The Case for a Confederal Europe | Hacker News Reader

The Case for a Confederal Europe

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35 pointsmenshiki80 comments

(Not a European, so appropriate caveats apply.)

> I am an EU nerd. As a young civil servant, I was involved in negotiating the Amsterdam, Nice, and Lisbon treaties. I have always been fascinated by enlargement and institutional reform. I am an advocate of both widening and deepening. I wrote my PhD on flexible integration

If some ordinary citizens of Italy, Poland, Spain, etc. were calling out for "widening and deepening" I might be more impressed. Especially if the citizens of the UK hadn't explicitly voted to leave.

>This time, there is no choice. Indecision will lead to frustration and instability. There is no space for petty, low-level tinkering or domestic politics.

Democracy... it's SO messy.

I agree with him that it would be the best way forward (and as a Norwegian I think Norway should join).

But it seem pretty clear this is not what people want at this time, so equally clearly it is not the right thing to do as democratic countries. Trying to influence opinions is OK, forcing treaties on us is not OK. In my opinion. EU can start by building trust and transparency and perhaps look inward instead at blaming people for not trusting them.

> If some ordinary citizens of Italy, Poland, Spain, etc. were calling out for "widening and deepening" I might be more impressed. Especially if the citizens of the UK hadn't explicitly voted to leave.

Ok, I'm here then. Let me know if you have questions for me?

> If some ordinary citizens of Italy, Poland, Spain, etc. were calling out for "widening and deepening" I might be more impressed.

Poland is an extremely pro-EU country, the support for the EU reaches 94% in large cities and 88% in the rest of the country. And Poles are very much in favor of these poorer countries joining the EU in one way or another, because everybody knows forming ties with Russia is apparently cheap, but there is always a price to pay at the end.

[0] https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/majority-of-poles-want-...

> Especially if the citizens of the UK hadn't explicitly voted to leave.

By a rather narrow margin – a less than 4% margin of victory, it could have very easily gone the other way.

And, the way the Brexit vote itself was structured leaves much to be desired. Many other countries have protections against constitutional-level issues being decided by a bare national majority. In spite of the UK's (unusual) lack of a codified national constitution, EU membership is undoubtedly a constitutional-level issue – indeed, many EU member states refer to their EU membership in their national constitutions.

In the US, a bare national majority is insufficient to amend the national constitution – instead, it requires 75% of states to approve (usually by vote of their state legislature, with state ratifying conventions as an alternative procedure which has only once been used). In Canada, most major constitutional amendments require approval by two-thirds of provincial legislatures representing at least 50% of Canada's population. Similarly, in Australia, to pass a constitutional amendment requires a referendum with a double majority – a majority nation-wide, and a majority in a majority of states.

If the UK had adopted an Australia-style approach to the Brexit referendum, "Leave" would have required not just a national majority, but also a majority in three out of the four constituent countries – a hurdle it failed to meet (England and Wales both voted to "Leave", but "Remain" won in Scotland and Northern Ireland). Given the lopsided-nature of the UK – England has over 80% of the population – you'd think protection for the smaller national constituents would be even more pressing than it is in Australia, Canada or the US – but that idea never seemed to occur to the Brexit referendum's architects.

Maybe they should have changed the rules before the game was played. Otherwise, it sounds like "hey, you plebs, you're going to keep voting until you get it right."

The UK has long had a dire need for constitutional reform–especially, some entrenched protections against the built-in possibility that any sufficiently large English majority can lord it over the other three constituent countries. Maybe they should have addressed that far more fundamental issue first, before holding a referendum on EU membership?

The failure to do so has likely hastened the UK's own demise – the experience of being outvoted on the Brexit gave a big boost to pro-independence sentiment in Scotland, and created a pragmatic case for Irish reunification which did not exist before (and stands a chance of eventually winning over even many who are culturally predisposed to oppose the idea.) While I think both outcomes are still many years away (especially in the case of Northern Ireland), it seems likely they'll be with us much earlier than they would have in a timeline in which the Brexit referendum had gone differently.

When I take a look around it seems like the world is moving in a more decentralized direction. Sure there are superpowers but those entities are probably not as cohesive as we think-- certainly not ideologically (looking at the U.S. in particular.) Even within the monolithic traditional centralized powers we can see evidence of their control and influence waning, e.g. mass censorship campaigns, political prosecution, compulsory mandates with travel restrictions, soon new currency controls, etc.

