Is Europe Disintegrating?
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Please keep in mind that this isn't any sort of stupid anti-Muslim rhetoric, just a geopolitical observation. I think if you look at the United States you'll see a model of Muslim integration.
In short: Nationalism in, Globalism out.
Not only that, but when you have centralized power it becomes much easier to corrupt and politicize. There's wisdom to decentralization.
However, many of the predictions like currency devaluation and market loss, that were dismissed as expert scaremongering tactics, did occur.
1. The pound dropped 22% in value after the referendum [1] 2. A 13% drop in the FTSE from referendnum to present [2]
[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-15/pound-dro... hard-brexit [2]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-13/what-can-...
Nor is it right to equivalate different fields of study, such as nutrition and economics. Some fields of study are much more stable than others due to the ease of proper sampling, hypothesis testing, and experiment replication. If you want to try to discredit economic experts, then focus on their failures, not the failures of other fields.
Last but not least, your claim that it is easier to corrupt and politicize centralized power is meaningless. Power only exists when it is centralized. Decentralization simply means creating multiple smaller groups of centralized power.
I think that the benefits of centralization, such as standardization of norms and forced unity, have proven far more beneficial to society as a whole than any increased chance of corruption.
[0] From http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-...: "In the intervening years, the N.I.H. spent several hundred million dollars trying to demonstrate a connection between eating fat and getting heart disease and, despite what we might think, it failed. Five major studies revealed no such link. A sixth, however, costing well over $100 million alone, concluded that reducing cholesterol by drug therapy could prevent heart disease. The N.I.H. administrators then made a leap of faith. Basil Rifkind, who oversaw the relevant trials for the N.I.H., described their logic this way: they had failed to demonstrate at great expense that eating less fat had any health benefits. But if a cholesterol-lowering drug could prevent heart attacks, then a low-fat, cholesterol-lowering diet should do the same."
I think the trick to dealing with immigration is controlling for "which immigrants" which might be easier said than done if you are place like America or Europe with a bunch of people stampeding at your boarders wanting in.
People/year? People/country? Per capita? Just putting quotes around a word doesn't clear anything up.
If all your immigrants turned into Muslim refugees overnight, what would happen? I'm sure you guess it.
Well, luckily, we don’t have that, eh?
In the 90s and 2000s, Western Europe took over a million refugees from the balkans – by 2005, all of them were deported back.
There was no wave of nationalism back then, no political change.
Even today, in Germany, most are in favor of the current refugee policy.
I don’t see why any of what you said has to happen. It hasn’t happened the last time this happened either.
2. Balkan refugees were not problematic and were fully identified. The opposite is the case of current refugees from the Middle East. That's why these problems are arising now.
The various eastern European migrations subsequent to the fall of communism did not come with terrorism.
[1] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2015/tab...
[2[ http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
No. There was a hot debate about this in 2015, with countries that take more refugees than average [1] arguing for quotas that would implement a more even distribution. I distinctly remember that a compromise was made, and in the end, some 50 refugees were actually relocated to a different EU country.
[1] Relative to population size.
I am generally confused by the claim of "mass migration". As this chart shows, EU migration of 2013 is below the rate of 2002 and is only now recovering from the 2008 economic crisis.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
If there is some problem that mass migration causes, why didn't it happen back in 2002?
That's an oversimplified chart that doesn't mean anything for this discussion.
It seems less likely the problem is immigration and more likely at last part of the problem is fear of immigrants. Studies such as the following show that anti-immigrant sentiment is more extreme among residents of rural places than among residents of urban places, even though immigrants are more likely to reside in urban communities.
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_cita...
Think about that: the people who are most affected by immigration are least worried about it, the ones least affected are most worried.
> That's an oversimplified chart that doesn't mean anything for this discussion.
If the claim is that migration alone is causing the problem, then it isn't oversimplified, it puts migration numbers into historical context. But if your claim is that it is not migration alone that is the issue, then possibly, yes, it is oversimplified. What other issues would you identity?
Did previous immigrants assimilate? Were they similar, culturally?
It's speculation, but I think rural populations worldwide are experiencing poor economic conditions while the urban areas have enjoyed growth and prosperity. The primary reason for this is most likely that young and educated people move to the cities draining rural areas of talent. Further, rural industries in first world countries are no longer competitive enough to sustain rural economies. There's more than can be said here I'm sure.
