In my opinion however the EU as is is hopelessly underpowered to effectively address big issues. They just don't have the mandate to actually get all 27 states to act as one.
The moment EU policies go against high member nation interests they are shut down. See Poland, Hungary, Netherlands, Malta, Luxemburg, etc for examples of this. Every single one has the power to basically veto all decisions.
No government institution is going to be 100% effective at what it does, but the EU has shown that as far as large organizations go, it is remarkably effective at pushing certain actions that it's member states cannot do.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...
These were initially met with huge resistance, yet got approved, and triggered huge changes, not only inside the EU, but throughout the world.
This one probably will see a zillion amendments and may eventually be either made powerless or be rejected.
My money is on it being approved in a weaker form, with a future version tightening things, like what happened with RoHS.
The trick is to get everybody commit to “we want to move to a climate-neutral economy. To get there, we need to do A”.
If you can get that, everybody has committed to “we want to move to a climate-neutral economy”. If it turns out A isn’t sufficient to get there, extending that to “A, B, and C” is easier than going there in one step. The eventual extension to “A, B, …, Z” may be a long way off, but that doesn’t mean the EU won’t get there.
• Majority of countries: 55% (comprising at least 15 of them), or 72% if acting on a proposal from neither the Commission nor from the High Representative
and
• Majority of population: 65%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_E...
As a EU citizen I do hope things won’t progress any further in this political regard because that will be the death of the Union (I know I’ll be among the many protesting deeper political integration), blowing up the economic union which while not perfect had its distinct advantages. Hope someone puts some common sense into today’s EU politicians/technocrats, they seem not to notice that they’te driving us all over a cliff (because apparently Brexit didn’t mean anything to them).
The EU was always meant to be a political union. The economical elements were introduced first because they're more palatable.
It's an argument I often see repeated from people living in countries where the EU for sold as a trade tool (for example the Netherlands) when it was simply not the case.
why would it be? The Union has evolved feom an agreement to coordinate coal and steel production to much more, and helped keep peace and bring wealth and integration. Globally the challenges are however not purely economic, economy and politics always mix - see China or Trump's arbitrary tariffs. Why would deeper integration be death of the Union?
For me deeper integration is very much needed as plainly the EU countries are mostly too small to play any global role individually and will be bullied by China & co if they don't get more closely together.
France and Germany handed over a lot of control of their war critical industrial infrastructure to 'High Authority' which preceded the European Commission, not for trades sake but to prevent world war III and form an counter weight against the Warsaw Pact.
Robert Schuman ( the French Foreign Minister at the time ) declared: " Through the consolidation of basic production and the institution of a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and the other countries that join, this proposal represents the first concrete step towards a European federation, imperative for the preservation of peace."[1]
The only one to envision Europe purely as an economic union was Churchill, and since the UK left his visions hold even less importance.
[1] https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-day...
That's a fudge that some governments (mostly British ones) used to avoid blowback at home, knowing (or hoping) that their people would not get any information from foreign media. That's a lie. It was never the case. It was political from the very beginning. You should read the Schuman declaration.
The EU addresses privacy and many other issues better than the US.
The EU has implemented actually changing the currency of every member, just as one example.
This is power that countries have always had, and it’s now moving into the EU realm. It’s more centralization and more eu control.
So it’s a step towards what you want.
A dozen draft proposals, which still need to be approved by
the bloc's 27 member states and the EU parliament, were
announced on Wednesday.
Since it’s a new form of taxation that everyone seems ok with. Perfect for any government.
Self interested cooperation among sovereign states is the only long term peaceful means of solving cross-border issues.