Quote Originally Posted by HoreTore
You only mention foreign policy and the internal market here, while you forget about the idiotic bureaucracy, silly legal system, lack of democracy and Tony Blair. I really don't see why we should have to suffer the last 4 to benefit from the first 2. As for wars, well, unless the russkies start WW3, I'd say we're pretty safe. I sincerely doubt that neither Sweden, Denmark, Finland or England will come for us... And if the russkies do invade, they're more than welcome to take northern Norway off our hands.
The only good things i see in EU are free movement of workforce and business, the monetary union and hopefully in the future a mutual defense clause. While EU has very limited means of projecting power over seas, in effect a mutual defense clause would create a threat so large, that it would most probably make any other nation think twice before attacking any of the EU countries. A strict defensive pact would serve the interest of many countries lot better then current NATO, which forces individual countries to send their forces over seas to global conflicts, that doesnt create any kind of threats to the security of the European countries.
About Euro army, im more then sceptic how it would turn out. In ideal world we could make huge savings in our individual defense budgets, by cutting over arching costs, but in real world, with the huge and incompetent EU bureucracy, i think EU army would be just an huge extra cost for the member states.