You can see, in 2015, very notable increases in (in)migration rate for Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Malta, Slovakia, and Estonia. You can also see Italy's huge 2013 spike (in magenta).
Europe isn't a good place for assimilation, you can be a 3rd generation "immigrant" living in France but you will not be French regardless of how PC they might appear to be.
European nationality is very much based on blood ties to the land, ethnic nationality was the driving force behind the emergence of Nations in Europe in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
Trying to compare them to "new world" nations, and specifically the US isn't really appropriate. The US was built by immigrants and the moment you arrive regardless of who you are or where you come from (to some degree) you are an American, this is not the same for many European nations.
Additionally it seems that judging by past MENA immigration patterns assimilation is also very much opposed by the communities at large, even communities that socio-economically are not ghettos like many immigrant neighborhoods and even whole towns still seem to rather change their environment to fit their culture rather than assimilate to the existing one.
Unless you were Irish, Italian, Jewish, African, Middle Eastern, Muslim, Japanese, Mexican...
Don't pretend that the US is somehow morally superior in the way they have treated immigrants in the past and tidy.
No one is pretending that the US is some paradise without prejudice but once you take the oath of allegiance you are an American regardless of your background.
I do want to add that strong social security doesnt seem to help with integration. I think part of the success of the US together with generational patience, is that to make a living you have to play along. So any economic mismatch is corrected by "force". Whereas here you can get a situation where the cultural values and habits that do not econonically fit (like raising your daughters to be housewives) are essentially supported by the welfare state, creating the opposite effect of how it is intended.
New world nations were founded on the premise of immigration and building a better world for yourself, people joke about the American dream but to some extent that is true.
Being an American or even a Canadian is more about the future and what you make out of yourself.
Being Dutch, German, French or Italian or many other nations is more about the past, you are who you are based on where you come from.
I'm not sure that this can change, nor do I necessarily think it should change, every nation and every nationality has it's own unique definition many of those are based on shared heritage and history which is tied to ethnic and familial roots. It's "easy" to become a Dutch citizen but it's nearly impossible to become a Dutch national, in the US there is very little distinction since virtually everyone there is a migrant at some point or another, and while if we go back to the stone age you may also call European migrants for the US it's much more recent history. The majority of the US population is 5 or less generations "American", compare it to the average Dutch or French native family and you get quite a different story.
I don't believe he's talking about individual racism but systematic racism employed by the US government, which historically preferred people from a certain background.
Italians and Irish people weren't even considered white. Chinatowns were basically invented in the US because Asian immigrants wouldn't (or not allowed to) integrate.
I know you don't mean anything bad about it, as you have mentioned. I am simply pointing the fact that this comment, that is strictly related to immigration, is the one that is the most up voted.
To me, it shows that people see immigration as the biggest problem of Europe, or at least the most discussed.
More problematic is the forced integration of diverse cultures and diverse economic backgrounds who don't speak the same language. Also there is a lot of obvious financial waste in its centre, lots of lobbyism and poor democratic safeguards. People, including me, feel they have no influence at all and a lot of the de decisions being made are not in the personen peoples interest. Massive immigration issues only examplify those issues.
Pro EU sentiment increased markedly in pretty much all of Europe post-Brexit[1], and hopefully national politicians will stop playing the silly "do bad/unpopular things and then blame them on the EU"-game.
This game was thought to be without cost, now it is clear that it is not, and the ones who played it most extensively are paying the biggest price.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/08/brexit-causes-...
>and hopefully national politicians will stop
They won't.
Nope, anti-EU rhetoric went up. It just wasn't effective as pro-EU sentiment in the population rose (from mostly already high baselines).
You have NATO and even without a centralized government the European Economic Area and the European Free Trade Association which together form one of the largest economies in the world.
Europe would do just fine if it decides to scale back on the pan-European EU government faculties and just go back to it's let's make trade, not war roots.
And lastly there isn't a single outside power wanting or being capable of swallowing Europe, Russia doesn't have plans to expand westward beyond it's immediate strategic needs (mainly a warm water port), it only cares about security and mobility as well for the EU not to overstep and have NATO on Russia's borders or try to circumvent Russia's economy by taking control of the caspian and near east oil and gas routes.
