Roza Ismailai’s Post

Young people aren't allergic to Europe. They're allergic to boring. Not to the politics. To the register. The press release. The explainer carousel. The panel about the panel. We built the most ambitious political project in modern history, and we give it the tone of a terms and conditions page. That's what I argued on Monday night in Brussels, when Newframes handed me a microphone and asked who Europe should be giving it to. I said people like me. People who grew up somewhere Europe was something that happened in other countries. Where I'm from, nobody cares what the Commission decided on a random Tuesday. They'll care if someone who sounds like them explains why it matters for their life. Because boring isn't a style problem. It's a question of who is talking. And it should be the easiest thing in the world to make interesting. Imagine pitching the European Union right after the war. Countries that spent centuries killing each other will share a parliament, a currency and open borders, within your lifetime. They'd have laughed you out of the room. One of the boldest things anyone has ever done, and we describe it like paperwork. I know how hard that is from inside an institution. There are a hundred good reasons to be careful with every word, and most of them are legitimate. One person can be bold in a way a directorate-general cannot. So it doesn't have to come from the institution. It can come from the people around it. Creators, artists, digital journalists. The ones who can take a forty-page policy paper and turn it into something a 24-year-old stops scrolling for. Not for one campaign. Not for one awareness week. For years. They're not channels. They're ambassadors. Erasmus didn't work because Europe explained itself better. It worked because Europe invested in people instead of messages, and kept doing it for decades. Nobody wakes up worried about Europe. They wake up worried about their rent. I had the microphone on Monday night. The argument I made with it is that I shouldn't be the exception. Do Europeas Believe in Europe, was hosted by Newframes, European Cultural Foundation & European Council on Foreign Relations ✨