Quote Originally Posted by Tiaexz View Post
Problem with Russia joining the European Union is that the sheer population and landmass size would cause it to dominate the Union. Only way a Union would really work is the national level of government to simply disappear and be replaced by a European one, leaving the various constitutional states of the members together.
Why? Russia's got 150m people. That's Germany and UK or France put together. EU as a whole now has 500m.

The landmass doesn't really work in Russia's favour since decision making is based on population and country vote, so Russia with it's 17m sq km will have as much voting power as 20k sq km Slovenia.

It's economy is, about what, 60% of that of Germany's. Granted, with the predicted growth, it would probably become Europe's largest in a decade or two, but hardly powerful enough to dominate everyone else.

In reality, by joining EU, Russia would actually lose much of the influence it exerts over EU now.