Quite so, and there is a lot to be said for the idea of city-states making a comeback - except that the power holders in existing states are hostile to such autonomy and exert their authority first by law and then by force. Advocates of decentralization need to face up to the military problem.

It's not obvious to me that state-sponsored violence is a death sentence to decentralization. Solely relying on it seems like assured failure of your regime. You really need buy-in at some level. I think this is why the measures I highlighted are being so ferociously championed right now.

I didn't say it was. I said that advocates of decentralization need to consider its existence; there's abundant empirical evidence for why.

It's quite telling even the most pro-EU people are very opposed to creating anything resembling a real country. Opposition to the EU is often branded as nationalistic or insular, yet the EU and its proponents are dedicated to keeping the people divided along national lines. It's a very strange Rube Goldberg contraption. It's unsurprising most opponents want to simply disband it - hard to come up with a workable reform plan. Once it's dissolved or enough countries quit, you'll probably see more real integration but on a smaller scale.

>It's quite telling even the most pro-EU people are very opposed to creating anything resembling a real country.

What makes you think that? I'm pro-EU and ideally I would like to see it turn into a full fledged country. The issue is that the general population doesn't want this (yet).

>Once it's dissolved or enough countries quit, you'll probably see more real integration but on a smaller scale.

It won't be dissolved.

> What makes you think that? I'm pro-EU and ideally I would like to see it turn into a full fledged country. The issue is that the general population doesn't want this (yet).

Disbanding the EU is also not popular with the general population, yet there are many people discussing it and non-trivial political factions supporting it (yes, often they're not serious about it, but still). Where are the people pushing for a common language? My impression is most staunch EU supporters aren't just not pushing for this - they'd actively try to prevent national languages from dying.

Several countries in the EU have multiple national languages, so it seems strange to expect an amalgamation of them all to only have one.

https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/european_languages.ht...

You cannot have a real major powerful country if the people can't communicate with each other. You cannot have a people.

All of these countries with multiple languages on the list are tiny, monolingual in practice or struggling with separatism/conflict. Most fit into into at least 2 of these 3 categories. And certainly none of them have 20+ official languages.

>It's quite telling even the most pro-EU people are very opposed to creating anything resembling a real country.

I am both of those things and I am not sure what it is telling you?

>Once it's dissolved or enough countries quit,

There was quite a strong anti-EU stance here in Denmark until Brexit. As things are now, suggesting Denmark leave the union is political suicide. I imagine that trend is similar in other countries.

because Europe is and will be for centuries an union of countries at best, look at UK, centuries later England has a lot of problems keeping all constituencies together, being forced to give up a lot of concessions, and that from a clear position of power. Same thing for Canada and Quebec.

I think the EU is focusing mainly on the wrong things. Like the single market, making it easier for big business in the EU.

But things that actually make lives better like standard welfare and healthcare are left to each country. Or a single-standard rail network that could really help reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Or standardised road rules and vehicle checks, taxes.. I've lived in 3 EU countries and it's a mess. There isn't a single anything for us normal people.

I know it started as an economic block mainly intended to attract big business but now that it's a real union they're still focused on ticking off the business wishlist. It's a neoliberal's wet dream. But people with low opportunities like old people in Eastern Europe are worse off than in their communist times, and those are the ones that the populists like Orban are feeding off...

There's no power behind any of these ideas. Anything business related has the power of capital behind it, even the regulations and standards - some of the admittedly good - are the basic requirements of a taming a market to make it functional. Without a shared demos then there is no democratic mandate for them either.

The massive tragedy of the EU is that they have spent 20 years or more dealing with the inbuilt contradictions of their single currency and self-imposed restrictions of their monetary policy. All of which has the effect of constraining public spending. When the 20 years could have been spent on a serious move to a green economy. It was culturally, socially and economically (having a tradition of social democracy which requires public spending) the place where this could have really taken off. Yet navel gazing, and now paying the geo-political price.

That's our motto after all - in varietate concordia.

We acknowledge that we're different, but that doesn't mean we can't strengthen our cooperation. As a very pro-EU person, I think paradoxically, the only way to sustain our differences is by getting closer together - otherwise we'll all end up vassals of Russia, China or the US.

Sorry but no, as an EU Citizen we need a real EU instead of a financial-only one.

