L'Europe n'existe pas

Do Europeans share any experiences, apart from Euro-elections (for which the turnout is always low), a song contest, the European Cup and travel? They don't share television. Digital broadcasting has meant many, many more channels. In the UK, there are nearly one hundred; in Spain and France around forty, depending on where one lives. (There had been fewer than ten free analogue broadcasters in the same markets.) Have any of the new licenses gone to channels which are European in scope, such as the Lyon-based multilingual broadcaster Euronews? Nope. Or to national public broadcasters from elsewhere in Europe, such as the BBC, Italy's RAI, or France Télévisions? Nope. Or to the international news and information brands of some of those same broadcasters, such as BBC World and France 24? Nope. So Europeans are told they should speak two languages in addition to their mother tongue, but must pay for media content in the languages they are encouraged to learn. So public-service broadcasters struggle to provide content for the new channels they have been allotted, yet the cheap alternative of simply carrying a feed from elsewhere in Europe has been passed over. And, in the symbolic realm of the channel surf, Europe does not exist.