Comment by the_duke | Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_duke | Hacker News Reader

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With the UK leaving, Poland and Hungary and others sliding into very uncomfortable territory from a democracy perspective, and far right sentiments growing even in the western countries, the EU is heading towards a pretty dramatic identity crisis.

A big issue is the lack of tools to take meaningful measures in this, or similar cases.

There is the suspension clause [1], but using it is difficult, and could eventually lead to multiple additional departures. See this (older) article for some background [2].

The most viable (medium-term) way forward for me is to transform the current EU back into a a looser, mostly economy focused association. With a subgroup of states pursuing stronger, value-based integration.

I think that multiple world-powers are pretty happy about this development. Russia obviously wants to gain back influence and would love to destabalize the EU. They are funneling money to EU sceptical parties all over Europe, including supporting Brexit. They also have "web brigades" for online propaganda campaigns. [3]

But I also think the US grew unhappy about the economic (and partially political) strength of the EU in the mid 2000s, where we saw not only the Iraq fallout, but also the Euro established as a important currency. In the Obama years relations cooled off considerably. I don't think the US would be unhappy about a EU that is not broken, but weaker and more susceptible to influence. (the failure of TTIP is an interesting data point here)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_Treaty_on_Eur...

[2] https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-can-still-block-hungarys-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades

This is a pessimistic view that does not understand the dynamics of the Union.

The European Union is, fundamentally, a very young superstate. It's not even 30-years-old, in practice. This is not its final form.

The EU is like Asimov's Foundation: it makes progress by facing (or provoking) crisis after crisis, and finding new equilibria and new policy tools. It's a bit like the US in early-XIX century or pre-WWII, when structures were fluid and conventions were still being established.

Remember the US had to go through a civil war to establish the unquestioned primacy of federal policy; China and Russia solidified through bloody revolutions. If we can get there with only a bit of bitching and debating, we will have done better than anyone ever managed.

That being said no individual state has veto power in the US. I don’t know anything about the EU but I suspect Germany and France or some other members will have to say at some point that this veto nonsense has to go. I doubt it can happen in our lifetimes as long as individual members are sovereign.

WRT to the "veto nonsense" you refer to: as far as I understand, the EU nowadays does have some sort of majority voting system for most areas, since the Treaty of Lisbon came into effect [1]. This also means that sovereignity of member states is already somewhat impaired (since any state alone cannot veto all EU decisions).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lisbon

Veto is being slowly removed from most decision-making procedures. It's already not there for a lot of (most?) "simple" areas. In theory even the budget should be approved with qualified majority at some point in the next 10 years or so, if the European Council follows the roadmap that the previous Commission recommended.

I don't know your lifespan, but in the next 40 years I expect the veto to be limited to mostly symbolic areas, like defense.

Is the EU more or less cohesive than 5 years ago? 10 years ago? What's the trend?

It's complicated (TM). There was an arguably surprisingly large amount of cohesion over Brexit (possibly aided accidentally by Brexit figures who telegraphed their intention to exploit European division to screw up the process), but not so much over covid, say.

For all the constant imminent doom of Europe predicted, though, public support for EU membership is actually quite high relative to historical values right now.

The trend is to be more cohesive. This also means that some contradictions and contrasts cannot be ignored anymore and will have to be resolved. One of those was the British hostility to federalism, another was the need for shared debt to correct an unbalanced setup in the common currency - both have been resolved, albeit painfully. The next is probably the slow unpicking of Visegrad.

There is no alternative to a stronger and more cohesive Europe. The rise of Putin, Xi Jinping, Trump, and FAANG, is focusing a lot of minds - the only hope to not get trampled by these giants, is to stick together as Europeans.

> slow unpicking of Visegrad

What do you mean by that?

As proved by this very news item, some of the positions emerging from the Visegrad block of countries (technically Chzechia, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, but others band with them on some issues) are fundamentally illiberal and contrary to the spirit of democratic solidarity in the Union.

For a long time, these countries have reaped the benefits of Union policies without making a real contribution; they enjoyed economic solidarity (by being the largest recipients of European funds) and then refused it on social and humanitarian policies (like sharing refugees). This is unsustainable in the long run.

You know what is unsustainable in the long run? How the EU treats these countries. On the surface it seems that we're recipients of EU funds but for every EUR we have to pay back much much more.

