2017 will be filled more votes on the EU
medium.com
medium.com
- The 88% poll appears to be conducted amongst (online) Telegraaf readers (here is an online version: http://www.telegraaf.nl/watuzegt/25920298/__Britten_moeten_i...) which is a bit comparable to the British 'Daily Mail'.. It's very anti-EU, and while it definitely has a large number of readers, the 88% is not at all representative of the Dutch population.
- The Ukraine referendum is mentioned, specifically: "The agreement itself is not that critical but the vote was widely used as a vote on the EU itself. It went against the EU by 61% to 32%, albeit on low turnout of only 32%.". The low turnout is relevant, a lot of people decided to strategically not vote in order to signal their dislike for the referendum itself. Although the minimum turnout (30%) was barely reached, the fact that this turnout was so low - combined with the fact that the anti-EU parties implicitly marketed it as an anti-EU vote - signals to me that much fewer people would vote against the EU in a referendum similar to the British one.
There is certainly a lot of anti-EU sentiment, but this article does appear to cherry pick its sources.
> It makes a bit more sense when you realise that the man doesn’t actually like democracy
Why does this mean he doesn't like democracy? He doesn't like direct democracy, but he loves our indirect democracy. I don't see the need for a referendum in the Netherlands, the next parliamentary election is coming up soon and if people want to leave the EU they can vote for the Socialist Party or the Party for Freedom, both want to leave the EU.
> The Dutch have a lot to lose from Brussels forcing a UK/NL trade war on them.
We have a lot more to lose from Brussels forcing a NL/DE trade war, if we decide to leave the EU. Economically we're practically the 17th Bundesland of Germany.
> He’s also survived a prosecution for “inciting hatred” (he was found not guilty).
Geert Wilders is facing more prosecution for asking his followers whether they wanted more or less Moroccans in The Netherlands, after which they chanted "Less! Less! Less!".
The basic assumption of democracy is that people can make good decisions. It must be so even in indirect democracy because otherwise how are voters meant to judge the track record of their existing politicians or the manifestos of new ones?
You can't argue on one hand that people are too dumb to understand the issues and on the other that people should select representatives that do because those representatives (a) come from the existing population and (b) aren't supposed to be elected on the quality of their smile but rather their policies.
I'm sure Mark Rutte believes he is a democrat, whilst simultaneously ignoring referendums and pretending nobody wants them. I think that's a nonsensical position.
The second Wilders prosecution is interesting. Whether one likes his position or not is irrelevant, it was political speech. If the Dutch courts decide to jail (?) the countries most popular politician for talking politics, well, I would not be in .NL when that happens ... sounds like the kind of thing that can spark civil unrest.
> We have a lot more to lose from Brussels forcing a NL/DE trade war, if we decide to leave the EU
Yeah, but at that point Brussels would be fighting a trade war on two fronts. How much tolerance for conscription into a fight for the power of the EU elites do the ordinary people in Europe have?
The Czech Republic is already calling for the resignation of Juncker, I see. Things look volatile.
I think immigration is a great thing, but I would have voted to leave. The EU is a great idea, but it should be limited to trade deals and trade enforcement. The single currency and the unifying political body are a bridge to far.
I don't think the Brexit is a referendum on Globalization or the Post War Order, I think it was a referendum on the limits of sovereign unity on a continent divided by many languages and cultures. The US is much less diverse and has, effectively, one language and it has trouble doing anything at the Federal level. Was there really any real hope that the EU could accomplish something an order of magnitude more grand?
Edit:
I would like to add that any democratic institution that has the power that the EU does, but the incredibly low turn out (EU turnout makes the American midterms look positively Athenian) and the high number of backlash candidates (a good number of EU MPs are actually anti-EU) that it does is doomed to be voted down by its body politic. The EU might not die, but it will for sure get scaled back.
And Europe is not that diverse. Many of us are Christian descendants of the Roman empire or of Germanic origins and share mostly the same values, beliefs and even culture. Sure we have our local customs, art and preferences, but a majority of the TV movies and shows we watch and of the books we read and of the news we hear about are pretty much the same, with slight variation. Many of us also learn English, French or German since primary school. Note English is not my native language and here I am, communicating with you. Such education was maybe uncommon 50 years ago, but there's nothing another generation or two can't fix.
I don't really understand your concerns. What's the problem in the single currency or in the unifying political body? The only problems I'm seeing are those that could be solved by having an actual political union.
You speak of sovereignty. In case you haven't noticed, there's the US hegemony, there's the rising China hegemony and who knows, Russia might make a comeback, with its maniacal daddy included. United we'd be stronger. In fact it is the EU that's the biggest economy in the world. But divided we'll be at their whims, we'll be strong-armed into any treaty they want. And divided we are.
This backs up my claim. Though our homogeneity wasn't the result of the war.
> And Europe is not that diverse.
