Croatia to switch to euro, enter passport-free Schengen zone
aljazeera.com
aljazeera.com
Wikipedia notes that the kuna has been pegged to the euro for some time:
> The modern kuna was introduced on May 30, 1994, starting a period of transition from the Croatian dinar, introduced in 1991, which ended on December 31, 1994.[10] One kuna was equivalent to 1,000 dinars at a fixed exchange rate. The kuna was pegged to the German mark from the start. With the replacement of the mark by the euro, the kuna's peg effectively switched to the euro.
So I doubt there will be much effect on the rate of inflation after the switch.
ČNB actually intentionally weakened CZK in 2013 and for several years after. And in the long term CZK appreciates against EUR rather than the opposite.
"struggling to keep parity" is just not true.
> if the period is longer then invariably
That totally incorrect for most currencies in the countries which joined the EU in 2004 or later. The Croatian Kuna was never free floating and pegged to the Euro/DM since it was introduced 1994.
A recession (“bad economy”) tends to stop inflation because people stop spending.
> Inflation is a sign of a good economy
Tell that to Argentina...
And you can’t take Argentina or Japan as examples for anything. (Basically, Argentina just doesn’t work no matter what and Japan works no matter what.)
They should probably give up on having a country and move back to Spain.
There is no beating around the bush, the economic situation is far from good. Walking outside, seeing normal, retired people dumpster diving collecting empty bottles makes me depressed because I can easily see myself doing the same when my time comes.
This is the part that most people who want to take a single sector that benefits them and project it on to the rest of the economy need to understand; as someone who has spend time in HR before it was in the EU, when it was on the HRK/non-schengen and then as it was announced (rather late in '22) that it would be entering a year ahead of schedule it's hard to wrap my head around this false reality they've been painting. I've both worked and lived there (as a US citizen) for a total of 3.5 years and just how normalized things like that are, and variations of these kind of things, is what I took away with the most as the date got closer.
Lots of things look like the rest of the EU, and thanks to Chinese hot money flowing into E. European markets lots of it has a very thin veneer of looking as you said 'normal.' But if you stay outside the tourist season you will get a very clear look of how things really are and it's stark if you are not of the upper-middle class who own properties and has multi-generational privilege--as someone mentioned, the massive drain is just beginning with 10% of the population leaving in 10 years,some of my close friends being some of them. The cost of surviving in a tourist based economy has always been difficult, COVID really hurt many regions hard and never really recovered, which led to more consolidation to already wealthy and often foreign property owners etc...
My last year was under the digital nomad visa program there, not bordering hopping as I had before, and I even had to get an OIB number etc... as I became a resident, and the truth is the government is still culpable of a lot of the post war 'Baltic mindset' thinking that still holds lots of things back--even for their own population. I don't see many things getting better in that regard to be honest, because even when it is in their own interest they are either too ossified to adapt (the public sector is filled with older age lifers) to a newer EU standard or seem to just ignore it until the problem goes away.
I love Croatians and their culture but now really only enjoy myself in Dalmatia anymore after spending lots of time around the country, and while I wish them well in this as it can help the youth have better career prospects I cannot see how it will not lead to more of the same and it will likely end up like Slovenia (massive brain drain due to the high COL relative the wages) and ultimately end up like Portugal.
Having the same currency as your tourists (mostly people from the north, to a lesser extent people from the east and northeast) helps a lot.
Schengen helps also, but even before people could just drive there without noticing the border.
No passport control at the airport is also a nice bonus. I can’t describe that feeling when I travel to another country without going through border checks, it’s so liberating.
Not during the summer. There were usually big queues at border crossings during every summer weekend. This should alleviate that a bit - the pressure will just move elsewhere in the road network, but will hopefully be easier to manage.
Long queues and passport checks every time.
So if what you say is true and you can drive without noticing the border there must be some bias.
Possibly depending on which country of the Schengen zone you're entering Croatia from.
With this change, it means to be outside the Schengen you must now either go to less stable/safe countries, or go to the UK which is very expensive. I think you still have the option to go to Bulgaria to stay in the EU without being in Schengen, but otherwise I guess the next best option now in Montenegro, however I'm not sure how stable it is currently since it primarily existed on a tourist economy serving Russians.
It does however highlight how things that are of benefit to millions, (or at least, hopefully of benefit to those millions) can have unexpected (?) impact on the few.
As a completely alternate anecdote, I'm planning to attend a conference there in 2024,and this change has made it a lot more attractive :)
I've visited Croatia about a million times in 2012-2022 (that includes pre-EU), and the border controls were almost always a non-story. They'd see the cover of an EU passport (or even the car plates) and would just wave at us to go through.
I was stopped once to have my bag searched for drugs, because you know, long hair = obviously must be smuggling drugs. But that happened near other borders too (even inside Schengen; I used to hitch hike a lot).
I actually wonder if it would end up being a net benefit or not because of its impact on tourism from Asia and MENA.