I’m not sure I follow. These countries get back multiples of their membership fees, largely in infrastructure funds (i.e. there is no repayment). You can literally not take that money if you so wish.

In return you have to sacrifice a lot. Just to make an example we have to order stuff from EU countries (like buses and trains) instead of buying form our own companies because it is against "regulations". It is just an extortion racket behind the scenes.

You have to run transparent bids for public works, yes, and buy stuff that is guaranteed not to kill your own citizens.

This is actually a great way to root out local corruption and to force companies to innovate, rather than lazily relying on guaranteed local contracts. It also enables them to compete over the entire EU market, on a level playing field. And it's doing wonders for your economies, which have grown quickly and consistently.

Can you clarify what you mean here?

There are a lot of factors at play. There are issues with anti-democratic governments in Poland and Hungary, COVID-19 has hit Southern states hard and obviously the UK has left. On the other hand, they did just agree to issuing collective debt for the first time, which is a major milestone in terms of a central budget. Notably, much of that money is to be given (not loaded) to member states hit hardest by COVID-19.

The EU is trying to have its cake and eat it too. An economic union with independent economies. A political union with independent politics. A human rights union with ghettos of language.

It's ridiculous that anyone thought a union between Ireland (where corporate tax is optional), Spain (where personal tax is optional), Germany (a straight-laced financial behemoth), the UK (the remnants of an empire) and Greece (a perpetual basketcase) would ever be successful.

> An economic union with independent economies

Fair point.

> A political union with independent politics.

Yep, pretty sticky.

> A human rights union with ghettos of language.

Wait, what? What does language have to do with whether or not a nation- and culture-spanning political entity has a unifying notion of human rights?

Lots of states and superstates have problems with human rights standards being inconsistently applied among their constituencies. But I don't see what that has to do with language.

Language is a barrier to cultural union. It can be a blindfold to the rest of the world who are not invited into many parts of contemporary Hungarian culture. It can be a blindfold for its citizens, limiting exposure to external culture. Without shared language, it's harder for the Hungarian people to be influenced by the culture and politics of its neighbours.

Even on a more basic level, the fall of Index.hu is made a greater problem because there's no Hungarian-language media in neighbouring Austria or Slovakia.

And yet it has been, really, quite successful.

There are definitely serious issues, and I would expect it to in the long term either trend towards greater cohesion generally or a two-tier solution, but it works... better than it would necessarily be expected to.

These sorts of massive divisions aren't that unusual in other cohesive state-like things, of course; compare the economies of New York and Mississippi, say. And the EU has tended to reduce the differences somewhat over time.

> And yet it has been, really, quite successful.

Has it though? Because Hungary begs to differ.

I'll agree that for a large subset (France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, in particular) the EU has indeed been a successful experiment. It was also successful for the UK until they deluded themselves into leaving.

And if the EU decided to either (a) not expand as widely as possible or (b) not try to morph into a Federal Government of Europe, it would probably remain successful indefinitely. For now the EU has been established for a blink of an eye, relatively. Only time will tell how successful they can be in the long term.

Hungary's only been in Schengen since 2007, and in the EU since 2004. In that time their GDP has tripled, and there's a huge jump over the accession period (which, oddly, flattens out when Orban takes power). Public debt hit a peak in 2010-2011, and is now 20% below that point. It's hard to see the economic effects as negative, looked at in isolation.

Hungary has its own problems that the EU isn't positioned to solve. That's not evidence that the EU itself is a failure, or bad for states that join it.

The union has been extremely successful for Spain, Italy and Portugal too, on many aspects. It forced local administrators to shape up in ways that were unthinkable before, and instilled into people that they should expect the same standard of life in Rome as in Stockholm. The long-term effects of this change of attitude are immense - systemic corruption in Italy has gone way down, environmental conditions have improved dramatically, connections and mobility have boomed. The Euro is not perfect but it wiped the periodic waves of heavy inflation that used to hit the working classes, and its worst excesses are slowly being addressed.

I don't think you can claim works without a stabilized positive economic trend, not an ever increasing and growing debt trend.

Which major countries or geopolitical unions are on a shrinking debt trend? Serious question, I couldn't come up with an answer after a bit of research.

> With the UK leaving

What do you mean "leaving"? The UK ceased to be part of the EU six months ago.

