Is the UK part of Europe?

The first big shock for a European studies graduate

One of the first big surprises for me as somebody coming here from continental Europe was to find out that when Britons say ‘Europe’ they don’t mean themselves and their country. They mean the continental Europe, like ‘Europe’ was somewhere else, but not here. This is so different to how my friends from other European countries identify themselves and also different from how we see Britain – when we say ‘Europe’, we do include Britain in it.

I feel there are two elements of this ‘not being Europe’ identity. One of them is a strong individual distinctive identity of this island. Coming from continental Europe you will notice all the obvious signs of doing things differently here: driving on the left side of the road, having two taps in the bathroom and using the imperial measuring system (good luck with learning that one!). You will try to understand what cricket or netball is, and why people here have no idea about volleyball or handball. You will find out every English town has a Boots, a Marks & Spencer, a Costa coffee shop and a WHSmith’s, and every little village has a local pub serving a Sunday roast. You will get used to a fact that a sandwich can be eaten together with a bag of crisps and that this is the favourite food combination for lunch (not mentioning that crisps can actually be inside the sandwich!).

Things here are done their own way, which seems to be considered THE way to do things.

Second element, perhaps a result of the first one, is a relatively little interest in Europe as a whole. This can be noticed not only in the public and political sphere, but also in everyday life.

Let’s take an example from my professional life here. When I worked as a manager of European-funded projects in Liverpool, we recruited young researchers (PhD students) for very competitive and prestigious fellowships, which required recruited candidates to move to another European country and work on a research project there for three years. I noticed we always had quite a small number of applications from the UK, although we offered a salary 2-2.5 times higher than a standard PhD stipend here. While I observed a small number of British applications in four of such projects, I still thought this might just have been a coincidence, so out of curiosity I checked the statistics of the Erasmus+ programme, one of the most popular and successful European programmes which offers opportunities to study and train in another European country. They confirmed my own observations. As an example, in 2017, 47k people from the UK participated in various forms of Erasmus+. France, with a similar population to the UK, had 90k participants in the programme. Even countries with smaller populations like Italy, Spain or Poland, had significantly higher numbers of Erasmus+ participants than the UK. Why is there such a small interest in the programme amongst British students and professionals? Does it mean they travel more often to study or train outside of Europe or rather just stay in their own country? I don’t seem to have an answer to that.

This ‘not part of Europe’ identity does not seem to have anything to do with a negative approach towards Europe, although it may seem so nowadays with the whole Brexit mess. Some like to explain it is a historical thing of having interest in various parts of the world other than Europe, like links with the Anglo-Saxon culture countries or Commonwealth. It all probably adds an element to this attitude, which to me seems to come mostly from a strong individual identity and self-centrism. Whatever the reason for this attitude is, its biggest manifestation is simply the fact that many Britons just don’t think about themselves as Europeans.