alt Hacker NewsWhat 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.
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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?
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!)
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?
it's all paid by us EU taxpayers anyway
That's simply not true, the EU subsidy budget is dwarfed by each country's national budget. From https://eubudget.europarl.europa.eu/en/how-it-works/ :
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.