Hacker News Reader

Comment by hnhg | Hacker News Reader

Maybe just sabotage some federal aspirations but also did a lot to enhance and enlarge the free market aspects. What did France meaningfully contribute so we have a baseline for comparison?

View on HN

France was a founding member of ECSC proposed by Robert Schuman, french prime minister, created by the Paris treaty and regarded as the premise of nowadays European union and expanded to up to 28 countries. France played an instrumental/leading role in building the very idea of a community of nations in europe. The contributions of that country toward European institutions are literally countless, but let’s name a few major ones: a shared currency (€), schengen area and absolute freedom of movement for citizens, goods, services and capital (none of which UK took part of). No one can sensibly deny France contributions to pretty much any regulation, judicial/defense/scholar/research/scientific cooperations.

I’m not saying UK played absolutely no role in building these institutions, but they’ve always displayed some reluctancy for further integration. Just fyi, France and Germany have been compensating since the 70s the budget contribution UK refused to make.

building the very idea of a community of nations in europe

Like the League of Nations? And every other (defunt) supranational institution all the way back to Napoleon?

Your point is that since it wasn’t able to work before, it’ll never work? I mean, Leonardo Da Vinci wasn’t able to build a working flying machine, does that mean the Wrights were dumb to think they would succeed where Leonardo failed?

If the wrights had taken Da Vinci's design and rebuilt the invention without understanding why it failed the first time, absolutely.

Hear hear! Fuck yeah!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com