Concerning safety, you often have trouble communicating with locals, (comparatively) high corruption and an unstable economy. They are steadily improving but are not quite at the same level as Croatia.
Appart from that, they are not part of the EU and normally don't accept euros.
I beg to differ. I was on a road trip in Bosnia once, and I will never go inside a car in that country again. Roads are poor. Speed limits are more like a rough suggestion. The local drivers are absolutely insane: they take over really aggressively, even with traffic coming from the opposite direction. I thought everything was just "ok standard crazy" (I've lived in Greece, Croatia, etc so I had an idea), until our car was taken over in a narrow tunnel, on a right curve - the driver behind us (or the guy on the opposite lane) would've had ZERO chance.
Roads are probably better in Croatia but the drivers are most certainly not.
Unfortunately the main highway from Zagreb towards the coast is regularly subject to traffic jams in the summer, which definitely doesn't help. But overall I'd still say it's a radically safer place to drive than Bosnia, I've seen more insane drivers in 2 days there than in ~2 years of Croatia.
Not having to leave/reenter Schengen area when visiting/leaving Croatia and dealing with yet another currency will definitely make their lives a bit easier.
Excerpt from Poland's policy.
"Yet further, above the framework of the Schengen visa exemption of 90 days in any 180-day period, Argentine, Chilean, Costa Rican, Honduran, Israeli, Japanese, Malaysian, Mexican, Nicaraguan, Panamanian, Singaporean, South Korean, United States and Uruguayan nationals are permitted to spend an extra period of 90 days visa-free in Poland."
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...
Here is your source. Not the best source, but I couldn't find my original on the Polish website https://www.gov.pl/ Well, honestly since I'm not in Poland it's just not worth looking for...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_the_Schengen_Ar...
Legacy visa waiver agreements for Annex II nationals[show]
One of the reasons Yugoslavia fell apart is because the richer north didn't want to pay for the under-developed south. EU has the same problem. The currency without a political union is a time-bomb. I also think the loss of the (educated) population to the north is unsustainable. Croatia has lost 10% of the population since it joined the EU.
It has been 32 years, my dear neighbor :)
I could be wrong but I seem to remember other EU countries like the Czechs, Sweden and Denmark intentionally avoiding the switch to Euro despite being eligible, and from some articles I read recently, other countries like Finland and Netherlands regretting the switch from their currency as they don't want to have to suffer the proposed persistent high inflation and be punished for being financially responsible in order to help countries like Greece or Italy pay their huge debt.
Also, an older Italian gentleman I spoke to once told me that after their switch to Euros, their prices shot up but wages didn't. Curious how true this is and if the same could happen in Croatia.
Does having control of your own currency that's not pegged to the USD/Euro carry any advantages anymore if you're not someone like China ar is it pointless now?
There are some advantages to being on the Euro, but macroeonomically, it more benefits large stable countries (which then have an artificially depressed currency) like Germany and France.
As the sibling comment said, they taxes are enormous, public services openly hostile to everyone, and public medical services (which you pay a lot anyway) are arguably worse then 40 years ago.
The coast is beautiful in places, the islands are even more so. But there is a difference between living there and visiting. I would even argue that the cities you mention are much worse to live in than say Croatia's capital Zagreb. The cities are very hot during summer, and just miserable outside of it. I would even argue that most of the coast/islands are like that, small towns are empty and dead outside of the summer season, and too crowded during one.
Personally, I would rather live in an alive place, and visit Croatia's islands now and then, then in a place which springs to life two months a year.
Similarly to the way some EU members applied transitional arrangements temporarily limiting free movement rights to citizens of new members states, Switzerland currently has a quota on Croatian citizens moving there.
"The Federal Council’s decision of 16 November 2022 to invoke the safeguard clause for Croatian nationals applies initially for the year 2023. It may be extended until the end of 2024." https://www.sem.admin.ch/sem/en/home/themen/fza_schweiz-eu-e...
In general you cannot move around within the eu and work from another country beyond 90 days. Which imho defeats the purpose of calling it a single market
Indeed, Schengen is completely unrelated to work visas, it simply removes border control within the area.
Freedom of movement rights come from the EEA Single Market (EU + Iceland, Lichensteain, and Norway) plus Switzerland (through a complex series of ad-hoc agreements with the EU.) Not all EEA members are in the Schengen area but they still enjoy freedom of movement rights, they just have to go through border control entering the Schengen area.
> In general you cannot move around within the eu and work from another country beyond 90 days. Which imho defeats the purpose of calling it a single market
This is inaccurate. As an EEA/Swiss citizen you still have the right to work beyond 90 days. I think you may need to register with the country's social security office beyond that though. The 90 day rule is effectively there to prevent benefit tourism.
For instance, when I moved to Norway some years ago for a job I was able to start work without any paperwork as a then EU citizen but had to register with the tax office for a tax number before they were able to actually pay me with the proper tax withholdings.