Trade prevent war, the benefits of a central government beyond that are fairly limited, the Federal government didn't stop the US civil war from happening it might have initiated it, but the US had their civil war and came out stronger, and Europe had it's own share of not so civil wars and also came out stronger in the end.
Currently there about zero chance of war happening in Europe between European powers, whilst there is a lot of Euro-skepticism the worst that may come out of it is bye bye to the European Parliament and a few other institutions. The EEA would still be there, the Council of Europe would still be there and everyone would go their merry way.
The Americans would do that as well. Even those are friendly allies (compared to Russia or China say). It is still beneficial to play them against each other. Say retaliate against France by loosening tariffs for German made goods.
The euro zone, which tries to connect some very different economies is not working that great but EU countries can decide to stay out of that part.
The Euro was designed as a bulwark against currency speculators and people trying to arbitrage between imbalances in the different European economies.
The other 6 out of 25 that are not using the euro are all ex communist countries. and other two (Monte negro and Kosovo) adopted euro without being part of EU.
Also, Denmark?
Brits and Dansk are crazy people, who cares what they do.
edit: all the non euro countries from the eastern block signed to adopt euro in the future.
Now you are just making things up.
Edit: then you should rethink using Wikipedia as your source because that is not accurate. EU cannot force countries to join new treaties this way. The EC may really really want to, but they have no legal right to.
No, I'm not, it's part of the treaties.
Can't you lookup things on Wikipedia?
Is it to hard for you?
"The other nine members of the European Union continue to use their own national currencies, although most of them are obliged to adopt the euro in future."
Denmark and the UK are examples of other EU states that were not communist that do not use the Euro
What? I'm trying to find any context where that statement makes sense, and I can't do so.
UK has never used the Euro, but that's not what "EU" means.
Your CAN have border control right now, in fact many northern European countries have border control among themselves today.
EDIT: I can’t respond to your comment, but please read the article.
Its just that not having border control is cheaper and allowing people work across birders is good for the economy. So basically until late 2016 the pros outweighed the cons.
The whole reason Brexit happened is because Britain wants to implement border controls.
Edit, Proof: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/03/eu-to-fine-countr...
Just get rid of these fines, and quotas, and give people control of their borders back.
Blaming EU for your own officials incompetency is soooo uk-2016
The entire point of the EU as an entity is that it allows people to move everywhere that companies and services can move to.
Additionally, the entire problem of the refugee crisis was that countries controlled their own border – and everyone refused to do anything, instead telling Greece to prevent them from entering, and Greece said they’d just open their borders. In fact, the EU only got control of the borders in September 2016! http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/...
A union needs free movement of goods, people, and resources; or a resource-sharing system, to ensure it stays fair.
That’s why free-trade agreements usually contain lots and lots of limitations to prevent it being actually free trade – and why the agreement Britain wants can never happen.
Not all of them. I recall that the countries that joined after 2000 have a clause in their accession treaties that forces them to join the euro-zone once certain economic indicators pass certain thresholds.
[1] For a "state" to do.
[2] Economic, political, military, etc.
Exactly that + Putin, I think.
(Plus they control a number of very important pipelines, etc. etc.)
Which makes the push towards renewables (which wouldn't happen without a centralized organization) so very inconvenient.
They have a respectable military. That beats any GDP.
I mean traitor
So tell me, what is this? http://i.imgur.com/zhVYPwN.jpg
And what is this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhafgcPeXes
Or is it maybe actually elected, actually held accountable?
> The idea that 20 or so different people with different languages, religions, mores, histories, frames of reference, economies could somehow achieve monetary or much less political union
Aha, so how did the US do it? By the time it was formed, not even half of the people spoke a common language (There was quite a large amount of German and French immigrants in those days), it was full of groups with different religions and traditions.
Are you counting Native Americans? I've never heard this before.
Additionally, crossing the Atlantic served as a filter to select only those people that were truly desirous of becoming Americans. Disgruntled EU voters have the nasty habit of lingering around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Articles_of_Confe...
[1](http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/06/07/euroskepticism-beyond-br...)