I don't even. It's fairly white...But not diverse? Are you kidding?
> What's the problem in the single currency or in the unifying political body?
Disproportionate outcome of opportunity. Greece voted fat pensions and benefits for their citizenry (as did Spain and Italy) and in order to protect the currency and the political stability of the EU Germans are stuck footing the bill. Common currencies work when it is relatively easy for anyone (including lower classes) to up and move within the region of the common currency to get a new job. The diverse culture, language differences, and disparate sovereignties in the EU make this difficult. Hence the bailouts and the blowback.
>divided we'll be at their whims
United you're holding each other hostage. You guys look like the Microsoft org chart right now. Cf http://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011...
What. You are either extremely disinformed, malicious or just plainly racist to believe and redistribute that kind of wrong information.
If the Germans had to pay Greece's, Italy's and Spain's debt they would be bankrupted for a couple of centuries. It's actually those very same countries who are paying their own debts through austerity measures and increase of taxes (which doesn't seem to work really well, but that's a different discussion).
Germany has grown so much thanks to those countries spending money on German manufactures, with money lent mainly by German and Dutch banks. It has been all a massive scam where North Europe has used the corrupt politicians in South Europe to siphon all the money of South European citizens. They took the risks gambling with the money of Northern European citizens.
This is and always have been a class war, not a national or race war. Those of you who can't see it are doomed to be puppets of others.
Not that I'd mind a consultive referendum on each article, but a comparison with the US bill of rights doesn't make much sense.
(Also, not all democracy has to be direct democracy and plebiscites are not always the best thing)
That doesn't seem accurate. Turnout for the last 4 midterms vs. EU parliament elections:
EU 49.5% 45.4% 42.9% 42.6%
US 39.5% 40.4% 41.0% 35.9%Edit:
USA numbers are artificially low, because they don't account for felons and the incarcerated population (of which the US has a high number, about 3 million people now).
This chart shows we have better than EU turnout if you calculate based on eligibility rather than voting age: www.electproject.org/2012g
Sure, the Troika and the EU (especially Germany and France) chose a path that created a lot of suffering for the Greek people in the short run, but bear in mind that Greece brought itself into this position by agreeing to become a part of the Euro zone and doing so using highly "creative" ways to mask their bad metrics to fulfill the stability criteria. If anyone is to blame here it's the EU for taking Greece into the Eurozone and the Greek government back then for eagerly grabbing that opportunity while ignoring (or not knowing) the risks. What we should learn from this is that strong political will alone is not sufficient if the underlying fundamental economic values are wrong.
No more than 5-15% ever passes through Greek hands.
IMHO, Europeans need to act together on a personal level. If people forget about "French", "German", "Italian", "Greek", etc. in their minds for a while, this union will be a huge benefit for everyone. This will probably give a better european parliament which should realize the problems and act as one.
At this point most of the countries think for themselves, because of the pressure of populist ( actually that's why Cameron did this referendum, right? ).
We've been trying to get an answer to the second question, "How to make EU better", for almost 10 years now. Unfortunately, every time the EU has an opportunity to change, the answer the Eurocrats give is the same: "Let's keep pretending everything is fine." I'm guessing it was last summer that they managed to convince the EU cannot change (from within) with their (mis-)treatment of Greece.
However, all of these things together have created a very strong feeling of not knowing our futures, and not having any control over it. I can say that Merkel is a very hated person over here, as she is seen as the leader of the EU, and the one who was setting all the rules that was destroying rights that people here have been fighting for during the last 40 years.
There are a lot of issues with the EU, and at this point its getting harder to find solutions for the issues at hand. If we wanted to save it, there would be some very big reforms i think. Starting with a big restructuring of the banking systems. You can not expect the different regions of Europe to work in the same way, it never has, and never will. Until this is accepted, we will keep on seeing the same results: Things are fine while the money flows, but once it stops, everything falls apart. You could get away with grouping "similar" countries into regions: such as the Scandinavian Union (cant remember the name). Another example from experience is for example Spain + Portugal + Italy + Andorra and maybe France. These countries work in similar ways and are very culturally alike.
But is it really the Eurocrats who are blocking progress? It seems to me like most of the blame should go to the European Council. Whenever I see the Parliament (or really anyone) push for meaningful reform, it gets blocked by the Council.
Instead of blaming our national politicians for their failure to push for (or even allow) reform in the Council, we keep electing them and blame the EU for their failure.
If the issue is that they're suffering from a kind of groupthink (and I strongly suspect they are) then having one of their members tossed out and replaced by someone who is actually against the group might be sufficient to break it.
I ask because while I may agree in principle with your ideas I would like to stress that it's a bit difficult, on a personal level, to go over considering yourself French, Greek or whatever when your thoughts are framed in a language which is Greek or French or whatever. Take citizens from any two random US states: they still have more in common than people from two different cities in Belgium, just depending on which language is in the majority in the area.
