Future of the European Union

[edyzmedieval]

This is going to be complex, and quite debated.

In essence, what we have right now in the European Union is a complicated junction with many roads, none of them clear - where do we go from here? The EU is not in an ideal shape, and political leaders realise this by trying to appeal to the EU-skeptics portraying the EU project as a unificator of Europe. These approaches have worked to some extent but it's clear the impact of Brexit will be hard and it will be a contentious issue for many many years.

So where do we go from here?

Economically, at this moment, we are on a relatively sound footing. But we have trade wars.

And what social wise? Cultural wise? Trade wise? Inter-exchange wise (Schengen)? Diplomacy?

Take your picks, where are we going?

[rory_20_uk]

Is this where is the EU going or where should the EU go? Even then is this based on ideals or on the reality of the world as-is?

Eastern Europe seems to want different things to Western Europe and there's also a split between the Northern states and the Southern states.

Continuing as things are help avoid showing all the fractures.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I've always thought the EEC was a wise move, and that spreading it to the former Warsaw Pact would be wise. I have always been less sanguine about the EU.

[edyzmedieval]

Both where it should go... and where it will probably go.

And yes, you're correct, Eastern Europee wants different things but not necessarily all of EE. Romania is more open to more integration.

[Fragony]

Can wait for it to die, and just go back to trade. I will get what I want.

[Husar]

I will get what I want.

Your country being a tank refueling stop on the way to France?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Your country being a tank refueling stop on the way to France?

You lot avoided it in the first 'War to End All Wars,' and if the Netherlands had ceded that bit South of Roermond to Belgium before the war you'd have probably given them a pass in the second iteration 26 years later. Darned inconvenient bit of geography for the Dutch that panhandle.

[Fragony]

Your country being a tank refueling stop on the way to France?

Things itching again with you guys?

[HopAlongBunny]

Not everyone would agree, but I think the EEC is a brilliant bit of policy.
To really make it work almost requires some form of political integration (imo); confederated states not a unitary state.
To allow for richer supporting poorer members there has to be some sense that WE are in this together, and it has to be based on something besides shear terror at the prospect of Russia finally getting it's act together (although that helps...)
But is such an arrangement destined to be forever a "hub dependency" structure?

[Beskar]

United States of Europe.

[Husar]

To allow for richer supporting poorer members there has to be some sense that WE are in this together, and it has to be based on something besides shear terror at the prospect of Russia finally getting it's act together (although that helps...)

I think younger and more educated people are more likely to see it that way.

And I personally see Russia as a smaller "threat" than global corporations. A corporation that makes more money than a country's GDP will simply not be bound to the laws of that country and I don't see why people think their nation is somehow so great that it can resist. In the worst case a corporation will get a more powerful, bigger country to subdue the smaller one because it has the bigger one sufficiently deep in its pockets as well. See the Argentina thing or several countries being forced to let children smoke or the quote from the Australian media mogul about Downing street doing everything he wants while the EU ignores him.

I simply don't get how people can think a world with small countries and enormous corporate (and personal) wealth in the hands of a few would somehow be good for them. Must like being puppets I guess, praying to be among the better-off puppets.

[HopAlongBunny]

I think younger and more educated people are more likely to see it that way.

And I personally see Russia as a smaller "threat" than global corporations. A corporation that makes more money than a country's GDP will simply not be bound to the laws of that country and I don't see why people think their nation is somehow so great that it can resist. In the worst case a corporation will get a more powerful, bigger country to subdue the smaller one because it has the bigger one sufficiently deep in its pockets as well. See the Argentina thing or several countries being forced to let children smoke or the quote from the Australian media mogul about Downing street doing everything he wants while the EU ignores him.

I simply don't get how people can think a world with small countries and enormous corporate (and personal) wealth in the hands of a few would somehow be good for them. Must like being puppets I guess, praying to be among the better-off puppets.

I agree.
In fact corporations have other advantages.
Transnational corp's are largely beyond the law in many real senses, further they have nothing but up-side to pushing the boundaries of "mere national" law.
"Oh but they get fined! and sued! and bad-mouthed"
Minor cost of doing business, and only if you get caught. Simply looked at from the point of view of economic size, the fines are laughable.
Even with a "slam dunk" criminal case, charges are unlikely to be laid; their lawyers are better, and their budgets are bigger.
The scariest thing about the E.U. is that it makes a school of sardines into a whale; harder to capture or ignore...possibly dangerous.

[Shaka_Khan]

What happens in the Brexit will affect an EU country's opinion on its own exit. From what I heard, the pound has weakened and the salaries have gone down. And the imports became more expensive.