""" If you want to remain in an EU, EEA state or Switzerland for more than 90 days, you may be asked to show that you are:
- In employment
- Self-employed
- A full time student with health insurance and money to support yourself
- You have money to support yourself and health insurance (for you and your family) without state assistance """
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government_in_ireland/...
Edit: Perhaps you are referring to remote work? If so then I think the situation in the EU is similar to that in the US where your employer must withhold state taxes in the state where you perform your work.
Longer term, Croatia will have lost control of its monetary policy but one would expect they reckon they'll gain more from the switch.
You cannot lose something which you don't have. A bit /s, but don't think its much further from the truth.
The real issue is they lose the ability to issue debts in their own currency and whether that's good or bad depends hugely on individual counties. It has worked well for some, not for others.
Having your own currency also allows you to set monetary policy and not just follow the European Central Bank. So in time of financial crisis you can print as much money as you want and fiddle with exchange rates to make your country more competitive.
Not quite. When your currency is pegged to the euro, the exchange rate isn’t fixed; you only promise to try and keep it fixed. If that turns out to be impossible (or you don’t want to do it anymore), you can change the exchange rate or decide to stop that pegging.
Of course, that you could do that has a price: people will weigh the risk of something like that happening when they invest in your currency.
If you join the euro, the exchange rate becomes 100% fixed. Giving up that flexibility removes some uncertainty for investors, and that may be beneficial to you (technically, you could still exit the euro system and reintroduce a national currency, but your national debt and interest payments would still be valued in euros, diminishing the effect you get from getting back your own currency. It also is deeply uncharted territory; I’m not even sure rules for doing it have been made. Markets may judge a move like that similar to how they would judge defaulting on your loans)
In some sense, pegging to the euro is the try-out of “what would happen if we joined the euro?”
"About 80 percent of bank deposits are denominated in euros and Zagreb’s main trading partners are in the eurozone. Croatians have long valued their most prized assets such as cars and apartments in euros, displaying a lack of confidence in the local currency."
So in that sense it's less of a radical change than e.g. Czechia or Sweden, since they primarily use the local currency AFAIK.
If you're already half-way using the Euro (kuna is pegged to Euro as well) you might as well join the euro-zone and have some influence.
It carries tremendous disadvantages.
In fact, I'm quite surprised that at this late date, with a greater understanding of what it means to force your citizens to use the Deutsche Mark, that they have made this decision.
With all due respect to Croatia and the lovely people that live there, they cannot compete globally with Germany in any interesting export market.
The typical tool that a nation uses to deal with that reality is the relative value of their currency. Consumers of import goods then have a choice to make between German quality and (for instance) Spanish pricing.
... and now that lever will be gone.
At this point I think it is fairly well understood what the economic - and social - ramifications of this are and, again, I am actually quite surprised they've made this choice.
Tourism is one of the larger sectors in Croatia’s economy, so frictionless travel between them and other EU members is likely worth the arrangement. They also have a floating LNG terminal, very valuable due to recent events.
I admit there is always a bit of contention when macroeconomic stress limits are tested. Such is the nature of unions.
The United States and the individual states share both a fiscal and monetary union.
The EU, on the other hand, is a monetary union but not a fiscal union and our expectations for that arrangement range from hopeful to outright fatalism.
“ [...] the point of that kind of Europe with a central bank is no democracy, taking powers away from every single Parliament, and having a single currency, a monetary policy and interest rates which take all political power away from us.”
Yeah, some matters are also discussed at the EU level. That's what happens when different entities make and join a club. They have to collaborate.
Would she have agreed to give Scotland its own currency ? Thought so.
Greece cannot pass laws through parliament without Brussels approval. Italy, effectively need to stay in-line with the EU's program otherwise the EU aid will stop... so effectively these parliaments vote whatever they're told by Brussels to vote.
> Yeah, some matters are also discussed at the EU level. That's what happens when different entities make and join a club. They have to collaborate.
I don't see much collaboration happening tbh (energy, immigration, etc.). I could point articles but I think we have a completely different view on how's Europe actually governed right now.
Not sure it could before joining the euro either though
That might be a positive thing even just in the context of monetary policy, but that does not really make the quote incorrect.
The local elite now will be owned by Brussels within a few years to an extend they can’t imagine. The politicians care too much about their personal careers, they don’t care about the state.
Ultimately the Citizens will have to pay the piper, but then again … maybe I am wrong.
Joining the EUR in 2000 one could claim ignorance. Joining in 2022, without having infrastructure and industry to compete with Germany, using a currency they completely control is pure suicide. You go looking for someone to take over you country.
Greece and Italy choose to be part of the EUR, so now they have to pay the price of a choice they made. However, there is a structural problem with the way the common currency is constructed. This has little to do with individual countries and everything to do with the eurozone.
The EURO created a union with a common central bank that lacked a common state to have its back, while simultaneously allowing states to carry on without a central bank to have their backs in times of financial crisis, when states must bail out the banks operating in their territory.
