All posts tagged European People’s Party

David Harley, senior advisor and co-chair at Burson-Marsteller Brussels, is a former Deputy Secretary-General of the European Parliament. He gives his view on the issues facing Europe in the months ahead:

Let us take a moment to peer through the Brussels autumn mist and try to see what awaits us in next year’s promised ‘European Spring’.

What are likely to be the dominant issues and major concerns facing the European Union and the European electorate in 2014, beyond the institutional aspects? Foremost in many people’s minds will be the simple question of survival, how to make do financially and make ends meet for themselves and their families.

Similarly, 2014 will be  about the EU’s own survival, at least in its present form, or – to put it more diplomatically – a period of careful consolidation, gradual recovery and adjustment after overcoming the worst of the multiple crises of the past five years (economic, financial, banking and social, with the threat of further political crises still to come).

Above all, voters will want to get a sense from political leaders that they, together with the EU institutions, will be capable once and for all of fixing the European economy, preserving living standards and providing decent job prospects, especially for young people.

Further failure to successfully deal with these issues could irreparably damage public trust in the European project. However unfair it might be, the fact that the EU was neither primarily responsible for these crises, nor has the means alone to solve them, will fail to impress European public opinion.

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