Future of the European Union

[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.