Methmo

And while you’re at it, can you give me your opinion on something: we always struggle in the European institutions to “connect” with citizens. It’s not by lack of trying, willingness or things to say, far from it, but rather a difficulty to find the proper channels or way to get to you guys and talk about Europe. So what in your opinion are the best ways to do that?

You're asking the wrong people. Most Redditors are Americans, things are very different over there. Most of the remainder are British millenials, who are more in line with American millenials than other European youth.

The people you should want to be reaching out to are the people who are suspicious of the EU's bureaucracy, right? Especially young people.

Any attempts to reach out to these disillusioned people should avoid political overtones that reaffirm their suspicion of EU elites - such as visibly taking a pro-refugee stance, or appearing to go out of your way to be "politically correct".

You need to show these people what the EU is doing for Europeans. Not some preachy "muh humanitarian superpower" speech, but about eg: the infrastructure projects in Eastern Europe helping them to recover from communism; the farming subsidies keeping small farms alive and Europe fed; the human side of the EU bureaucratic machine (which you help to do with blogging); research grants to Universities; and how Europe standing together is helping defend individual member states' interests (such as when we defended one country from the US's bullying over visas by threatening to retaliate as a whole against the US).

I'd say Youtube adverts are the way to go. Each "advert" showcasing a project that EU money has funded, or instance the EU has defended one of its smaller members.

I've seen videos of Americans failing to point to Syria on a map, so I don't really know. But I'd assume most could outline the basics - public transport, roads, NASA, military, legal aid, etc.

Also they do at least have a more direct hand in voting for the Federal Government (I think - although the electoral college seems a bit of a complication). One of the biggest issues in the EU is the bureaucracy being seen as more distant from citizens.

you had a lot of pure lies about the EU (do I need to talk about the EU army or the NHS bus ?).

Many prominent EU figures have called for an EU Army. From Juncker in 2015, to even the more Eurosceptic politicians like Hungary's Orban.

Not that its a bad thing - I think it would be great, especially considering how both Greece and Turkey are in NATO despite increasing tensions - but in hindsight the speculation about it wasn't far off.