Now during the good times, cross-border loans created unsustainable debts. Then, at the first sign of financial distress (either a public or a private debt crisis), the writing was on the wall: a eurozone-wide spasm whose inevitable outcome was sharp divergence and enormous new imbalances.
The beneficiaries of this situation are some countries and not others, but this is not sustainable in the long run. The EU needs to create a proper banking union and then most likely most to a sort of political integration. Unfortunately the EURO as currently constructed, made that impossible by pitting one country against another.
The local elite is such a bunch of bufoons (Johnson would fit right in!), being owned by Brussels would be an improvement.
There are some "pro-Brussels" arguments. For example right now Greece is in the midst of a spying scandal and the only way the judiciary pays attention is to avoid pressure from Brussels. Local journalists try to escalate to European bodies because locally the judiciary bodies are either corrupted or toothless.
So, there's at least that.
You can have all the LNG terminals in the world, but if your government and judicary are completely corrupted, normal citizens won't get a cent out of it. And that's happening over here in Croatia.
Whenever you purchase with HRK, you'll get your change in EUR. ATMs that are dispensing HRK will stop working, but those that dispense EUR will be available for no fees regardless of the bank.
> ... and now that lever will be gone.
Because Croatian prices will be equal to German prices? Why?
That lever hasn't been there in a while. Croatia could never lift the peg to Euro without massive disruption to almost everyone here.
A few years ago, Switzerland lifted its peg. Only a very small number of Croatian mortgages have using CHF at the time (the rates were better then EUR or HRK ones) and the resulting damage was huge (bankruptcies, people's lives' ruined), still having repercussions ot this day.
Compared ot that, virtually all of the mortgages (and other types of loans) are either calculated in Euro or pegged to Euro directly or indirectly. If the peg had ever lifted, you'd have rioters in all the major cities the next day.
same thing happened in other countries in eastern europe. it was a mess, but to me it showed that people don’t really understand what they’re signing.
> The typical tool that a nation uses to deal with that reality is the relative value of their currency.
The typical tool they use is product pricing. Why devalue the savings and assets of Croatians who don't participate in exports?
The irony of your claim is that Croatians use the euro as a store of value in preference to the kuna because of the (perceived) vulnerability of the kuna to devaluation, or even elimination. They've lived through several wars and attendant changes in sovereignty were bank savings were simply wiped out or the old currency was severely devalued in a forced exchange.
People tend to bring up this "important tool" but ignore that by itself it's of little value (see Italy for instance: so many devaluations, still a fiscal basket case) and ignore the severe impact devaluations have on the income as assets of people who have worked hard and done nothing to deserve the haircuts they recieve in currency devaluations. More often it's used as a tool to avoid economic reforms (again Italy).
Not only that, but they have used the German Mark before in favor of the dinar. And dollars as well in seafaring regions. There are pop songs from the 80s made about this. [1] Pop the lyrics into Google Translate Croatian --> English: https://cuspajz.com/tekstovi-pjesama/pjesma/djurdjica-barlov...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZfzjPrWO5o&ab_channel=DekyS...
A currency devaluation may, in theory, make a country's exports more competitive but it does so by imposing a real cut on every citizens income. It also makes all imports more expensive leading to inflation so in the end, it cannot not solve the underlying problem.
There are no examples of countries becoming wealthier simply by manipulating the value of their currency. Nor does it make me taller if I decide from now on to measure my height in cm instead of inches.
In general stability is better for small countries. And Euro is big enough to be stable enough.
This fails Econ 101. Gains from trade occur even if one country is absolutely worse at making and selling everything than another. You may want to revisit the concept of comparative advantage.
Their currency is also currently pegged to the euro, so this is absolutely no change from a macroeconomic perspective. It just reduces the barriers to trade, including tourism.
Ignoring temporary inflation due to businesses taking advantage to round things up in Euros, my belief is the switch will be a net positive.
Croatia has been already completely tethered to Euro. Kuna was unofficially pegged almost from the start, house and car prices are always quoted in Euros, people's mortgages are calculated in Euros. The "loss" of monetary freedom that comes with not being able to print your own currency is not a loss here because Croatia could in practice never leave the peg, the consequences would be extremely severe.
On the other hand, Croatia is a very small country (less than 4m people) and tourism makes up a large portion of the economy. Using Euro removes friction and costs tourists and businesses had having to convert from/to the currency. The removal of the border checks (entering the Schengen, which also happens on Jan 1st) will also help with this.
> other countries like Finland regretting the switch from their currency as they don't want to have to suffer sky high inflation and be punished for being financially responsible just to help other countries like Greece or Italy pay their huge debt.
Croatia will be a net beneficiary (edited, thx) of EU funds related to the integration processes for at least a couple of years, and is near the rear of the pack in most economic measures.
Do you mean net beneficiary, instead of benefactor?
In Italy we’ve been talking about this a lot. Of course there’s no evidence in the data and until last year prices had barely changed since I attended middle school in the mid 90s.
Only in name as a PR move. Take a look at the 10 year EUR/DKK conversion chart. [1] The Danish national bank keeps the currency fixed to euro anyway.
