After years of pain and humiliation Greece may exit Euro AND EU... PVC says...

[Husar]

This is not a problem with a small number of perverse politicians - remember all the failed referenda for the EU Constitution? Then there was the thing where Ireland had to vote twice to accept the Lisbon Treaty...

The masses have no appetite for becoming a Federal Union, many of the countries involved are ALREADY Federal Unions, they don't want to be subsumed under another level of government.

So, again, Farage is basically right - whether you believe in the dream of the EU or not, it's been done backwards and the wheels are in danger of coming off.

I said Farage and like-minde people, not just like-minded politicians.
So people vote no in referenda but do not vote in sufficient numbers for UKIP and other parties to get out of the half-arsed, obviously faulty thing that the EU is right now. Does that mean that the masses want this to be a mess? It appears as though most people are just led around by the established parties and the press, does that not make it the fault of the masses that we are in this insufficient state in Europe?

You can't blame the politicians that you reelect all the time. Maybe if you voted for someone else, but in a democracy that still means that most of your fellow nationals, with whom you supposedly have so much in common, still wanted someone else.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I said Farage and like-minde people, not just like-minded politicians.
So people vote no in referenda but do not vote in sufficient numbers for UKIP and other parties to get out of the half-arsed, obviously faulty thing that the EU is right now. Does that mean that the masses want this to be a mess? It appears as though most people are just led around by the established parties and the press, does that not make it the fault of the masses that we are in this insufficient state in Europe?

You can't blame the politicians that you reelect all the time. Maybe if you voted for someone else, but in a democracy that still means that most of your fellow nationals, with whom you supposedly have so much in common, still wanted someone else.

It has been shown, time and again, that across Europe people vote on the basis of domestic issues, not EU-related ones. Things are different at the EU level where there actually are a lot of Eurosceptic politicians, enough to demonstrate that there isn't the political will for a true Federation. The problem is that, by and large, the EU project has progressed without the consent of the masses, so people were voting for lower taxes or for a better transport system, or cuts to the military after the Cold War and meanwhile the EU project marches on in the background until suddenly Germans wake up one morning and discover that the Greek national debt is now their problem.

It's like a relationship, if you want it to succeed then you have to compromise, if you don't want it to compromise then your own self-interest is more important to you than the relationship. If the other EMU nations want Greece to remain in the Euro then they have to pay for it themselves, up front, and not "loan" Greece cash it can never pay back.

It should have been clear to everyone this wasn't going to work back in 1992 when Soros forced Britain out of the EERM - and toppled the last Conservative Government in the process.

[Pannonian]

It has been shown, time and again, that across Europe people vote on the basis of domestic issues, not EU-related ones. Things are different at the EU level where there actually are a lot of Eurosceptic politicians, enough to demonstrate that there isn't the political will for a true Federation. The problem is that, by and large, the EU project has progressed without the consent of the masses, so people were voting for lower taxes or for a better transport system, or cuts to the military after the Cold War and meanwhile the EU project marches on in the background until suddenly Germans wake up one morning and discover that the Greek national debt is now their problem.

It's like a relationship, if you want it to succeed then you have to compromise, if you don't want it to compromise then your own self-interest is more important to you than the relationship. If the other EMU nations want Greece to remain in the Euro then they have to pay for it themselves, up front, and not "loan" Greece cash it can never pay back.

It should have been clear to everyone this wasn't going to work back in 1992 when Soros forced Britain out of the EERM - and toppled the last Conservative Government in the process.

At least the England-Scotland relationship is up front with the realities and the solutions.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/e...eal-looms.html

After all that it looks like the Greek government would rather bow than accept leaving the Euro, so the pain continues, Greeks get poorer and the EU is even further from genuine, meaningful, reform.

[Pannonian]

I said Farage and like-minde people, not just like-minded politicians.
So people vote no in referenda but do not vote in sufficient numbers for UKIP and other parties to get out of the half-arsed, obviously faulty thing that the EU is right now. Does that mean that the masses want this to be a mess? It appears as though most people are just led around by the established parties and the press, does that not make it the fault of the masses that we are in this insufficient state in Europe?

You can't blame the politicians that you reelect all the time. Maybe if you voted for someone else, but in a democracy that still means that most of your fellow nationals, with whom you supposedly have so much in common, still wanted someone else.

I'm quite happy with a half-arsed EU, if by that you mean a common market, common mentality which allows us to work in concert as a political and economic bloc, and I'd like us to work even closer as a military bloc a la NATO, whilst still accepting that different states have different interests. I'm wary enough of my country's government to want more interactions with them, and I certainly don't want closer involvement with an even more remote government. It doesn't mean I reject involvement on an individual level with the rest of the EU; I feel even closer to other Europeans than even to Americans and other Anglophones. Possibly except for Antipodeans, who are essentially English with a different accent.