1. I know the EU is completely against the "two-speed Europe". But that MUST be put in place if the EU is to survive. There's a clear divide between regions in the EU. It is a cultural divide in the way work is seen, perceived, in the way money is handled, on how corruption is seen by citizens, etc. That's why after decades the economies of the PIGS have not adjusted to the rest of the EU, and they probably will never adjust. It's a cultural thing that won't change.
Also, I suppose rich and poor countries don't equally agree with the amount socialism/interventionism the EU should be establishing. For example being from one of the PIGS I like interventionism from the EU because I see local politicians/courts/etc as useless. If you go to court and the verdict is stupid, you can go to a European court. But I suppose people from the north like their local politicians and courts and don't like it when the EU interferes.
2. Many people don't like immigrants. Whether that's racism or not, or whether those people can be educated or not... that's irrelevant. The EU is literally shoving immigrants down people's throats. Immigration from A8 countries MUST be regulated (end of Schengen) and also countries should be able to decide if they want Muslim refugees or not.
Remember this is just my opinion and what I've seen around me as a citizen of one of the PIGS.
My country for example received millions of Romanians/Bulgarians back in the day, so that's what people were against. There was a huge construction bubble, and they came en masse, leaving many locals without a job. As soon as the construction bubble popped, they left en masse. They also greatly increased the insecurity here, with really recurrent news about thefts committed by Romanians, pickpockets, etc. News were flooded with those events. So, you can imagine what the locals ended up thinking of them.
Natives wouldn't say anything negative about rest of slavs, Poles, etc because they simply never met them.
Why do smart people assume that their own familiarity with a subject is a suitable guideline for tossing around opaque acronyms without prior definition? Why are people just supposed to know the acronym?
He points to the acronym PIGS, coined for four crisis-torn, Southern European debtor countries of the eurozone: Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain.
This attitude saddens me - regulation would most likely mean that I would need to get a visa to stay where I am, where I work and where I pay my taxes, which is not how I imagined EU. Just a few years ago, I felt "at home" wherever I went, who cared which nationality you were, you could walk into a government office in Germany, Spain, UK, France, and you would be treated the same as a local citizen. Now? It seems like we are becoming 2nd category citizens, despite the only difference between being a "foreigner" and "natural citizen" is the label on my passport.
Too bad they love buying and selling in the common market. Can't have the cake and eat it too.
Edit: but they sure can downvote. Karma is an excellent fuel.
Now what it triggered is also that every single politician talks about reforming europe ( borders mainly, but also politicaly).
All in all, i'd say it pretty much tighten bounds across european countries than the opposite...until britain suddenly experience an extraordinary growth, that is.
Poland for example is refusing to accept these immigrants and paying a pretty big fine for each one they turn away [1]. Other countries like France and Germany are buckling to the pressure from the EU and accepting them, and we've all seen how well that has worked out for them.
So I think not having to take this crap from the EU is one attractive reason to leave.
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/poland-refuse...
The move came about because of the flood of immigrants coming to Italy and Greece, mostly - and serious concern that neither one of those two countries can deal with the problem on their own. It has been decided(democratically, by representatives from each member country, not some evil court of villains!) that other member states will help lessen the burden, by taking a certain quota of immigrants, so that Italy and Greece don't collapse(even more). Yet in some media(particularly in the UK) it's portrayed as EU telling member countries what to do, without any notion that those countries also voted on this issue and agreed to it.
this is true, but the EU institution used its power to force through a proposal which several countries were extremely upset with.
this was the first real example of Qualified Majority Voting being used in a controversial way, resulting in a lot of people becoming upset... suddenly the EU could no longer be seen as an institution that works almost entirely on consensus
it certainly modified my views on whether or not I wanted the EU institutions gaining more power, or even retaining the ones they have at the moment
What if one EU country wants to do something else? Can't different EU countries just choose to do their own thing, and be ruled by their OWN population, instead of people in Germany deciding what happens to people in Poland?
If greece doesn't want to deal with these immigrants then THEY should chose to close their own borders.
Self determination is the fundamental issue at stake here.
The EU IS telling countries what to do! People in Germany are deciding what happens to people in Poland!
And I'm sure you know very well that "closing borders" wouldn't do a thing when immigrants arrive via boats and land on your beaches asking for asylum. You just can't send people back to active war zones, and that has nothing to do with EU regulations.