--
[1] https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=DKK&view=10Y
Having said that, it seems like they've foreseen this issue and currently require businesses to display prices in both currencies.
On the euro-conversion day, 1 EUR = 1,936.27 ITLira = 1 Deutschmark (at the time). So, prices went up ie a L1,000 coffee became €1 - it doubled, because a) it was easy and b) people just couldn't be bothered. Businesses had no problem, being bothered, of course - wood from Germany that used to cost DM1,000, now cost €1,000 in Italy when it should have been 1,000/1,936.27 = 516 Euro....but it didn't. I knew a guy that was building a house and it was cheaper to purchase a lot of things from Germany (even with the exchange rates, paperwork etc), and boy did they get burned. Equally, an Italian company they originally called had also doubled their prices, so it would have cost twice as much again to purchase locally.
Italy was just the victim of a series of rounding errors, except when it came to wages, as they didn't double.
To me, it's just like shopping in the states. A dollar is a dollar, but state, local, county etc taxes sure make it far more interesting than it should be.
This is just an urban myth.
No.
1 Euro=1,936.27 IT Lire
1 Euro= 1.95583 Deutsh Mark
Around that time, roughly, the change was 990-1,000 Lire = 1 Deutsch Mark.
However, countries have drastically different monetary goals, as can be sharply seen in times of crisis, such as the sovereign debt crisis in the 2010s. It's fundamentally impossible to satisfy the goals of Germany and Greece, for example, with a unified currency but no fiscal union (and of course, with no democratic governance).
Oh man I absolutely do not. This makes life so much easier as a Dutch person. It felt a bit weird and was tricky to deal with and mentally convert Iceland's currency to something that makes sense to me while on holiday last year, or having prices for books and food in a stopover airport to Finland in another random currency despite to/from being all Schengen/EU. But that's just holidays and stopovers. Imagine this is part of your daily life as you go to a restaurant in Belgium, or get a drink after a walk in the Eifel in Germany. Even if you could pay by card (hah, germany and paying by card) the exchange fees would probably add up. Or buying hardware in a German media markt that isn't available in the Netherlands, gotta do math and factor in exchange fees.
No thank you, Euros all the way. I'm not economically literate enough to say whether it would be a good idea to have a world currency, but I'd be in favor of working towards that sort of thing if it were sensible (probably you get into issues like some places having a ton of inflation while others are negative and not being able to balance it out with a central bank, but again, I don't truly know the impact of that).
Within SEPA it's now zero. I can buy computer parts in Germany without considering that downside. Kind of the useful for this 'one market' thing they are trying to have going on.
And the mental math every time. I can trust that a coffee is going to be a bit overpriced at worst (but not a real mistake), but is it worth driving 5 minutes to a petrol station that sell it at 493 ISK the litre instead of 529 ISK? Should I buy this shirt for 1500 ISK as souvenir or is that insensible? Hard to tell.
It does not matter much on what side of the border one lives. And if it does to someone, they're free to move. Borders are now settled once and for all. If a nation joins the EU this is an accepted fact - and no, an exception like a nationalist, populist Hungary publically dreaming of access to the Adriatic Sea does not invalidate the line of thought.
Not necessarily. For example, The Netherlands and Belgium exchanged parts of lands in 2017 to make their border align again with the Meuse river: https://nos.nl/artikel/2112869-nederland-krijgt-belgisch-sch...
For context: the border originally followed the flow of the river, but a few decades earlier the river was straigthened by dredging to enhance the traffic on the river; the border was left as-is though, leaving both countries with hard-to-reach peninsulas on the "wrong" side of the river.
It's not much of a problem in practice because of agreements made decades ago and there is no (or very little) actual land involved, but the borders are still technically disputed by both side.
this video explains (or interprets) quite succinctly the EU - it's a post-imperialism union. I really like that idea.
Not for external ones...it'll be interesting to see what happens to Kaliningrad when Russia collapses later this year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Final_Settlement...
What values does Orban's Hungary share with most of the rest of Europe?
Come on please...
To Romanians, the ongoing stonewalling is perceived as racism against Gypsies; fear that the under-documented Gypsies of Romania and Bulgaria will flood Western Europe, who already has had enough of the documented Gypsies migrating to their cities so far. And when, after years of poorly-founded claims that the Romanian external border was leaky, Austria brings up their brand new, never heard before reason "poor treatment of Austrian businesses", it's seen as making up random stuff, cynically.
I'm not sure what you are talking about. There have been several incidents regarding smuggling across the Romanian border with Ukraine/Moldavia/Black Sea, plus endemic corruption (see the Recorder documentary).
I would not trust today's Romania to secure Europe's borders.
Migrants routes may be used as a political justification but there have been a bunch of border incidents suggesting Romania does not in fact meet the criteria for Schengen.
[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/main-cocaine-ro...
Disclaimer: I’m romanian.
