The European ‘data-society’ question and why it is important.

Source: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/RCI/#?vis=nuts2.economy&lang=en 29.4.2017

Today the EU-27 will establish its agreed guidelines for their side of the Brexit negotiations. The positions they enumerate will impact both the EU and the UK let alone a wider world. Naturally, getting the data right and in context is crucial in such matters. The trouble is that it’s not happening effectively. We may use the right data but in a lop-sided way both politically and economically. To top it all, this bias can be found in mainstream and other media reports with dire consequences.

Simply put, the headlines, including the politicians who over simplify them, are mistaken and distorting and even dangerous. Political and economic mistakes are being made on both sides as reality (the context on the ground)  hits this skewered, biased, clumsy political discourse.

An example from the UK side: alternative trade models to the EU are often used to justify a change in national, geo-political thinking.

The former UK Empire connections to the Commonwealth are often cited in various quarters but tracking and locating the data shows that this is wildly exaggerated. Good journalism picks up on this and is welcome but little of this type of thinking hits the popular media:

https://www.ft.com/content/2324edd8-2426-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0a16

On the EU side, the statement that Northern Ireland could join the EU if it unites with Eire appears on the surface logical but actually is politically explosive and a direct attack against a sovereign state. In trade and political terms the island of Ireland represents a small percentage of the economic context but in political terms, with its old ties to Irish terrorism, this is meddling that could and would probably cost lives:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/27/eu-to-debate-recognising-united-ireland-to-allow-swift-return-for-north

Why are these fundamental mistakes being made? The answer lies, in part, in the poor use of data and comparisons but most of all the narrow but ill-defined prism of over concentrated weight given to country comparisons when societies, all of them, are more complex and localised.

To counter this, the work of Eurostat is in this case exemplary.

Their regional analysis website is highly useful in exploring what is happening across the European continent: it analyses, through time and space, the development of the economy, population, health, education, labour market, tourism, digital economy and society, agriculture, transport, science and technology, and demography.

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/RCI/#?vis=nuts2.economy&lang=en

This work exposes two ‘truths’:

1. Although Europe is made up of nation-states, how we live our lives is much more regional than any national discourse allows. The reality on the ground is much more fragmented than normally, nationally displayed: there are successful and not so successful regions. They interconnect. The democratic and economic rights of these regions are the bedrock upon which national consensus has to be forged. In other words, national statistics are too broad for most of us if we need to know what is really happening where we reside and how it all fits together.
2. The European national political discourse is held by different constitutional formats which rely heavily on political parties. Those very same political parties which in the twenty-first century are patently unconnected to their constituencies (the Netherlands, the French presidential elections, the forthcoming German and Italian elections illustrate this) are consequently out of touch: a national past-ideological political party system is too frail for consistency. It is leading to poor leadership.

In the end the Brexit negotiations will end : tautological but true. If the complications of political and economic discourse are difficult to grasp, the end must be negotiated with clarity. To help us we must expect that our media and our journalists come to terms with what is the regional data reality on the ground. Few are doing so.

They can start by looking at the Eurostat data before committing to their journalistic forays into opinion.

To date, with some excellent but rare exceptions, the signs are not good. Without serious focus, fundamental mistakes will happen to the detriment of all of us in Europe.