snowdogIt is once again almost time for the winner of the European Economic and Social Committee’s annual short video challenge competition to be announced. You can see the three shortlisted finalists at this link. They are all good in their different ways and I am certainly not going to jinx any one of them by expressing a personal preference. I must say however that I was touched by one of the anecdotes told in Marius Krivicius’s video, Better Together. An inhabitant of Vilnius, this young Lithuanian recounts a sad childhood memory of his family’s pet dog running across the frontier into Poland. At the time, they simply couldn’t follow, and they never saw the dog again. It is through such illustrations that we can understand both the benefits of the European integration process and the sad and at times tragic frustrations of what went before.