- We need a Constitution;

- we need a common fiscal system;

- we need to agree with a neutral language for documents, witch can only be an auxiliary language NOT spoken by anyone inside or outside the EU;

- we need a common defence;

- we need to remember that we are European till the Urals so Russia is largely Europe and have already offered more times the EAEU (EurAsian union) partnership witch is a FAIR one since we needs each others and we have industry and tech, they have land and resources with ground contiguity;

- we need to rule ourselves outside the anglosphere because UK and USA governments do their OWN (rightly) interest NOT our EU interest and their "international" institutions only serve them not us;

- we need to remember that an united Eurasian union is the first world power no one can break except ourselves (as it happen with two world wars in the recent past);

- we need to IMPOSE by People will a Political ruling class above finance, who represent OUR interests not the interests of some criminals in Davos;

- we need a Democratic model like the Swiss one where People vote every two months and there is a conscription of one month per year, 18-28 years of age, with weapons at home, so the government CAN'T go against Citizens without a bloodbath no one is interested in and so must respect people will and people must know how to protest, peaceful and armed+trained as needed, si vis pacem para bellum;

...

The last thing we need is the Germany model who actually DEVASTATE Germany making it a dummy and fragile empty economical power only for very few.

Fascinating article, thanks for sharing.

It is clear the the author has a deepened deep and wide vision of the options for Europe.

Alas, I'm not convinced the leaders of Europe, as a bureaucracy and as a human group, share that kind of visions, or to be more optimistic, I'm not convinced they will succeed in making it prevalent.

I will share the article widely, thanks for sharing.

It’s always messy, as what’s in the best interest for the EU as a whole may not be best for an individual country, or even a politician’s own agenda.

I hope the current situation can be resolved, in the next few decades, tho. There are some fundamental collaboration / alignment issues within the EU, and I think it takes some real decisiveness from the top to resolve them.

One thing I found odd about the EU, once I heard about Brexit, is that it had no escape clause, no procedures for leaving. Imagine marriage, but no divorce. "Well, we'll just make sure it is perfect" isn't a handy answer.

EU or replacement entity, it needs a procedure for "This isn't working, [we want out/you need to leave]."

Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union defines the process for leaving - which is what the UK followed?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_the_European_U...

Yeah, there is a mechanism for getting out, but none for kicking out a state that is sabotaging the rest (looking at you, Hungary).

Well, that's what Article 50[1] was established for.

Also why do you find this particularly odd? Is there a clause in the constitution for US states to leave the USA?

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

Indissoluble union of freeborn Republics, Great Russia has welded forever to stand.

To be fair in comparison which similar entity has a statute for leaving? The last time states tried to leave the USA it caused a significant civil war (and similar cases can be found for other Countries). Many multilateral treaties also have no provision for leaving, I don't think Nato has either (although France as a founding member had a weird neither in nor out status).

True.

The Brexit went rather smoothly, if seen in historical context.

USSR had this possibility on paper and even offered a mechanism for exit (a local referendum). In fact it was dissolved after all republics including Russia left it. Probably the reason it was a mostly peaceful process with few exceptions.

Well, I drew the marriage comparison up above but I guess I can belabor the point. If you told me that I can join a labor union but never change my job, I would not do so. If you told me I could join this awesome book club, but could never leave, I would hum "Hotel California" under my breath as I walked off. If I was offered a candy bar and told how amazing it was and it also came with a contract that this was the only kind of candy bar I could ever have, I would not buy that candy bar no matter how dazzling it appeared. If a gas station told me I could join their loyalty program but also forever after only had to get gas at their chain, I wouldn't join that, either.

Vendor lock-in: I avoid it in technology if it can be helped and it seems like a good principle elsewhere. Sometimes things just don't work out.

You have to remember that the EU was created in the aftermath of World War 2. It was built to eliminate war amongst a group of countries that had warring for hundreds of years. Making it easy to leave would undermine that.

There is a procedure for leaving of course, as pointed out in other comments; that's what the UK made use of. There's no reason disentangling economies and legal frameworks that have been consolidating for more than half a century would be easy though.

It does, and did: Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty[0]. It says that "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements" and sets out a procedure for negotiating an exit agreement, with a backstop provision for an exit without an agreement if one can't be agreed.

The actual procedure hasn't been perfect (six months turns out to be too short a period to negotiate a future relationship from scratch, and there are some awkward game theory problems with extensions to that period needing unanimous approval) but the principle that a state can leave is both clearly written down and entirely uncontested. Disagreements have been about the scope of the future relationship, not the principle that the UK can leave and have the treaties cease to apply.