It doesn't matter to you, but I am sure it matters a whole lot to the people of Poland (but fuck them, I guess?). Apparently they've changed their mind about this deal, and just want to be left alone.
The EU isn't a suicide pact. People can and will change their mind, and will change the deal along with it.
"You just can't send people back to active war zones, and that has nothing to do with EU regulations."
Then send them to Germany or Sweden. They love the refugees! It is a win win situation. If they really do believe all the things that they say, then it should be no problem, right?
I think you're probably being sarcastic, but after the latest semi truck incident at the holiday market there were reportedly protests outside of Merkel's office. The right wing is gaining traction. I'd be surprised if she is still in power in 3 years.
Well, I am Polish, and "a whole lot of people in Poland" want things that I absolutely disagree with(prohibition of gay marriage, abortion, they want the church to meddle with politics etc etc). So while I wouldn't say "fuck them", I would say that I disagree with their opinion strongly.
>>Then send them to Germany or Sweden. They love the refugees!
There's no need to go from one extreme to another. Basically the options are:
1) Send them back where they came from
2) Try to house them where they arrive
3) Try to distribute them around the EU evenly so that the burden on each country is minimal
Option 1 is probably what most people would want, but that doesn't make it feasible. Even if we assume that we know exactly where they are from, which is not always true, we could probably send back people to countries which are not torn by war. But that still leaves you with people who are genuienly fleeing war, and if you are advocating sending them back there, then well....I think we can finish the discussion here.
Second option is terrible, because neither Italy nor Greece have the capacity to handle this many immigrants. The best they(or anyone) could do is built a huge camp for them, but as you can imagine that would be a distaster very quickly, if done at that scale.
Option number 3 evokes a lot of negative emotions, but unless someone comes up with a better solution, it seems like the best way to go.
Just keep the free trade stuff, but allow countries to control their own borders and things would be good.
Brexit wouldn't have happened if Britain was allowed to have border controls.
The people don't want a lot of things.
> If the EU doesn't, then the whole thing will collapse
And then the people won't even have the option of going to Berlin and work as waitress, while people from Africa or middle east will continue to come here, undisturbed, without a super state trying to control the situation.
It's so obvious that the single states can't control immigration on their own.
If that's what they want, they can be my guests.
Britain can. Breaking into there is MUCH harder than anywhere else. Island nation and all.
"and then the people won't even have the option of going to Berlin and work as waitress"
Orrr..... they will just negotiate and change the deal, so something like this CAN work. This is not all or nothing. There are better solutions, and they will be negotiated.
Agriculture. Again, low cost producers undercutting domestic producers.
And there's legit questions to be had about monetary policy (or the lack thereof), as well as EU courts undermining local law.
Another one is that, on a lot of different matters and areas, different countries just cannot obey to the same laws, and their history, language, and way of thinking are just fundamentally different.
This is too 1930's...
Exactly what kind of people did you talk to? I visited Paris after Brexit and outside some groups on the far right everyone where laughing at the crazy brittons...
Many in Germany and France consider UK hindering advancement in EU, and consider the Brexit a god send
Were many of them associated with each other for one reason or another?
The EU in its current incarnation as a centralised, geographically-defined bloc could be considered a relic of colonial, pre-globalization times (as much as nation states are a remnant of pre-industrial, pre-Information Age times).
In order to be able to address the issues of the 21st century we need a much more decentralised structure, more devolution of government to the local level and more cooperation between these decentralised entities.
Large cities in different countries and their respective populations often have much more in common than people from rural regions have in common with these city dwellers (as evidenced by Brexit). Yet through arbitrary national borders they're simply lumped together. The same applies to border regions. Why shouldn't companies and other organisations from different countries be able to work closer together more easily?
Finally, why should organisations such as the EU be defined in terms of geography instead of in terms of shared values? As of now, Canada for instance would be a much better fit to the EU economically and in terms of values than some of the Eastern European member states.
There are a few interesting articles about this subject and 'neo-medieval' overlapping authorities and multiple identities as a possible outcome:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329850-600-end-of-n...
https://stratechery.com/2016/the-brexit-possibility/
https://fieldnotes.mike-walsh.com/brexit-and-the-rise-of-the...
Those of us who actually lived in Hungary know that the media needs to be regulated to prevent the media from picking our next president.
