I know its a small nitpick, but I got unreasonably annoyed at the two "Financed by EU fund x" banners having different flag sizes, paddings, fonts etc.
How is there no unifying design language for these?
Is there any design? It's just the flag and a title + subtitle.
Also, the EU is the most efficient government in terms of overhead, and having seen some of it up close not wasting time or money on "unifying design languages" for every single funding billboard is very much EU style. Just copy-paste by some local authority in Powerpoint in most cases, I bet.
Looking at the modern iterations of the program guidelines for these programs, especially [1] and [2], you basically have to use the flag, the text over, under or to either side of the flag (your choice) in one of 6 fonts (Arial, Auto, Calibri, Garamond, Tahoma, Trebuchet, Ubuntu or Verdana), and have some rules for minimum distance, minimum size and proportionality. They absolutely could have made those two match visually. But each program offers premade banners that match the design criteria, and those don't always harmonize. As you say, nobody cared
What are the funding billboards for, anyway? They're an eyesore, and it's all paid by us EU taxpayers anyway. They should say "financed by you", or better yet, not exist to begin with.
The EU budget [..] accounts annually for around 1% of the EU's GNI (gross national income), or around €160-180 billion. National public spending by EU countries averages nearly 50% of their respective GNI.
I'm not sure I understand your comment tbh. Where does the money come from, if not from EU taxpayers?
> the EU subsidy budget is dwarfed by each country's national budget.
My comment had nothing to do with that.
The page you linked has a question "How is the budget funded", which lists the revenues:
> Another difference between the EU budget and national budgets is that the EU lacks direct taxation power to finance its budget and instead relies on revenues called “own resources”.
> These revenues are:
> - Custom duties on imports into the EU
> - A small part of the VAT collected by each EU country
> - A contribution based on the amount of non-recycled plastic waste in each EU country
> - National contribution from each EU country based on its gross national income (GNI). All member states contribute according to their share in the combined GNI of EU countries. This is the largest share of the own resources.
They put them up with and without the EU funding info, right? Here most is not EU funded, but there are still signs, because how else do you know what is going on? Or are big construction projects completely unsigned where you live?
They used to be unsigned. I agree it's good for the funding to be transparent, but a government and/or EU-wide website would be fine to list the supported projects. No need for ugly signs.
I mean, see Brexit; there's a bit of a "what have the Romans ever done for us" aspect to a lot of euroscepticism. Some of the more Brexit-y regions were also amongst the poorest, and thus the largest beneficiaries of EU funding (eg https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/26/cornwall-fea...)
The idea is to show people the benefits of the EU, essentially. It is unclear how well it works.
Cornwall, say, had reason to feel hard done by; it was the second-poorest NUTS 3 region in Northern Europe. It's just that they were directing their ire at Europe, and not at the national government where it belonged. All but one of the ten poorest NUTS 3 regions in Northern Europe were in the UK pre-Brexit (along with the very richest NUTS 3 region, inner London), and there's a reason for that.
(Of course, the problem is now solved by Brexit; as the UK no longer participates in Eurostat, _none_ of the poorest regions in the Eurostat statistics are in the UK!)
Yes, I remember Wales received a lot of EU funding for infrastructure and there used to be those "funded by the EU" signs everywhere. They voted in favour of Brexit.
I think this sort of things does little to convince people. The road network was there and working before the EU, it is still there and working now.
Especially, people were well aware that the UK was a consistent net contributor to the EU budget so knew that EU funding for infrastructure was not reallly a benefit.
Well, except that in the UK the devolved nations (Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland) receive more funding from the government than England does. For instance, Wales received 20% more money per person than England does.
Devolution itself also means that, effectively, the UK government is in charge of England while the devolved governments are in charge of their respective nations, so just looking at which projects the UK government funds is misleading.
So, it is not accurate to say that regions are neglected, and you might even argue that ultimately the South East of England and England overall fund the whole country...
Overall, I do not know if that was specifically a benefit for Wales. Obviously in the end the Welsh decided that the cons outweighted the pros, anyway.
I (pro-EU Austrian) think they are great, as they show that we also get huge benefits through our EU membership and that we can do such enormous megaprojects only together
Also, eyesore? What do you have against the EU flag?
They do get made at national level. That's because, for example, what to build is decided at national level, then they bid for EU funding as part of financing of the project.
Basically yoy bid to get some of your money back...
How is there no unifying design language for these?