I have tried to write the book in an engaging, accessible way. I’ve also tried to paint a picture of the EU as it is, and not as its supporters or critics might wish it to be.
- Dr Chris Bickerton
The turbulent events that have shaken the European Union over the last few months have been a double-edged sword for Chris Bickerton. He has been writing a book explaining how the EU works. Events, including Grexit, Brexit and the Syrian refugee crisis, have combined to make the EU “a constantly moving target”, but at the same time they have meant that the public is now interested in the EU in a way it never was before.
Bickerton, a University Lecturer in politics at POLIS and a fellow of Queens’ College, says the fact that the EU is now so high up the news agenda has meant writing the book, The European Union: a Citizen’s Guide, was quite a challenge.
“The European Union has long been seen as quite a technical organisation and for some time people have not been that interested in it,” he says. “Since the financial crisis of 2008, that has really changed. On the one hand, it was difficult to write about such a constantly moving target, but on the other hand it is an advantage that people are interested. It makes it easier to write about it.”
The book, which took him six months to write and is published this week, is part of the relaunched Pelican Series and was commissioned to coincide with the UK’s EU referendum, although it is about the broader issue of how the EU functions.
One of its main goals is to try to explain what the European Union is and what it isn’t as well as how it works, where the power lies and how it makes its decisions.
Bickerton says people have for long felt detached from the EU, something he puts down in part to the failure of journalists and academics specialising in the institution to translate its “impenetrable jargon” into terms that the public can understand.
He says: "People have a very good sense that it is important, but it seems too difficult to grasp and not that interesting. It’s not a mystery. There is a way to solve the riddle which is by not using the jargon. I have tried to write the book in an engaging, accessible way. I’ve also tried to paint a picture of the EU as it is, and not as its supporters or critics might wish it to be.”
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Image: EU flag
Credit: Wikipedia
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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