[0]: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eut/teu/article/50

This is news to me, because I was told repeatedly by the anti-Brexit people that this was unthinkable, there was no method in place, and so on, and so Brexit shouldn't occur because no procedures had been made for it. I didn't buy that reasoning, but I had foolishly assumed that they were telling the truth. More fool I, I guess.

Are you in the UK - there was a lot of coverage about "Article 50" at the time it was invoked.

Nope, US. I also found the "We should vote again, and vote the right way this time!" thing baffling, but again, it was an outsider's view.

That was more based upon nobody having a clear vision of what leaving the EU should look like. Even amongst the Brexit crowd some wanted single market membership and some did not. Some wanted to pull out of completely unrelated organisations that just so happen to have the word 'Europe' in the name.

I personally feel that side won by promising many conflicting visions to different groups and not being able to deliver when they won the vote.

One of the most accurate predictions about Brexit was made by Nigel Farage, one of the leaders of the Brexit campaign - this was before the referendum:

"“In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way."

Of course he was thinking of a 52-48 vote for Remain - but his point is still valid.

Yes, but he also wasn't thinking about the four subsequent years in which anti-Brexit forces tried everything they could (and more) to stop the duly passed referendum from actually taking effect. That went a long way toward causing the collapse of Labour's "red wall" in northern England in the 2019 election.

FWIW the trend in the vulnerable 'red wall' seats has been towards the Conservatives for decades. This is partly as a result of partisan and class dealignment, and partly because the Labour-leaning forces of the organised working class have been in retreat there since the 70s. A former mining area like Bolsover, for example, has moved to vote more like similarly situated semi-rural, increasingly elderly, and low-wage areas since the pits closed.

Brexit also a factor in '19, of course, but those seats are red in history and not any more in demographics.

That’s a very strange thing for anti-Brexit people to have told you. The existence of Article 50 was sufficiently well known before the referendum itself that the BBC wrote about it in “what happens next” hypotheticals months ahead of the vote itself: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35946617

Brexit was messy not because such possibility did not exist, it actually did - UK triggered exit article and there was some procedure for it. The problem was that it is impossible to have a rollback or a national fallback for every EU regulation, neither UK wanted to have such fallback in all cases: they negotiated to cherry-pick the regulations they liked, while abandoning the others.

That is totally incorrect, that is what article 50 is and that is how UK left.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_the_European_U...

There is also no mechanism to leave under e.g. US Constitution (i.e. US States can never legally leave the Union). Similarly, no way to leave NATO, or any federal sovereignty that I know of. So, this seems hardly odd; given UK was able to successfully and peacefully leave EU, we already know that it's possible to leave EU.

You need to understand that EU invests ($$$) in each Member State, so one can argue the federal entity has incentive to make sure leaving is hard enough that no member can leave frivolously. (and from the opposite direction, one could argue federal entity should ensure leaving is not too hard, so as not to make the union undemocratic or despotic -- but that's a separate and debatable issue)

> no way to leave NATO

I thought France left and rejoined a few decades later, have things changed since then or did they only leave a small part of NATO?

They froze their membership. They did not leave, but they did not participate either.

> France quit the unified NATO military command structure, but not the organization. This means that France agreed to help a NATO member if it was attacked but on its own terms.

https://historyofyesterday.com/why-did-france-leave-nato-at-...

Thanks for the info; that seems weird, but no weirder than anything else in politics.

> I thought France left and rejoined a few decades later, have things changed since then or did they only leave a small part of NATO?

France left the unified military command (in stages) but later returned. To a certain extent the partial breach seems to have been magnified for domestic purposes, as secret agreements on reintegration in the event of an East-West conflict have since come to light. They also have always been outside of the nuclear planning group.

But, in any case, they never left the alliance.

> The key is to ensure that all willing and able European democracies have a clear and realistic path to membership or, if they do not want to join, an alternative form of cooperation.

When Russian Federation could still be called a democracy it did not have that. Have you read the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale?

Turkey was also (briefly) a functioning democracy but it also never had a "realistic" path to membership, even though it was one of the older member candidates. Turkey still is a democracy on paper, and no one knows what will happen once Erdogan dies -- it's not impossible Turkey can become a functioning democracy again, but it's not clear to me if EU would be enthusiastic to re-start membership conversations with them.

