Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Life in the European Union

 This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Keep (no consensus). --Ryan Delaney talk 18:19, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Life in the European Union
A POV attempt to portray the European Union as a country with its own culture, geography, education system, sports, etc, in a similar way to the article Life in the United States. All the information here is already discussed in European Union and many other articles. JW 11:57, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, there's no false or unverifiable information, the subject matter is certainly notable, and it doesn't say that the EU is a country of its own. Europe does have its own culture, geography etc, at least to a certain extent. And while the integration process continues, this becomes more and more of an issue (at least hopefully). - ulayiti (talk)  12:03, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Europe may have its own culture and geography, but the European Union doesn't. There's no such thing as "life in the European Union", people in Sweden, Italy or Ireland live in different countries. JW 12:11, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Of course it does. And the people in Sweden, Italy and Ireland all have the common denominator of being citizens of the EU (both officially and in practice), and everything that the article states applies to them. And you must see yourself how odd it sounds to claim that there's no life in the European Union. - ulayiti (talk)  12:21, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * That's not what I said. And it is simply not true to say that the member states of the EU have a collective culture or sports that are separate from that of the rest of Europe. JW 12:38, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge with European Union. The page seems to be an accurate description of various EU policies, but the title is misleading. Martg76 12:40, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes that sounds fair. I would agree with a merge. JW 13:05, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

(talk) 17:42, 2005 August 9 (UTC)
 * Keep, perfectly legitimate topic james gibbon  13:56, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep – it is an emerging topic. Although this article can not be exactly compared with Life in the United States, a comprehensive article about the “life” in different countries of the European Union is perhaps not out-of-place. --Bhadani 15:06, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Why would we need these articles when we articles not only about individual states, but of continents, provinces, regions, cities, towns, townships, municipalities, counties, prefectures, hundreds, parishes and city blocks? What's to stop people from making a "life in..."-article for every one of these and why on earth would we need them? / Peter Isotalo 15:44, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge or delete. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, and I would certainly recommend merging or deleting the US equivalent as well. All of this should be mentioned or refered to in article like European Union or United States. It's basically an impressionistic article topic that is utterly impossible to clearly define and delimit. It could reasonably include everything from parliamentarism to knitting and can't be limited to just human activities. / Peter Isotalo 15:44, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Nowhere in the article does it imply the EU is a country or a monolithic culture. The article is merely a set of summaries of pages about the European Union and its various human and social aspects, all of which are notable. Merging with European Union (which deals primarily with its institutional and technical aspects) is not a good idea as that page is already too long. Qwghlm 16:02, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep - I certainly don't think the EU has any monolithic identity beyond the overt structures, but I don't think this article contradicts that, and I don't really see it as POV. It clearly shows how the EU - a notable supranational body - influences these areas of life, as distinct from how it functions as an organisation in itself. AlexTiefling 16:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Why do we need a separate article with a fairly confusing and non-encyclopedic scope and title for this? Why can't this be elaboreated on in European Union or articles like sports in the European Union? "Life in XXX" can mean anything and nothing and seems rather to serve some sort of diffuse portal-like function as a link to various "XXX in region/country/union Y"-articles. We have portals, we have articles for the countries, regions, unions, etc., yet for some reason we need yet another article to explain this with far fuzzier terms. Very few readers would probably ever look for this kind of information in this kind of article. This seems to be more about pleasing ourselves rather than non-participating readers. / Peter Isotalo 16:41, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. I see no problem with this, certainly not POV issues. Christopher Parham
 * Comment - There is not such thing as "life in the European Union" in a way that there could be "life in Denmark" or "life in Ireland". "Life in the European Union" suggests that citizens of the different member states are part of a single community, the way that nations or towns are. That is POV, as well as untrue, and isn't the kind of approach WP should take on a controversial subject. JW 21:12, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * It's arguably POV to claim that EU membership has no communal value, as you are doing. Please don't use VfD to promote your point of view on European politics. AlexTiefling 15:58, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. All the information is contained in other articles already. There is no need to have this as a "mirror". Sdedeo 18:32, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete for the reasons stated by Sdedeo, together with the similar Life in the United States which is currently listed for VfD as well Tonywalton 20:07, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge with Culture of Europe. Rd232 22:06, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete: content is quite shallow and overlaps with other articles. Title is misleading. Pavel Vozenilek 23:43, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. If there is any unique content (none is immediately obvious to me), merge incontinently with either European Union or Culture of Europe, whichever suits said content best. Don't create forks, please! Who would look for this content under such a title? Who would ever look for the title at all? Bishonen | talk 00:01, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete It is highly POV to suggest that most of this should be separated out from coverage of Europe as a whole. Osomec 05:52, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep or Merge with Culture of Europe. --142.163.130.240 14:42, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete: POV, redundant with the main articles referenced. jglc | t | c 17:27, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep  There are some POV problems (the various treaties aren't discussed in a historical and political context--few of them have been without controversy).  The effects of membership of the Council of Europe and the European Free Trade Area, even the Schengen Agreement, are neglected. So cleanup, too. --Tony Sidaway Talk  18:41, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
 * It's too bad that the motivation got hung up on the POV, because that's simply not the issue here. The point is that the article is basically a mirror of a bunch of other articles and nothing that anyone would ever search for if wanting this kind of information. It's just as pointless as the US equivalent. / Peter Isotalo 09:39, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete the EU is an economic association, not a country, nor a region (the region is Europe, and also includes Switzerland).     ( ! | ? | * ) 19:47, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Although there is a clearly defined 'Europe' region which includes non-EU nations such as Norway and Switzerland, it's easy enough to see that one can refer to the EU as a region, identical with the union of the areas of its member states. Such a region includes Tahiti and not Switzerland, but it's still a well-defined region. Otherwise, how are expressions like 'Entering the EU' (of travellers) meaningful?AlexTiefling 15:58, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
 * The EU is not just an economic association, it's also a political one ('ever closer union'). -- Joolz 10:36, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep - 68.72.139.4 16:32, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep --§ 00:06, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep this article is not a POV attempt at trying to portray the EU as a single country with it's own identifiable culture, rather it's a summary of a number of topics which all citizens of the EU/member states have in common (e.g. the eurasmus programmes, elections to the same parliament, Lisbon strategy etc) and therefore it serves a different purpose to other articles. -- Joolz 10:36, 18 August 2005 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.