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Comment by tanilama | Hacker News Reader

Trump is definitely an issue. His talk about abandoning NATO, ridiculing EU to drive his own argument for domestic issues, makes him pretty hard to be likable from EU establishments' perspectives.

On the least insignificant level, the message is pretty clear: US is destabilizing, and Trump might only be the beginning of it. With a isolationist and hostile US government, EU naturally would seek another anchor for safety, which is China, to counter balance it.

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In the end, the EU needs to do what it must to survive and that IMO means federalize. A united EU would not need an anchor for safety.

Which is a political goal at odds with the population.

Even Macron admitted that if the French were given the same vote as the British, they'd probably leave the EU[1].

Their tactic? Just avoid a vote. A small elite closing ranks and ignoring that EU citizens simply want trade union, not political union.

There's only so many times politicians can say "it's more complicated than you peasants understand, we must federalize!" before they get kicked out. Their hubris is bringing about the rise of the extreme right.

Europeans, as in the general populace, do not as a majority want to federalize. Federalization is one of those open conspiracies driven by a particular type of person who's completely out-of-touch with normal people.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/21/emmanuel-macro...

To quote the article:

> Asked if the French would vote to leave the EU in the same way, he said: “Yes. Probably, in a similar context. But our context was very different, so I don’t want to take any bets. I would have definitely fought to win.

Which is quite different that what the title implies.

I think you're not understanding what he meant by context, the context is that just before then he'd said it was a mistake to give the UK electorate a leave/stay questions, he meant he'd simply give France a stay/stay question, i.e.:

Would you:

    1. like to stay in the EU as is or 
    2. like to stay in the EU with minor tweaks?

It's too complicated for the peasants to understand apparently.

But if given a leave/stay question, he thought France would vote leave like the UK.

He then went on to have a rant against all the unwashed who'd lost out because of globalization gobbling their livelihoods and how they should damn well be pleased to be screwed, if you're not a university educated elite it's your own fault for sucking, politicians obviously aren't meant to represent you or your views.

The very basis on which the EU is founded is cooperation, It's becoming and hopefully staying a trait that seems normal to europeans. I'd prefer cooperation over isolationist worldpowers any day.

The EU is cooperative among its members, but its economic policy towards the rest of the world is protectionism.

The EU is the world's largest exporter and largest importer [1]. It also the world's largest foreign investor and the world's largest recipient of foreign investment. If it were protectionist, that would hardly be possible.

[1] http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/eu-position-in-world-trade/

Eh, that seems to be a pretty big leap in logic. Europe doesn't need a unified nationstate, if it has strong institutions that fullfil nationstate-esque functions. We are at a good level of that on economic, monetary and judicial matters. The fiscal issues of the EU are in the process of shaking themselves out.

What we are lacking is effective military cooperation. Even NATO is not very good at this, unless the US is shouldering the majority of the load. The situation is improving slowly, though the continued struggles of the A400m and other defense projects show that we have a long way to go still. OTOH given our strategic position and Russia's continued weakness there is no real rush.

If you have fiscal cooperation, a single currency, a governmental body that forces regulations and laws to its member states and in the end even a unified army (which I think will happen in the future, especially since the US is taking more and more of an isolationist approach to foreign policy) isn't that closer to a federation than it is to a simple trade union? Not all federations need to be a massive nationstate which in Europe would be impossible by definition since you can't create a new nation out of thin air in a few years when you have nations that have existed since the time the concept of a nation was created.

Yes, that is exactly my point. People are pushing for a "federalization" of the EU, when really we have institutions that do the bulk of what a federal state would do already and could put the ones we still need in place without making significant changes to the current framework.

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