[Fragony]

What happens in the Brexit will affect an EU country's opinion on its own exit. From what I heard, the pound has weakened and the salaries have gone down. And the imports became more expensive.

A small price for being a sovereign state, it is not realistic that we follow suit with the current political party-kartel but one can hope

[Pannonian]

A small price for being a sovereign state, it is not realistic that we follow suit with the current political party-kartel but one can hope

Are you coming over to live here any time soon? Or are you going to continue to praise the virtues of Brexit from the safety of Dutchland, deep within the heartland of the EU?

[Fragony]

Are you coming over to live here any time soon? Or are you going to continue to praise the virtues of Brexit from the safety of Dutchland, deep within the heartland of the EU?

No bought an apartmentment here, but consider yourself lucky, the EUSSR now demands 300.000.000.000 extra, for an overhead that is totally useless, with a drunk and a failed Dutch politician who nobody ever elected running the show and telling other countries what to do, even what to think

[Husar]

No bought an apartmentment here, but consider yourself lucky, the EUSSR now demands 300.000.000.000 extra, for an overhead that is totally useless, with a drunk and a failed Dutch politician who nobody ever elected running the show and telling other countries what to do, even what to think

As opposed to this forum only having a normal dutch guy telling us what to do and think about the EU?

[Fragony]

As opposed to this forum only having a normal dutch guy telling us what to do and think about the EU?

Do you think I am the only one that thinks about the EU like I do, that is why the eurocrats want censorship of free thought. And an army. It is so ugly.

[Husar]

Do you think I am the only one that thinks about the EU like I do, that is why the eurocrats want censorship of free thought. And an army. It is so ugly.

No, but three people on a continent of 500 million still don't make a majority and the rest of that sentence is just a conspiracy theory based on nothing but opinion.

[Fragony]

No, but three people on a continent of 500 million still don't make a majority and the rest of that sentence is just a conspiracy theory based on nothing but opinion.

Feel free to think so

[Pannonian]

Do you think I am the only one that thinks about the EU like I do, that is why the eurocrats want censorship of free thought. And an army. It is so ugly.

Over here, as you'd know if you actually lived here rather than pontificating about it from overseas, it's the Brexiteers who are censoring free thought and opposition, accusing dissenters of treason. MPs, judges, and now the Lords who've upheld parliamentary sovereignty over cabinet rule have been named and shamed as enemies of the people. Do you agree with this?

[Furunculus]

What EU will we get?
My thoughts from a few years back - not significantly changed with the arrival of brexit/macron/etc.

Does Brexit maximise regional harmony (read: the EU)?

That depends on [why] we choose to exit, and [whether] the EU finds a happy outcome for the lack of political legitimacy that hamstrings the economic integration necessary for monetary union to survive. Crucially, it also depends on whether choosing to exit helps or hinders the EU in finding that happy outcome.

There are two visions for Britain outside the EU:

1. One is the Tory driven Vote Leave. It will be business oriented (low regulation), and follow three centuries of Tory foreign policy (outward looking). This is the ‘Singapore on steroids’ version, a high-growth / low-protection model that reverts from social-democracy to market-economy.

2. The second is the UKIP driven Leave.eu. It will be worker oriented (high regulation), and be captured by the reactionary left (inward looking). This is the ‘Belgium on steroids’, a social democracy unencumbered by the market orientation of the EU Commission, and with little use for elective warfare.

There are two visions for Britain inside the EU:

1. One is a German driven Europe of rules. It will be business oriented, and Greece will come to be the template of a ‘wide’ Europe with no sense of common solidarity. This fractious stasis will nevertheless require us to integrate to fight for oxygen in a low adaptability / low growth bloc. Member nations might eventually come to engineer out some of the imperfections of Maastricht and Lisbon, but it will be an antagonistic and inward looking bloc.

2. The second is the French/Italian European people. It will result from peripheral Eurozone members choosing to leave monetary union, and accession states simply refusing to join. In doing this, the six founding members will recognise the common solidarity necessary to legitimise a transfer union at the core of Europe. A core able to integrate, a periphery happy to cooperate, this EU would be able to focus on more than zero-sum maneuvering.

A large number of interacting components whose aggregate activity is nonlinear and typically exhibits hierarchical self-organization under selective pressures. Hey, you just described a complex system, I demand you now give me easy answers!

I’ll try:

On the outside, we do at least have a simpler calculation.

Vote Leave won the official designation of the Brexit campaign. With Labour in disarray, if Brexit wins the day then we are looking at Singapore on steroids. We only get the full benefit of this if Europe finds the wherewithal to move beyond the current fractious stasis…

On the inside, it’s a lot trickier.