I was born in Bulgaria, currently living in Berlin, doing IT.
I think the culture is indeed different between the member-states, but not so hard to overcome if you are acting together and vote.
To be honest, I think that Europe (and, by extension, the whole world) will unite one day. With modern communications and transportation people from different countries have far more intense contact than ever before and that will inevitably lead to blending into single community.
The problem is that this process must take some time, and by "some time" I mean "centuries", and EU officials try to speed it up to few decades.
They of course have political opinions, watch TV and vote. But they - I suppose - lack the kind of experiences you had in Berlin.
So you either take off their voting rights (UE Commission would not mind at all, I suppose) or you have to accept that USE is not gonna work.
My relative fluency in English is the exception in Italy and in Rostock, too (moved here two years ago so I think I can say something on this matter).
In other words if you think that every citizen in UE has the same command of English (and the same propensity to think globally, assuming I have any and it is related to English) you are wrong.
Isn't that the underlying idea of the EU - we're all the same, all in it together, etc. I think this is exactly what has gone wrong - head in the sand regarding differences. Everyone likes their own culture, hence population clustering and ghettoisation. On the contrary, I think the differences need to be acknowledged, and compromises allowed to let people manage as much of their own affairs in their own way as possible. People can't complain about the EU if the EU isn't forcing anything upon them.
Sometimes, the best way to force change is for one party to walk away from the table and force a reset.
I'm amazed at how the Brexit is being cast as the end of History itself. Life will go on. Trade, travel, immigration, other treaties will come into being - probably much along the same lines as what was working directly with the EU.
Perhaps the EU will undergo some fundamental changes that will make rejoining look more attractive to the UK.
What about: It's 2025 and the EU and the UK will still exist, still trade with each other?
Britain's Anti-EU stance had a completely broader base than in any other country and for a much, much longer time anyway.
N. Ireland just isn't going anywhere.
Scotland, most likely yes. But there will be a huge exodus of business from there to England. Not the other way around.
Also wales, again not going anywhere.
What you and many other commenters need to understand is that the populous/economies of the other countries in the UK are tiny compared to England.
If they were to leave, they would almost certainly get bullied in the EU.
The Scots who think they will be independent whilst being in the EU? I don't think so. They would get slapped down harder than a Red Headed Step Child!
There's also nowhere in Europe such a strange alliance between libertarians buccaneers (Johnson) and hardcore reactionaries (Farage).
Protectionists and reactionaries on their own would not win a referendum anywhere.
Well he doesn't have a lot of chances to be reelected, but I wouldn't say Marine LePen would get elected.
Political parties are imploding, but that's their own fault for backing one side so heavily.
My worry is the political turmoil will turn into economic troubles. If we elect a solid out leader, who has sensible plan and lays out dates for the plan then a lot of the economic distress will dispear.
The parties are shooting themselves in the foot ATM, by not accepting it and just working out a decent plan. Economic pain at the moment is caused by uncertainty of not knowing whats going on more than anything else.
And a lower currency actually gives the economy a boost.
I fully expect everything to fall again because of the drama of over weekend. That should have been completely avoidable
> The gbp went down, however it started going back before the market closed.
That's an interesting interpretation: http://i.imgur.com/XL2K38H.jpg
There will be eventually a bounce back, but were not even close to it, the markets will go up slightly when Article 50 will be called then spiral down again depending on the outcome of the negotiations.
The UK stands to lose the most out of this, most estimates it would lose considerably more than it pays out to the EU even without a recession, and with it more than double.
The Leave supporters already said that none of that money would go to the NHS and that there won't be a positive financial benefit to leaving the EU within the foreseeable future, realistically that foreseeable future is probably at least the next decade.
The UK has a huge debt, the GBP is spiraling down the drain they'll have to increase the interest rates which would harm the already dying UK housing market, the Job loss projection especially from large multinationals is pretty steep and international investment in the UK is expected to be considerably cut if anything short to a (effectively EEA membership) full free trade and FMP agreement with the EU reached.
Whats worse is that with the UK having already the most expensive undergraduate education in the world the UK youth is now going to lose their ability to study in the EU for free, that is expected to both reduce the amount of skilled labor available in the UK especially if you decide to kick all those Polish "plumbers" that arguably are more educated than the average brit who voted "leave" it would just inflate the UK student debt even further and considering that even now the UK student debt is unbearable you are just compounding your problems.
Not to mention is that the BrExit put the fringe on the political map, the UK public policy is already horrible, this is a country that has lost respect to freedom of the press, freedom of speech, a country where punitive imprisonment of upto 7 years can be cast on being unwilling on giving up your password or encryption keys to law enforcement even if you are not charged with any other crime and one of the front runners for to become the new PM - Theresa May supports mandatory internet censorship (sorry "obscenity filter") as well as warrantless access to your entire Internet browsing history.
