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Comment by franch | Hacker News Reader

> The aim is to have a federal union in Europe. In a way, going straight to monetary union is to 'force' further political union because they know full well that it requires it in order to work.

Sorry, but I disagree. There is no consensus whatsoever in the EU about a federal Union. There is not even consensus on a budgetary union (as in shared debt, not just having a shared currency) because it will reflect badly on states that currently have stronger economies in the EU: https://www.reuters.com/article/germany-lithuania/merkel-say...

Actually, to be fair, every time there was a popular referendum even the EU Constitution has been rejected by the population (it only passed later by the parliament): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_European_Constitut... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Dutch_European_Constituti...

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Ever closer political union has been the aim, publicly stated or not, since the early days of the treaty of Rome.

They know and knew that monetary union can only lead to further political union.

The main issue, or the benefit, is that it requires all countries to have a good governance. It will force Greece and friends to finally be serious.

> every time there was a popular referendum even the EU Constitution has been rejected by the population

That it was "rejected by the population" is a dishonest characterization. Referendums in Luxembourg and Spain were successful. Elected representatives in 16 other EU countries voted in favor of the Constitution. Yes, it was rejected by voters France and the Netherlands, and that killed the treaty, because establishing a Constitution requires unanimous support.

So, no, it wasn't rejected by "the population" (a term that it was always be inaccurate[1]). It was rejected by a minority. And the treaty being one that requires unanimous approval, failed because of that.

This Wikipedia page shows the full picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitu...

[1] Anytime there's a characterization in the form of "the people" (or "the American people") it's dishonest and inaccurate, because the "people" of any large enough group hold diverse-enough opinions that you simply cannot characterize them with a broad brush. (Unless of course, you conduct referendum in which the question is affirmed unanimously by everyone in the group with a 100% quorum. Which gets quickly almost-impossible as the group's size increases.)

> So, no, it wasn't rejected by "the population" (a term that it was always be inaccurate[1]). It was rejected by a minority. And the treaty being one that requires unanimous approval, failed because of that.

Uhm sorry no. Read the links. It was rejected by the majority of the voters both in France and the Netherlands.

What happened afterwards in France was to change it slightly and make it pass by parliamentary vote instead.

About the accuracy of the term "the population", I simply mean it "by the local rules for a nation wide referendum".

I meant a minority of the European people/countries. Whether you count by population, or by the number of countries.

(a) By number of states: 18 approved it, 2 rejected it, and the rest canceled/dropped efforts as it was effectively a failure (at that point).

(b) By population: Let's add together the populations of the 18 countries that approved of it, and the 2 that rejected it. I'm confident the total population of the 18 europhiles exceeds that of the 2 naysayers.

We don't know how things would have fared in the rest of the EU (that dropped/canceled referendums or legislative votes on this), but of those 20 countries, a majority of both people and countries were for the EU Constitution.

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