Don’t let EU use taxpayers’ money to brainwash kids

Of all the news stories you could imagine, by far the least surprising is that MEPs are considering setting up a website designed, as some have described it, to “brainwash” children into supporting the EU.



By: Stephen Pollard
Published: Wed, March 13, 2013



The website will be used to target children to endorse EU activity

The plan is to target children by using “playful” techniques to lure them on to the site.

The reason no one should be surprised is that the EU already spends a fortune on propaganda.

After it lifted the lid on this latest planned EU campaign, this newspaper was yesterday subjected to an extraordinary attack by the European Parliament Information Office. An anonymous online article accused the Daily Express of warping the meaning of “propaganda” by using the term to describe its plan.

What makes this all the more sinister is that it isn’t a fortune that the EU spends. It’s our fortune.

Every year, the EU takes over £2billion from us in taxes which it spends on what it calls “communications” – more than Coca-Cola spends on marketing.
It relentlessly pushes the line that any opposition to the EU is deluded and that ever-closer union is the only way forward.

As its “Information and Communication Strategy” puts it, the aim is to “boost awareness of the EU’s existence and legitimacy, polishing its image and highlighting its role”. Indeed, the Commission even admits that it pushes propaganda rather than fact: “Neutral factual information is needed of course but it is not enough on its own… Genuine communication by the EU cannot be reduced to the mere provision of information.”

One particularly unsavoury aspect of this is the decision to target children. In recent years the EU propaganda machine has produced a barrage of materials aimed at schools. The aim is to implant in children’s minds the notion that the future depends on the EU and that only the EU is virtuous.

As the European Parliament’s strategy document puts it: “Research has shown the social and political perception of young people starts at a very early age.”

Last year the European Commission’s publication manager Judith Schilling was caught on video letting slip what is going on: “We will never succeed in convincing people about the value of being a member of the European Union if we do not start early enough with the young people before they form prejudices and are misinformed by other sources.” It is chilling.

Any opposition is “misinformed”. Any thoughts which are not pro-EU are illegitimate. Much of the work is designed to seem harmless. Brightly coloured pencil cases with the EU logo are handed out to pupils. Then there are EU colouring books such as Let’s Draw Europe Together.

But it is of a piece with more clinical efforts, such as the regular indoctrination seminars for teachers designed to get them to push the EU’s virtues.

Many people have spoken out against the costs of EU propaganda that their taxes are contributing to


ny opposition is “misinformed”. Any thoughts which are not pro-EU are illegitimate. Much of the work is designed to seem harmless.

Material offered includes a video on the Commission’s site entitled Passport To The EU, with “fun” information about the 27 member states.

“The EU: What’s in it for me?” explains to teens “how we benefit from membership of the EU in our daily life, everything between lower roaming charges and cleaner bathing water”.

Even when it implements projects not primarily part of the propaganda machine, the Commission finds a way.

We’re all familiar with the EU flags on building projects that receive EU funding (although there is no such thing since we pay in far more than we get back).

Take the EU School Milk Programme. Schools which want to take advantage of the free milk have to display an EU poster outside their canteen.

But despite their unrelenting propaganda the commissars are in a panic over next year’s Euro elections. They can see ever-rising hostility across the EU – not just in the UK.

As a secret EU paper put it last year: “In order to reverse the perception that ‘Europe is the problem’, we need to communicate that the answer to existing challenges… is ‘more Europe’ not ‘less Europe’.”

And so they are spending £2million of our money to fund a cadre of officials who will monitor the internet for so called anti-EU “trolls”, against whom they will launch a blitz of attacks. Under their plans, £2.5million is being spent on “seminars, symposia and cultural activities” – an 85 per cent increase.

Another £4.3million is devoted to “audio-visual information” – a 36 per cent rise.

So while the EU’s citizens face a diet of austerity and cuts, the EU itself is taking ever greater sums to spend on selling itself and attacking its opponents. Forget any idea that the EU’s bureaucrats are impartial civil servants.

They are foot soldiers in the EU’s propaganda army. Projects include £82million on the House of European History, which will “promote awareness of European identity”.

The communications budget also pays for Gongos – Government Organised Non-Governmental Organisations. Supposedly independent organisations such as the Centre for European Policy Studies, European Movement, Europe for Citizens and Friends of Europe are in fact funded by the EU and pump out the same craven Eurofanatical line.

It is both shameless and shameful. These people are so consumed with their own sense of destiny and righteousness that they see all opposition as somehow immoral.

It is our money. It is our future. And it is yet another reason why we need to take back control of that future.

pgmason wrote:
It's the Express - hardly a bastion of balanced Journalism.

The plan is to target children by using “playful” techniques to lure them on to the site.

 d-usa wrote:
It's like a parallel universe, where the UK = the US, and the EU = the UN and crazies = crazies...