You won’t be able to make a good argument using statistics about corruption and migration. European politicians have given up on that, too. Now it’s subjective stuff like “they don’t treat our businesses well.”
That's a bold strategy, let's see if pays off.
There's also a bunch of lovely people. One of the companies I worked with had a remote office in Romania, and onshored a fair amount of staff, and they were perfectly european culturally.
The counter is obviously there's nothing wrong with Romanians ethnically, but there has been downsides of denying the negative consequences of immigration, which had helped fuel our absolute farce of removing from the union.
With that said, from the little knowledge I have on the issues, many of these issues are the UK shooting itself in the foot, but my point is these are not black and white issues, but rather complex issues that are better fixed for an increasingly stable Europe.
- timing of the influx
- appearance
- my wife is Ukrainian and see believes them to be Romanian. She likely has better insight than I.
- She also talks to them sometimes.
The thing is, Romanians are Europeans. They're all culturally European. It's just that some (mostly Western) Europeans dislike the grimier aspects of European culture and have redefined European-ness to exclude some European people.
If I see a hobo from Alabama begging downtown, I'm not going to be like "this guy is not 'culturally American,' we should restrict Alabama's travel to the rest of the US." I see it as American culture, and we should fix it by improving quality of life throughout the federation.
The "unified Europe" project is hilariously wrapped up in mindfuck games of who to exclude.
That's said, comparison to the US doesn't make sense, since it was only back in 2008 when Romania was added to the bloc.
We're mostly on the same page, I just assume it's a process rather than pulling the plaster off.
Then again, I've also noticed that US passport control has stopped stamping my passport.
https://ogletree.com/insights/cbp-expands-pilot-program-elim...
> However, border checks will end only on March 26 at airports due to technical issues.
Inability to e-parse which group a passport belongs to?
Also physical builds with plenty lead time tend to happen, while e-plans tend to miss dates.
So just curious.
March 26 is the date of the switch from the winter schedule to the summer schedule for airlines. There are differing rules and visas for entry into Croatia versus Schengen, and changes on the ground like different gate assignments, and given the timing of the final decision (Dec 9th, midway through the winter schedule) it would have meant that airlines would be speculatively changing the rules on their flights mid year, which is obviously unworkable.
Look forward to reading more about about the differences and successes/failures that can be attributed to falling within each of those groups.
Not by design. Eurozone is a subset of EU countries, Montenegro and Kosovo adopted Euro unilaterally.
Not really first one reached, but first one where fingerprints were documented or an asylum claim was filed. This is why in the case of Syria for example, relatively many Syrian refugees are the responsibility of northern European countries like Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.
I wonder what will fall first, whether EU or Eurozone, there are hardly any benefits for anyone joining now unless it's extremely poor country (EU).
As for convenience, everyone pays with card anyway, so it absolutely doesn't matter what the currency is anymore.
There's a massive benefit and that's the free movement of goods and people. The EU has lifted up both poor countries and made rich ones richer... Ask Poland, CR, SR, the Baltics, etc... what they think of the EU. And France and Germany have also benefitted, both have doubled their GDP since the creation of the EU.
> Meanwhile CZK Czech crown is strongest against euro in 11 years, so much for euro being helpful in any way.
The CR is in some ways a bit of an outlier - they're very heavy into manufacturing, have been growing very fast plus have had a rather conservative monetary policy.
not really truth, all of these poor countries had huge growth prior joining EU and it just continued after joining EU same as it would continue without joining, not thanks to EU, which is wishful thinking of EU proponents, look at Serbia GDP growth for instance, higher than any EU country and even fresh EU members Bulgaria and Romania had huge growth prior joining, same with central Europe, you will have trouble finding poor non EU country without massive growth
but yes money wise it's beneficial for poor countries to be net receiver of funds, for well of countries which are around zero contributor/benefactor there are hardly any benefits left
Absolutely false, Ireland has had higher GDP growth, and closer peers like Estonia or Lithuania have had comparable growth rates to Serbia, which is all the more impressive (or underwhelming for Serbia depending on how you look at it), because these peers have much more developed economies (on a GDP per capita PPP basis) and sustaining high growth when you're already developed is harder.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2...
Also the wine industry in these countries and also in Hungary has seen major growth and huge quality improvements. In fact this industry has been growing in Moldova and North Macedonia as well as a consequence to increased EU exports.
Made easier when well over two-thirds of your exports are to EU countries, with zero tariffs. GP then has the nerve to conflate Eurozone membership with EU membership to fit their hazy narrative - the lack of rigor is astounding.
Sure, besides massive money printing 2013-2017.
> Ask Poland, CR, SR, the Baltics, etc... what they think of the EU.
Considering significant eurosceptic parties (at least in CZ and PL) this might not go as well as you'd hoped.
Sorry but "if you look at Eurostat stats Eurozone countries" is not going to cut it as a source when you make such bold claims.
