlight the European Commission’s priorities in raising awareness on our rights as Europeans. Over 87 per cent of us are aware of our EU citizenship.  But if we understand the concept, why is there a crisis of identity? Could it be that the British and the people of the Continent simply do not have the same vision of Europe? What some fear as an imposition bent on changing their way of life, others accept as an added value to their national status, permitting them to travel, work and live where they choose. Churchill once said, ‘we are with Europe, but not of it.’ It may be that we need to accept this obvious truth. But this is not the end of the story. The European project is at a crossroads. Euroscepticism is no longer a British prerogative, expression of a proud island – it is a continent-wide movement. People are putting into question the purpose of a superstructure which claims to bring together a myriad of distinctive nations. But if our EU identity is worth fighting for, we must find out first what exactly we want it to be, especially in a time when so many flee to our countries.

Question of History: Peter Chappell

Britain has never sat easy with its place in Europe. We were late to the party, applying in ’61 and joining in ’73. We watched on as the mainland became more and more integrated and saw ourselves as set apart; an island which has waged war with the continent for much of its history and whose political discourse was increasingly shaped by Euroscepticism.

This narrative of British identity taught to children in schools is almost unanimously one of opposition: we fought off the Armada, we fought off the Nazis, we are democratic and Europe is authoritarian and ideological.

The horrors of the Empire and the reliance Britain has had on its allies are swept under the carpet. If you were to believe AQA History GCSE, the only contact we had with Europe throughout the 19th and 20th centuries were the World Wars (both moral victories) and the competition for imperial colonies in Africa. There are many reasons why this country voted for Brexit, but I sincerely believe that dismal teaching of the French language and of our involvement in the First and Second World Wars played its part.

Let’s be honest, we were taught the history of England, not Britain. If you are from Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may have been taught some regional history, but these differences only entrench the divides in identity across Britain. An early conception of British identity is not taught early on, and so it is left to the likes of Nigel Farage to define it as warm ale and steam trains.

Compare this to the culture which exists in Strasbourg. It was once a place of confused national identity, being in the region of Alsace-Lorraine, an area which has switched hands between France and Germany multiple times. Now, however, it has embraced European identity wholesale. EU flags are flown outside shops, residents speak German, French and English. Locals would define themselves firstly as European. This wouldn’t be right for Britain, but it shows the gulf in identity between two areas both governed by the same EU.

No wonder we have a difficult relationship with European identity when we have such a difficult relationship with ourselves. We lost an empire and have been left clueless as to how to work with our neighbours ever since. The good news is that our generation has chosen Europe. We have friends on Erasmus courses, we love French, German, Italian culture. We see what America is becoming, and look to Europe. The bad news is that the rest of the country disagrees.

EasyJet Generation: Lucía Keijer-Palau

In 2013 the Ad Agency VCCP ran a campaign for EasyJet based around the idea of ‘generation EasyJet.’ The campaign was pan-European: its videos and posters were run across ten different European countries. The idea was simple: this was the most connected European generation ever, all thanks to an unprecedented ability to book a cheap flight and hop on a plane.

The neat ad-speak both reveals and obscures. To characterise, as the campaign did, an entire generation as the “early risers for the airport cab” is something of an assumption regarding how many young people might be prepared to fork out £60 to get onto an airplane and pay for a holiday. But it still hints at some truth. Those aged between 16 and 24 have not only grown up in a world where the EU’s existence seemed an established norm, but come of age after key acts that drew the union tighter and tighter together, from the Single Market to Schengen and Erasmus. Even if the UK remained outside the Schengen Area, the principle of free movement was easy to take as a given when you’ve never known anything else. Given this, that 75 per cent of 16 to 24 year-olds are estimated to have voted to remain in the EU last June was hardly shocking.

Brexit and I: Student perspectives

The European identity which the EU promoted was a great post-war project meant to tie the people of Europe together as one, never to repeat the horrors of 1939-1945. But identity and the like is much more complex than an identikit one-size-fits-all European model. British millennials who grew up in an era where European conflicts were squabbles over whether Britain should join the Euro are likely to have a sharply different understanding of Europe to those who grew up at a time when Western European conflicts were somewhat bloodier.

The EU manifestly failed to foster a broader sense of pan-European identity in Britain. Yet as parliament prepares to vote for the triggering of Article 50, it might be time to revive something of that 2013 EasyJet campaign and to stake out our claim as Britain’s European generation