Young Irish voted NO to Lisbon Treaty
By Adriano on Friday, June 20 2008, 13:20 - Ideas - Permalink
This post is also available in: Italian
65% of young people voted NO to Lisbon Treaty.
Is it a generational or a social divide?
According to the last Eurobarometer, only 35% of under 24 people in Ireland voted NO to the referendum.
Moreover, 31% of people still in education (students) voted yes and 69 voted NO.
Old people seem then more pro-Lisbon than their young counterparts as the only class of age who voted YES are the 55+ with 58%.
Is then Europe a project for old people? For this blog, focused on Eurogeneration, this is a clear dilemma. We've been building the media you are reading also with enthousiastic Irish people. OK, those people were Erasmus, so they beneficiated from exchange programs.
We can then conclude that the generational gap exist but that maybe the social divide is more important in this field. Indeed, 74% of manual workers voted NO while 60% of self-employed preferred YES.
The conclusion for an open-minded EU leadership: wake up guys! Invest into Erasmus and other mobility exchange programs 10, 100 times what you put today instead of wasting money in agriculture.
Otherwise European project will keep being an élite stuff.
Adriano
Comments
"Young Irish voted NO to Lisbon Treaty"
Clever boys!
Will Erasmus solve the problem though?
@ anonimous
Not at all. But in the long run, this is part of the solution to the euro-apathy.
But I would like to share with you the thoughts of a Brussels-based freelance journalist of Irish origins, Angela. She well knows her country:
"Younger people were much less likely to vote in the referendum (a ratio of 2:1 when compared to older voters). This is largely due to political apathy on the part of younger people in Ireland, but the fact that the referendum took place on a Thursday also needs to be addressed. Most young people are registered to vote in their home constituency and many are working/studying in the large towns. A very large number of Irish students also travel abroad for the summer, and the date of this referendum meant that many students had already left the country.
Of the young people who did vote, the majority voted "no". (In the 18-24 years old group 65 percent voted no). Many people voted no for the simple reason that they were utterly confused and felt there was a lack of information. Many young people I spoke to felt it was hard to find unbiased information and didn't know who to trust when listening to the pros and cons. The treaty also came at a bad time for the country, a recession had just been announced, and for the first time young voters who have only lived through the Celtic Tiger had to contemplate an insecure future. Many people felt that a no vote would keep the EU the way it is. It was the "safe" way to vote. A vote against the Treaty was not a vote against Europe - 80% of those who voted "no" support Ireland's membership of the EU. "