Orbán was the first politician who had the balls to call out the West on their irresponsible immigration policy, while everyone else was too busy being politically correct. The Austrian media blasted him, however when Austria started doing the same exact thing, they reported it differently.
Look at the Buzzfeed "reporting": they knew the document was most likely fake, yet they decided to publish it anyway.
So it's better if the president picks the next president?
How did the countries that had been members before got close culturally? What do you mean by that?
I'm afraid we got much better at increasing body counts recently.
I believe that more and more people are in favor of existing the EU. In the case of France, the first thing that people need to understand, is that a referendum was held in 2005 in France, and that the people have been asked if they wanted to integrate the EU. The No won by over 55%. Even though, Sarkozy signed the treaty and put France into the EU.
EDIT: People also realize that people who run for presidency, only present a program that is actually the program of the EU... In the case of France, there are some specific laws and orientations that the EU is trying to push on the country, on different areas, such a Work law, or GMO. Those laws goes against what generations and generations of people fought for. Other people who run for president also put in their program stuff that would go against the EU program, and that is NOT APPLICABLE. If those were applied, the country would be fined heavily by the EU. Which I think, makes those politics either liers, or incompetents.
The second thing is that more and more people realize that the way it works isn't sustainable, and this for a simple reason; having 28 countries together, who have to obey to the same set of rules (EU treaties), in different area such as Education, Immigration, Finance, Farming, etc... is not possible. Why? Because the interest of Estonia in Immigration are totally different than France's interests in that same area. Italy interests in finance are different than UK, etc... You cannot apply the same rules to everybody.
A simple metaphor to understand the problem is this: - If you own your own house, you can do whatever you want and paint your outside walls as you like. - If you own an apartment in a 6 stories building, you probably wont have the freedom to put whatever window you want on it, and there will be a few rules that every story of the building will have to follow. - Now take a building with 28 stories, is it now harder to make everyone happy? or easier?
If there is a leak under the roof, the owner of the last story will be mad and will want to do something about it. However, it won't be the others owners' priority to fix that. If the first floor has an issue of recurrent flooding, the people for the above stories won't have that as a priority either...
Now, if you want to modify the European treaty, you must have the unanimity of all its members. How is that possible, knowing that each country does not have the same interests/concerns, in any area? It's not. And this is probably why UK tried to negotiate with the EU on a different set of topics, before actually holding the referendum.
Not to mention that countries who are not in the EU, but are in Europe, are doing way better on a lot of aspects, than countries who are part of the EU. A lot of novel prices of economy also stood up and explained that the EU will collapse, and one of them even resigned from the BCE (Banque Centrale Europeenne), and joined a French political party who wants France to get out of the EU, using the Article 50 of the treaty.
And somehow people do manage to live in skyscrapers without flooding the first floor.
I'm not sure if anyone ever attempted a currency something like the Euro before.
Real life example: I can't put an extension on the front of my house because it's prescribed that my house must be set back from the road X feet. I can't build a third story because the max is two stories in my neighborhood. I can't bulldoze my house and build a duplex as my lot, as well as entire neighborhood, is zoned single family. I can't buy a 3000 square foot lot and build a house, my city says all houses have to have at least a 5000 square foot lot. I can't even leave my garbage can outside unless it's garbage day.
And I don't even have an HOA!
There's no "debate," you can't come even close to doing what you want to your house and you never could. And you know what, for the most part, everyone who lives here is happy with it.
Well, from 1865 to 1927 there was the 'Latin' monetary union, which failed because some countries (e.g. Greece) simply couldn't afford to produce the coinage and instead debased the currency.
>Not to mention that countries who are not in the EU, but are in Europe, are doing way better on a lot of aspects
This does not mean that being part of EU has something to do with it. For example, if you want to say Norway, you should compare it with Sweden or Finland, not with Portugal or Bulgaria.
The problem is that those laws are not modifiable because you need the unanimity of all the countries in the EU. Which is extremely difficult because, again, all the 28 countries have different interests in all areas of the treaty. It's basically stuck.
As far as you saying that every member state can have its own set of rules, no. We had this issue multiple times and found ourselves having to pay insane amount of penalties because we were not, for example, accepting to grow GMO in France. If the EU says "You guys should do this and that in that matter", we can't have a rule that goes against that. That is the real problem, I think that the people of each individual country do not decide anymore, and the people in charge have no power, since they cannot take their own decisions.