Playing around with World Bank data, you can see that out of a selection of non-Eurozone countries (Czechia, Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania), and Eurozone countries (Estonia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Latvia), and checking their PPP GDP per capita growth, it's a complete mixed bag. The only cluster that emerges is non-EU, non-Eurozone countries doing significantly worse than EU countries:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?end=2...
Very similar story about reported unemployment rates with the same selection:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.NE.ZS?end=2...
don't go on my with your selection matching your agenda, show me all Eurozone countries vs all non Eurozone EU countries
https://mobile.twitter.com/EU_Eurostat/status/13674145166240...
as for GDP growth rate there is absolutely no difference between Eurozone vs non Eurozone EU
https://mobile.twitter.com/dlacalle_IA/status/15199795585603...
There is no reason to join Eurozone at all. EU is worth it only for poor countries.
What developing or growing countries need to do is export their products to the rich ones so they can build up their domestic economy and pay off debts with the fresh money in their country. This doesn't mean huge export surpluses, exporting as much as you are importing is ok. The lack of of an exchange rate means German products are valued at the average between western and eastern Europe so everyone buys from Germany almost exclusively which isn't healthy in the long run.
Also gdp growth is not an important indicator since most well developed countries will see their gdp growth stabilize, but even if we take your point at heart it isn't true[1].
Its ironic you bring up Czechia, since it's an excellent example of how a strong economic Eastern European country is still reaping te reward of being in the EU. [2][3]
[1]https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gdp-annual-growth-...
[2]https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...
[3]https://archiv.hn.cz/c1-66927630-co-nejlepsiho-prineslo-cesk...
You say that as if that was something to strive for. CZ is an exports-heavy economy.
> I wonder what will fall first, whether EU or Eurozone
Fall? First? What does that even mean?
Putting aside the nature of a fallen EU, which probably is a semantics game anyway, not worth getting dragged into, it is even harder to understand how the ECB would operate without EU agreements in place.
So still an argument for independent central bank with its own currency.
Despite its flaws, which it surely has, I can't see the EU as anything but a major success of humanity. A force for cooperation between peoples with vastly different cultures, languages and historical backgrounds, working together towards a better future.
For those critical of the EU, please comment here on what you suggest as an alternative. Are the countries supposed to split up and go back to competing with each other in an increasingly harsher global market? How on earth are the small EU countries supposed to compete?
Maybe you'll say that the EU is great for small countries and not so much for larger ones, who are sponsoring the EU's success with their citizens tax money. Maybe that is true so, as a citizen of one of those small countries, I am thankful to my fellow EU-tizens who are better-off, for quite literally bringing my country into the world stage, with the increases in quality of life that that entails.
I welcome my fellow Croatian citizens to Shenghen and the Euro, I hope to get to meet some of you next time I visit your country, or vice-versa. Long live the EU, one of humanity's greatest achievements.
California, ecologically, is not capable of supporting its own population independently, and short of geo-engineering at continent scale nothing will ever change that. It has absolutely nothing to do with politics, economics, or any sort of issues like that, it's simply the geographic and ecological nature of the state.
Los Angeles, for example, would be impossible for it to exist without modern technology and mass importation of water, most of which comes from outside of California (although some comes from Northern California where it actually rains).
Anyone, like yourself, who seriously contends that California could survive on its own independent of the United States simply does not understand how anything works, water systems, electric systems, import/export economies, globalism, money movements between coasts, investment funding and how it is structured to take investments from the US heartland and VC companies in Californian tech. Your statement is not just a gross oversimplification of a LOT of complex topics, it's blatantly untrue in /every single/ one of those topics.
That's quite a preposterous assertion. Source? CA has ~85% coming from the Sierra Nevada watershed, only 15% is the Colorado River at the bottom. "California receives 75 percent of its rain and snow in the watersheds north of Sacramento."[0] CA is more than water self-sufficient if it loses the 15% Colorado River, but reduces the ag. water usage (80%) that ships out most of it to the rest of the states.
https://water.ca.gov/water-basics/the-california-water-syste...
We're talking numerous large nuclear power plant levels of energy.
Have you reaf how long it takes to build a nuclear power plant??
Around a decade.
So it's not as simple as just "desalinate"
I don't understand how that's possible. I don't know of any lakes or rivers or aquifers larger enough to provide water to almost 40 million people in California.
https://www.nature.org/media/california/california_drinking-...
The large greenery to the right is the Colorado River which provides 15% of CA water at the bottom.
It provides 60% of California water.
Even removing the farms, I couldn't find any data supporting that it was enough water for the rest of California.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that it can't either.
The data I found says the Sierra Nevada watershed supports 750,000 farms.
Is that equivalent to 15 million people or so?
Those aren’t gifts to the rest of the country (and, actually, much of it is exported directly internationally), they are cash crops, and the lifeblood of rural California.
> California would immediately become a failed state on its own, unable to meet even the most basic needs of its residents
Of course CA independence would be economically harmful and disruptive. Doesn't mean CA won't be able to provide its own water by taking an ag trade economic hit.
There’s not enough NorCal water for that, which is why SoCal already relies on Colorado River water as well as NorCal water.