Everyone understands that the twin aims of a wide Europe with a common currency are totally incompatible. You can have a pre-Maastricht intergovernmental Europe as wide as you care to expand it (no transfer union required), but the EU has gone too far for that now and yet we’re still inexplicably wedded to the idea of ever-closer-union (which demands common solidarity). It sometimes feels that without some creative destruction there is no way for Europe to move beyond paralysis.

From the point of view of Britain; is the EU more likely to achieve the French/Italian European people with us inside (as an advocate for the divergent needs of the periphery), or outside (where the shock of Brexit breaks the fractious stasis)? If we leave, and a German driven Europe of rules persists, will we exacerbate Germany’s unwanted and unhappy dominance (forcing non-euro nations to join, or leave entirely)? If we stay, will it be harder for France to accept that a European People does not need to include every EU nation (thus beginning the core/periphery realignment)?

This is the essential question that nations are wrestling with when they look at the Macron vision of EUrope.

What EU do I want?
I want an EU that does not force the little nations to knuckle under the 'consensus' thrashed out by the bigger boys.
Britain was big enough and ugly enough to carve out the opt-outs it needed, but that is not true of many of the smaller nations.
For this reason i would have been very happy with a remain vote if Belgium had not demanded that exemption to ever closer union must apply only to britain. A more callous and selfish act I have rarely seen!
Since this was the result, i'd be more than happy if we ended up back in EFTA, with the intention of creating a power block to push back against ever closer union.
To be clear, my aim is not to obstruct European nations from going where they want to go, but to prevent the EU from steamrolling nations that don't wish to go with them.

[Fragony]

Over here, as you'd know if you actually lived here rather than pontificating about it from overseas, it's the Brexiteers who are censoring free thought and opposition, accusing dissenters of treason. MPs, judges, and now the Lords who've upheld parliamentary sovereignty over cabinet rule have been named and shamed as enemies of the people. Do you agree with this?

Well yes. You can never be too early to identify totaliritism. Maybe I will change my mind if I read more, but so far so good.

[Pannonian]

Well yes. You can never be too early to identify totaliritism. Maybe I will change my mind if I read more, but so far so good.

You agree with the painting of political opponents as traitors? Putting faces and names on the front page of a national newspaper and labelling them as "enemies of the people"?

[Husar]

Well yes. You can never be too early to identify totaliritism. Maybe I will change my mind if I read more, but so far so good.

You think the EU has totalitarian tendencies, but you kinda like Trump, think Putin is harmless?

[Fragony]

You agree with the painting of political opponents as traitors? Putting faces and names on the front page of a national newspaper and labelling them as "enemies of the people"?

Newspapers are nothing more than lifestyle magazines printed on dead trees with some casual news included, and should be treated as such

[Pannonian]

Newspapers are nothing more than lifestyle magazines printed on dead trees with some casual news included, and should be treated as such

Easily dismissed by someone living in Dutchland, who doesn't have to face the consequences of that of which he spouts. Just like the 90s neolibs whom I despised.

[Greyblades]

What happens in the Brexit will affect an EU country's opinion on its own exit. From what I heard, the pound has weakened and the salaries have gone down. And the imports became more expensive.

The EU has a tightrope to cross: to accomidating a departure would undermine the EU's necessity, too punishing and they would risk reminding the east of the warsaw pact.

Of course with our current lack of leadership its probable any punishment might be indistinguishable from May's self destructive flailing.

[Pannonian]

The EU has a tightrope to cross: to accomidating a departure would undermine the EU's necessity, too punishing and they would risk reminding the east of the warsaw pact.

Of course with our current lack of leadership its probable any punishment might be indistinguishable from May's self destructive flailing.

Polls across the EU indicate Clemenceau more than the Warsaw Pact. Nearly everyone wants to squeeze the UK until the pips squeak for this decision of ours. A moderate government might look at the margin and decide the mandate isn't there for radicalism. But the Leavers have interpreted the result to mean that the victor gets the spoils while the vanquished gets ground into the dirt. No matter how little the actions have in common with the promises of the Leave campaign.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Polls across the EU indicate Clemenceau more than the Warsaw Pact. Nearly everyone wants to squeeze the UK until the pips squeak for this decision of ours. A moderate government might look at the margin and decide the mandate isn't there for radicalism. But the Leavers have interpreted the result to mean that the victor gets the spoils while the vanquished gets ground into the dirt. No matter how little the actions have in common with the promises of the Leave campaign.

Clemenceau is better than Lincoln. Lincoln saw to it that a secession attempt was punishable by force of arms.