This is inaccurate. Most of the laws are produced in an ordinary way. The unanimity (of the Council) is required only in some cases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_E...
> As far as you saying that every member state can have its own set of rules, no. We had this issue multiple times and found ourselves having to pay insane amount of penalties because we were not, for example, accepting to grow GMO in France. If the EU says "You guys should do this and that in that matter", we can't have a rule that goes against that. That is the real problem, I think that the people of each individual country do not decide anymore, and the people in charge have no power, since they cannot take their own decisions.
That 'problem' is the same for every modern democracy. We continuously have to accept decisions that are made democratically, but they are just stupid (e.g. Brexit).
How much truth is there, to this statement i.e. "young Spaniards with PHDs are serving as Waiters in London or Berlin."
Anyone? I find it quite shocking and want to know if the Author is engaging in fear-mongering, or if Europe is indeed falling apart and the part about Greeks, young Spaniards and Portuguese peeps is true.
I know two spanish people with a BA, one went au-pairing in france, another one couldn't find a job and moved to morocco cause it was cheaper.
So while it may be exagerated, there's probably some truth to that statement. The euro has destroyed the mediterrean economies.
That's implying Mediterranean economies would be better off without the Euro. I beg to differ.
The overall unemployment is around 19% currently, down from almost 27% in 2013. [1]
The youth unemployment is around 44%, down from almost 56% in 2013. [2]
I can't imagine what having half of all young people unable to find jobs will do to a country in the longer term.
[1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/spain/unemployment-rate
[2] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/spain/youth-unemployment-rat...
Plausible. Wage is higher in London and Berlin. As others put, unemployment among youth is very high in Spain. Finally, Europeans grow up speaking English as secondary language thanks to computers/IT. (For Civ players among us: smell the cultural victory?)
Also, if you apply for social benefits in NL you need to apply for one job a week and give proof about this to the government. You need to accept any 'socially acceptable work' regardless of your education (no, won't involve prostitution, but it can surely involve low wage jobs such as garbageman, waiter, or clerk in a store). If you went for a PhD in philosophy (not much money in that field), that is entirely your choice. Its also entirely possible you're unable to find a job right after you completed your education if that education isn't in high demand (if your PhD is tech-related you have nothing to worry). Except when job recruiters demand you have certain 'experience in the field'. Then you're screwed regardless.
The Spanish presence is less visible now, I am guessing because some left, and the others got better integrated. Would not be surpised if some of the PhDs are prepping a few dozen of meals each evening...
Will ask my spanish friends soon.
A minority of those well educated people might get stuck, though.
Also take with a grain of salt all this kind of articles. American and UK media likes to project their worldview in the political actors of continental Europe but the 20-something nations involved are varied and make the EU extremely complex.
The only way it could be saved would be to jettison the euro or at least the convergence criteria. Germany doesn't seem keen on a succesful EU, perhaps there's some underlaying anger over those last couple of attemps to ruin Europe. One can only guess.
E.g., in 2014 the court ruled that mass data retention was violating basic human rights, killing the data retention directive. The Swedish government wanted to keep doing this anyway so they interpreted the ruling quite creatively, concluding that the Swedish implementation of the directive wasn't "bad enough", and forced ISPs/telcos to continue with mass data retention. This was challenged by a Swedish telco and right before Christmas the ECJ ruled in the telco's favor -- and then finally Swedish ISPs could (well, had to!) stop this particular form of surveillance.
So, I'm happy to be in the EU, for that reason and many other reasons.
Sorry, that sounds like socialist nonsense.
> A single market
The single market was and is designed for a collection of industrialized nations that no longer exist. 2/3 of the EU economy today is driven by services (80% in the UK) and yet there is no single market in services worthy of the name.
Even the EU commission admits that the single market is a dysfunctional mess; of course their answer to the productivity problem Europe has is 'more single market!'
> and in the process, creating peace.
It's only been through the interests of the US that peace has been maintained. The expansionary EU threatens that.
> it only overpowers states in favour of its citizens
In what world is it a good idea that unelected and unaccountable judges can overpower the elected and accountable governments of member states?