I think it makes sense that EU would want to see the country maintaining peace and prosperity for a while until they're more serious about membership. This is why the recent Ukraine membership deal will not work out any time soon, it's a long game.

Yes, we've read Sleeping Beauty. What's your point?

Are you saying that Russia is Sleeping Beauty? If so, why? If not, then what are you saying?

Regarding alternative forms of cooperation: From 1996 to 2022, Russia was a member of the Council of Europe.[1]

I see no reason why a truly democratic and market-economy stable Russia could not become part of the EU. But I am also very pessimistic that I will live to see it, as much as I hope I will. Under these conditions, Russia could even join NATO.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_Council_of_Europ...

> I see no reason why a truly democratic and market-economy stable Russia could not become part of the EU.

EU had plenty of time to prove it and did no real steps towards integration. Trying to drive a wedge between Russia and its neighbours at the same time.

I'm not sure what membership in Council of Europe did for Russia. European Human Rights Court was somewhat visible but that's it.

> EU had plenty of time to prove it and did no real steps towards integration. Trying to drive a wedge between Russia and its neighbours at the same time.

This is not true. Other counterexamples: Russia is a member of the Partnership for Peace[1] initiative. In the 1990s, when Russia was in a very bad economic situation, there was a lot of support for Russia from the EU, especially from ordinary people who sent aid packages or organised transport. I was myself shortly involved in a program to foster academic exchange with Lomonosov University.

Fact is that democracy and free market economy never really took hold in Russia. After Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, what was there in the beginning could not grow but declined. Corruption was everywhere. Chechnya was turned into a slaughterhouse. To sum it up: There was absolutely no basis for a deep integration of Russia with EU. It is rather astonishing how much and for how long the EU has continued to engage with Russia over the last 20 years.

> I'm not sure what membership in Council of Europe did for Russia. European Human Rights Court was somewhat visible but that's it.

This was of great benefit to the people of Russia as it protected them from the excesses of an authoritarian regime. The future will show how much they have now lost. Freedom of expression no longer exists even rudimentarily in Russia. Many civil rights activists had to flee into the West during the last two decades. As a representative for many, I would just like to mention Garry Kasparov.

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

> In the 1990s, when Russia was in a very bad economic situation, there was a lot of support for Russia from the EU

From my experience you greatly overplay it. There was "some support" maybe, but definitely not "lots" of it.

In 2000s Russia no longer was in a very bad economic situation. But there was no integration. Yes there were all kinds of bells and whistles, such as academic exchange this, international program that; but you know, you can have these with any country in the world. They're not life changing - they are just some peer things. Russian life was affected very little by its neighbourhood with the EU and no real integration took place.

> Chechnya was turned into a slaughterhouse

I don't think it is true (what would you compare it to, Bosnia or Yemen?). However, it does show the attitude which got us where we are now.

>> In the 1990s, when Russia was in a very bad economic situation, there was a lot of support for Russia from the EU

>From my experience you greatly overplay it. There was "some support" maybe, but definitely not "lots" of it.

Some numbers from my country of origin: In 1990, West-Germany alone payed 12 billion D-Mark (~6 billion Euro) and an additional loan of 3 billion (~1.5 billion Euro) for the re-unification to the SU (officially for the withdrawal costs of the Red Army). In addition Germany supported Russia to join the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Alone in 2020, German trade with Russia was covered by new export credit guarantees from the German state of 2.47 billion Euro; in this it was #1 (#2 Turkey: 1.93 bln, #3 USA: 1.25 bln, #4 China: 1.21 bln). -- How much else would be necessary to call it "a lot"?

> But there was no integration.

I would recommend reading the "Common Strategy of the European Union of 4 June 1999 on Russia": https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... This text documents in detail the common understanding of the member states of the EU at that time regarding Russia. However, it was the Russian government that rejected the idea of an integration into a common European economic and legal area on the basis that Russia is special in so far as it is not only European, but European-Asian and wants to keep its independence. The politcal vison of Putin was not to join the EU at some point in the future, but to establish Russia as the hegemon of its own federation of states, the Commonwealth of Independent States.

To sum it up: The outstretched hand of the EU was rejected by Putin right at the beginning of his presidency for fundamental reasons. There was therefore no realistic chance of a closer relationship between the EU and Russia in the last two decades.

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