What Did the Europeans Ever Do for Us?
Brexit, Brussels and the Things We Didn’t Realise We Had
If you’re of a certain age, you’ll probably recognise the reference.
In the 1979 Monty Python film Life of Brian, a group of rebels gather to discuss their hatred of the Romans.
One of them asks:
“What have the Romans ever done for us?”
What follows is one of the greatest comedy scenes in British history.
Aqueducts.
Sanitation.
Roads.
Irrigation.
Medicine.
Public order.
Each contribution is reluctantly acknowledged until the original question starts looking rather foolish.
Nearly half a century later, Britain found itself asking a remarkably similar question.
What has Europe ever done for us?
For decades, newspapers had carried stories about Brussels bureaucrats, regulations, directives and committees. The European Union was often portrayed as a distant institution issuing endless rules from across the Channel.
And something rather interesting followed.
People gradually began discovering that many things they had assumed were British were not British at all.
Some were European.
Some had originated in Brussels.
Some had been fought for by British politicians working within European institutions.
And some were things that most people had never even realised existed until they were threatened.
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The Strange Invisibility of Success
One of the challenges facing any government, institution or organisation is that success often becomes invisible.
Nobody notices when the traffic lights work.
Nobody writes newspaper articles about bridges that remain standing.
Nobody praises a company because its payroll system processed wages correctly for another month.
We tend to notice things only when they stop working.
The European Union suffered from exactly this problem.
Many of its most significant contributions became part of everyday life.
People simply assumed they had always existed.
Or that they had originated in Westminster.
As a result, the EU often received criticism for the regulations people disliked while receiving little credit for the protections people valued.
From a marketing perspective, it was a disaster.
The EU became a textbook example of poor brand attribution.
The Cheap Flight Revolution
Let’s start with something most Britons have benefited from.
Cheap holidays.
Today, booking a flight from Southampton to Malaga, Birmingham to Prague or London to Rome feels entirely normal.
For younger readers, it is difficult to appreciate how different things once were.
Prior to the liberalisation of European air travel, flying around Europe was significantly more expensive.
National airlines dominated routes.
Competition was limited.
Prices remained relatively high.
The creation of a single aviation market helped change that.
Airlines could compete more freely across European routes.
Low-cost carriers expanded.
Weekend city breaks became commonplace.
Suddenly, destinations that had once felt exotic became affordable.
The rise of carriers such as Ryanair and easyJet was not solely the result of EU policy, but it was heavily enabled by it.
Millions of Britons who enjoyed cheap European travel were benefiting from European integration, often without ever realising it.
Your Delayed Flight Might Have Been Brussels’ Fault
Or rather, your compensation might have been.
Anyone who has successfully claimed compensation for a cancelled or severely delayed flight has probably benefited from European legislation.
Passenger rights became one of the EU’s most tangible contributions to everyday life.
Airlines, unsurprisingly, were not always enthusiastic.
Passengers, unsurprisingly, generally were.
The interesting thing is that many people only discovered these protections existed when their flight was delayed and somebody pointed them towards a claim form.
Good policy often works like that.
You only notice it when something goes wrong.
The End of Roaming Charges
For years, travelling abroad involved a familiar ritual.
Before leaving Britain, sensible people would disable mobile data and promise themselves they would only use Wi-Fi.
Then somebody would accidentally open Google Maps for thirty seconds and return home to discover a phone bill large enough to fund a minor military campaign.
The abolition of roaming charges across much of Europe transformed that experience.
It became possible to use your phone abroad much as you would at home.
It was one of those rare political achievements that people immediately understood and appreciated.
No lengthy policy briefing required.
No economic modelling necessary.
Just lower bills.
Politicians dream of delivering benefits that obvious.
The Food on Your Plate
Food standards are one of the most contentious aspects of Brexit.
Supporters argued that Britain could establish its own standards outside the EU.
Critics worried about potential divergence.
Regardless of where one stands politically, it is difficult to deny that European regulations shaped much of the modern food system.
Standards relating to food safety, labelling, traceability and animal health became deeply embedded within British food production.
As someone who works within the pet food industry, I have seen first-hand how regulatory frameworks influence everything from sourcing to manufacturing.
Many consumers rarely think about these systems.
That is understandable.
Most people simply expect food to be safe.
The moment it is not, however, the headlines arrive quickly.
The Workers’ Rights Debate
Another area that frequently generates disagreement is employment law.
Paid annual leave.
Limits on excessive working hours.
Protection for part-time workers.
Parental rights.
Many of these measures were shaped, influenced or strengthened through European legislation.
That does not mean Britain could not have implemented similar protections independently.
Indeed, in many areas it already had.
The important point is that European institutions played a significant role in developing employment standards that millions of workers came to regard as normal.
Like so many aspects of EU membership, these protections became so familiar that their origins faded into the background.
The Research Nobody Notices
One of the less glamorous aspects of the European project involved research funding.
Universities across Britain benefited from collaborative programmes involving scientists, engineers, medical researchers and academics from across Europe.
These projects rarely attracted front-page coverage.
Most people understandably pay more attention to inflation, immigration and football scores than research grants.
Yet many scientific advances emerged from precisely these kinds of international collaborations.
They represented one of the quieter success stories of European integration.
Quiet success, unfortunately, rarely wins elections.
Why the EU Struggled to Tell Its Story
Looking back, perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the Brexit debate was not what people believed.
It was what people didn’t know.
The European Union spent decades creating systems, protections and frameworks that affected everyday life.
Yet many citizens remained unaware of them.
This represents one of the greatest branding failures in modern political history.
The EU became associated with bureaucracy rather than benefits.
Regulation rather than outcomes.
Committees rather than consequences.
As Philip Kotler has argued throughout his work, value creation and value communication are not the same thing.
The EU often focused on the first while neglecting the second.
As a result, many of its achievements became invisible.
And invisible achievements are notoriously difficult to defend.
So, What Did the Europeans Ever Do for Us?
The answer, as Monty Python might have predicted, turns out to be rather a lot.
- They helped shape passenger rights.
- They contributed to cheaper air travel.
- They influenced food standards.
- They supported scientific collaboration.
- They reduced roaming charges.
- They strengthened various workplace protections.
Whether these benefits outweighed the costs of membership remains a matter of political opinion.
Reasonable people can disagree.
But it is difficult to argue that the answer is “nothing.”
Verdict
One of the enduring lessons of Brexit is that institutions often fail to explain their own value.
The European Union may have been many things – bureaucratic, complicated, frustrating and occasionally maddening.
But it also helped shape aspects of modern British life that millions of people took for granted.
Like the Romans in Monty Python’s famous sketch, Europe may have suffered from a peculiar problem.
People became so accustomed to the benefits that they stopped noticing them.
Until somebody asked the question.
TL;DR
The European Union influenced far more aspects of British life than many people realised, from passenger compensation and mobile roaming charges to food standards, research funding and workplace protections. Whatever one’s view of Brexit, the idea that Europe contributed nothing to modern Britain does not stand up to scrutiny. One of the EU’s greatest failures may simply have been explaining its own value.