The UK's departure 6 months ago is a milestone that's more political than actual. During the transitional period of the withdrawal agreement, the UK is effectively a non-voting member this year as it has no option to opt of EU regulations or budget contributions until the end of this period. Other parts of their departure, like the Northern Ireland backstop have their own conditions before the UK can adjust them.

Describing the departure as in progress rather than done is very much accurate.

Technically correct is of course the best sort of correct.

The UK transitioned from being part of the EU into a sort of weird temporary EU dependency, in practice; it no longer gets to vote, but hasn't meaningfully left the EU until next year.

and in effect nothing has changed yet until the transition period is over and agreements have been made.

Legally we've left. Culturally and practically we've got a way to go.

Countries of the EU falling to far right populism is the result of some unpopular policies being imposed by the EU themselves—Your comment reeks of "beatings will continue until morality improves".

Far right populism in Europe far precedes the existence of the EU; it seems fairly perverse to just blanket blame the EU for it.

It's resurgence does not though.

It's had multiple resurgences since WW2, and the current one may have already peaked in some places. Duda didn't exactly improve his numbers, say, and in most Western European countries the far right isn't actually looking all that healthy in polls.

I've had the flu a lot, but that doesn't mean that I'm chronically infected with it. Every time I got sick, I caught it from a different person. Europe caught it from this intermediate condition where the core of the EU can consistently take advantage of the peripheral states, generating large trade surpluses, but have to be begged to help through begrudging one-off fixes (rather than federal institutions that work to and have the means to constantly rebalance things) whenever they crash one of them by loaning them too much money to buy things from the core.

If federalism is just exploitation, the obvious last resort is nationalism.

Hah, that is indeed the narrative but is it really true? Poland is one of the major recipients of EU aid, it also benefits immensely from the single market. Yet politicians always use it as a scapegoat blaming it for its problems!

The Polish political/media approach seems very, very similar to the British; anything good, Poland did, anything bad is the EU's fault. I think most member states do this to an extent, but a few really lean into it, causing a lot of public confusion.

So you have to take the bad with the good? Can't you say "money is good, but being forced to be leeched on by refugees of NATO wars is unsavoury and doesn't help anybody"

> be leeched on by refugees

Had to re-read that one. Really, people desperately fleeing from wars, who've had their lives destroyed, are leeches?

It's fine if you don't think it's your responsibility to help them, but at least try to be respectful of their difficulties.

Nope, I witnessed the rise of populism in Hungary, its a very interesting story. Mostly because its a small country, so its easier to see behind the curtains and because its in the border of the west-east influence zone.

Hungary had far right activist since it was freed from the soviet union (MIEP [1] and early Jobbik [2] ), but these were very different from the ones today. They hated the Soviet union and Russia with a passion, since they occupied Hungary for 40 years. Another prominent feature of them was hating on jews. Also they never had any significant popularity, most ppl saw them just as wackos.

Then around 2010 something happened. The far right (mostly Jobbik at this time) reversed its stance on Russia and started hating the EU and US within like half a year (also they stopped their anti-jew rhetoric). Also small, dubious news sites and started popping up which praised Putin so much I thought it was a joke. Same thing happened in conspiracy sites - a few years earlier they content was about UFOs, lizard men, angels etc. and suddenly political articles praising Putin started appearing in them e.g. [3].

After these changes moving away from straight nazi stuff Jobbik started to become more and more popular, so much that Fidesz felt threatened. (around 2010 Fidesz was center-right). So they started saying the same things as Jobbik (and discrediting them, e.g. spreading fake news that the party's head was muslim), just louder, and with more $$$ backing them up wich leads to today.

So IMO it was a carefully planned operation from Russia (support extremist voices to start infighting in the EU) that turned out very well. They are of course not 100% responsible (the other part is the PC culture taken too far), just gave a kick in the right direction.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Justice_and_Life_Par... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobbik 3: https://www.facebook.com/Hihetetlen.Magazin/posts/9441749489... Here they say that Putin is fighing against the Satan which is US and the EU.

The question is how does one thwart and reverse such an attack?

Make a better argument.

sydd above said "small, dubious news sites and started popping up which praised Putin so much I thought it was a joke. Same thing happened in conspiracy sites - a few years earlier they content was about UFOs, lizard men, angels etc. and suddenly political articles praising Putin started appearing in them"

I don't think making a better argument had anything to do with the rise of this and it will have very little with pushing it back down.

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