Not at all, those are simply the biggest ones that would be recognised by Americans. Another recognisable project would be the Erasmus program or interrail, or ESA(remember the cute spacecraft philae, yep that was not NASA but ESA https://twitter.com/philae2014?lang=en).
EU has tons of projects with smaller or even larger scale, usually in areas that are not supposed to yield profit but has large impact to trade and life quality of the citizens, preserve peace and food security. Mostly boring stuff, EU is not a for profit company that will design the next iPhone, it's this organisation that does the stiff that individual countries or companies are not willing to do or simply cannot do but it needs to be done.
>By which upper middle class kids get a free year of holidays abroad at the taxpayer's expense. No results expected.
I don't know why you would say that. Me, my brother and a lot of people I know benefited from these programs and we are not even a middle class. Now we do better but back then the times were tough.
Frankly, a semester abroad with Erasmus is more of partying and networking than studying but people keep these connections and the poorer people who could have never been able to afford it can actually afford it.
Many times, poor people stay poor because they lack networking and perspective. Erasmus is a fantastic program, especially for the disadvantaged students, at least they know what's out there and know some people.
I fully agree - travelling and doing something in foreign countries together with people that come from different backgrounds & religions & nations completely demolishes prejudices, helps to learn to adapt and to respect other people and to develop the mindset needed to try to understand how other people think and behave, etc... . 25 years later I'm still using stuff that I learned during that period.
I'm rarely totally in favour or against something but in this case I can see only positive things.
EU has tons of projects with smaller or even larger scale, usually in areas that are not supposed to yield profit but has large impact to trade and life quality of the citizens, preserve peace and food security. Mostly boring stuff, EU is not a for profit company that will design the next iPhone, it's this organisation that does the stiff that individual countries or companies are not willing to do or simply cannot do but it needs to be done.