If anything the UK needs the EU only not turn full V for Vendetta on you.
So yes the EU is a shitty bureaucratic and partially non-democratic mess but the UK is far far worse without it and same goes for the majority of Europe. I don't understand how people claim to want to go back to the good ol' days when the good ol' days were Europe fighting over the Rhine over and over and over.
I don't particularly care if it has a short term impact. Everybody knew that.
I care about 10/20 years in the future.
"Not to mention is that the BrExit put the fringe on the political map, the UK public policy is already horrible, this is a country that has lost respect to freedom of the press, freedom of speech, a country where punitive imprisonment of upto 7 years can be cast on being unwilling on giving up your password or encryption keys to law enforcement even if you are not charged with any other crime and one of the front runners for to become the new PM - Theresa May supports mandatory internet censorship (sorry "obscenity filter") as well as warrantless access to your entire Internet browsing history."
And sticking with an organisation that repeatily ballots a country until it gets the 'right' answer is a good thing? I don't think EU is exactly great for civil liberties
I Live in the UK under a Tier 1 Visa (exceptional talent) now also with high earners exemption the BrExit doesn't affect my status but I am already planning my leave, losing access to the shared EU market and the overall notions of the politics that drove this entire debate are just disgusting, and I am a conservative, I believe in strong defense, deterrence, a free market economy, and immigration control but the UK would get nothing it didn't had before by leaving the EU and it would only remain weaker both politically and economically for decades to come.
I'm happy for you that you "got your country back" but I really don't think you understand the implications of this at all.
P.S. I wonder how everyone would react to the BrExit after Amazon cuts about 70% of the products on Amazon.co.uk and Netflix cuts all those European distribution rights show :<
This is completely silly. There many countries outside the EU with the full range of Western goods and media? What makes you think we can't get that?
Most likely we will move to the EEA so we wont lose access to the market. I'm actually pro free movement.
One benefits from this, is that immigration from outside of the EU may actually become easier.
Amazon only delivers books and a limited number of other items to those countries. Try ordering things from Amazon.com about 90% of the tangible goods do no ship to the UK and the 10% that do incur an import duty.
P.S. Immigrating from outside of the EU if you are a high skilled worker is already incredibly easy getting a Tier 2 sponsorship from a british company is a joke, it costs about 600 GBP for the company and its usually completed under 6 weeks.
That's not the same as having trade deals outside of the EU. Which is what were going to do. We also have standard wto options.
If immigration is that easy outside of EU, what's the issue?
Try ordering something from Amazon or Ebay to Iceland, or Israel, or HK or Australia, Japan, or you know even Russia all have pretty damn good trade deals but all are pretty damn fucked on imports.
You are really betting on many things the EU has a strong incentive to give the UK the worse deal possible and that's honestly what they must do in order to prevent a domino effect, infact the EU can drag their feet for 2 years and force the UK to leave without any agreement once Article 50 has been initiated.
I see you've never lived in a western, modern country that has free trade agreements but is not the EU/US(NA/CA) and you have no idea just how considerably shittier (and expensive) it is when it comes to western goods, media and services.
Also let's stop calling the UK the UK, It's Britain now It's pretty clear that Scotland in the least would split and probably remain in the EU and that Ireland would either seek a reunification or a deal on it's own.
Personally, I think there is a place for limited acceptance of refugees, but first priority should be keeping people in the region they are from, not hundreds/thousands of miles away and expect different cultures to readily accept a large influx of a group of individuals who may/may not accept the culture they are being relocated to.
Maybe world powers should do more to settle down the unrest there. That said, a couple hundred years of meddling is hard to undo.
Yes the EU has economic problems in the South, but they are nowhere near Soviet-level problems. Eastern Germany was one of the better doing (de facto) Soviet states and is still far behind the West today after 25 years of subsidies.
The EU has a problematic image, but it is not like mother Russia looking after its child states. The commission has no direct elections, because the member governments which negotiated the treaties (remember, this is just a union of states) do not want elections. They want to send in their own guys. The image is so bad, because nobody knows anything about it and local governments blame it for everything. They abuse it to get laws passed and can later blame on the EU.
Many of the standard the EU creates are quite good. Think of roaming or USB chargers for example. Yes, they are regulating many things, but that's because they cannot do anything else. What we really need is not less EU but more. First of all better integration on the financial side of politics. We cannot share a currency without a joined budget/tax system. After that we can work on things like police, military, maybe even social systems (which would stop the discussion what EU citizens should get from the state).
My point is that political unions are often painted as eternal, but the USSR proves it's possible for a huge integrated trade bloc to disintegrate within just a few years.
That said, I do not get the sense that the people running the EU actually care about the prosperity of their citizens much, nor democracy, and they do have a love of central planning ...