> For residential use, there is plenty, without needing to ship out water in the form of half of the US’s fruits, nuts, berries, and vegetables.
Sacrificing the state’s agriculture would…rather deeply harm the economy.
> Solar ramp-up is progressing well, already at 17% vs. 50% natural gas, with battery storage to eventually buffer the rest of the 15% nuclear + hydro.
Nearly a third of California’s energy is imported. displacing fossil fuels with clean renewables for in-state generation is good, but it isn’t self-sufficiency.
An independent California would just buy the things that it needs from its neighbors, like most other countries do.
Would they? Would they really?
Sure they'd be poorer but they'd probably just consider that a really, really cheap price to pay for not having to share a country with California (or wherever the line is drawn).
Would you take a 10%-20% pay cut to get your way on almost all political issues? That's basically the bargain you're striking when you get out the map and draw a poorer but much more politically homogeneous state. I think most people would take the deal they'd do it with a smile on their face.
Despite all the bickering and backbiting and dysfunction in it, the overwhelming majority of its residents and polities do not want to see the union broken apart.
The strongest argument against growth of the EU is, quite literally, inertia. It's not a perfect union, but it's much better for its participants than being marginalized outside it.
But you know what? If some outsider were to pose a serious threat to any of the states, we're all going to band together and tell said outsider to get wrecked and go pound sand. That same Texas would be among the first to come to California's aid and defence. The only one who gets to dunk on Americans are fellow Americans, nobody else.
There is all this rhetoric in red-state politics, governors shipping immigrants to NYC, Texans obsessing over Nancy Pelosi, babble about "east coast values." That shit simply doesn't exist in the other direction. It's true that coastal elites harbor a lot of resentment toward "rednecks" for things like the recent abortion ruling, but… they just don't obsess the same way. Mostly they just don't think about them at all.
It certainly does exist when they think folks in red states are in a position to exert control over the national culture. Do you remember the Bush administration? Or the beginning of Trump’s presidency? People were pretty obsessive about him here in DC before he even did anything.
Nah, the abortion ruling is a product of coastal elites; there aren’t any rednecks on the Supreme Court.
It would have to be a very, very, unifying outside threat.
Division runs deep these days and it seems highly likely that any such external threat would be leveraged by the two teams to try to gain the upper hand resulting in further division.
The CCP is still a disaster. The EU has the same nature - just because great things were achieved and the EU was the political organisation present doesn't mean the EU was good. It might be, I don't have any particular view. But it is interesting that the EU has serious energy problems, brewing war on the border implying diplomatic failures and is largely reliant on American military assistance. These are points against it. HN has celebrated their redesigning the iPhone to use a more standard connector though so there are pro- and con-.
For a few, while the poor countryside has no money and toxic boosters raining down on them.
The countryside is emptying of people in China as in every other country, just starting later and moving faster. Being a peasant is no fun. That’s why people leave as soon as they can.
Can't tell if you're being flip, so I'll add this one: the ease of producing products in country A and shipping them to country B without having to go through customs.
Given that Brexit happened and companies which predate Brexit still exist in the U.K., the reader has plenty of data to decide whether this constitutes a significant digit in the "pro" column.
> Can't tell if you're being flip
I can't tell if HN is being flippant. I've never seen such unanimous approval for a powerful entity engaged in triviality. The world has not confronted the level of threat we currently have of international industrial war for 70 years, and one of things that most bought people together celebrating the EU's contribution to the world seemed to be ... phone charger cables. It seemed to be the stand-out example of the EU doing something simultaneously newsworthy, well liked and good, which is concerning.
People in the halls of power in the EU don't seem to have been focusing on the important issues if issues like that are what generate praise. Doubly so because the EU has failed to produce anyone who knows how to design a good phone. All the industrial muscle for that is in Asia and America along with the track records of success.
Customs policies are based on international trade agreements and local policies. The 'custom department' is just executing.
> one of things that most bought people together celebrating the EU's contribution to the world seemed to be ... phone charger cables
You made that up.
The crisis was a self inflicted wound. And by far most of the time, the idea that a good is OK in one country but unacceptable in another is silly. It is quite rare that a good that can be sold somewhere needs to be restricted somewhere else. It happens in rare cases, but far less than most policies would have us believe.
Goods are produced under very different standards, different subvention systems, different economic systems, different economic policies, ...
For example in the EU the Chinese Covid vaccine(s) have no permissions. Likewise China does not allow European vaccines to be imported. Each country has their own reasons for that. It's not because the regulators are silly. It's because they have different standards and different interests.
In large free trade zones and joint markets like the EU, there are common standards and a common court for disputes. The EU as a union, just like any country in the world, negotiates the trade agreements with other countries, ...
> Goods are produced under very different standards, different subvention systems, different economic systems, different economic policies, ...
That isn't an explanation or an argument, that is just a list of things which are true. I'm happy to read that list and then buy things that are different from what I'm used to. I'll buy stuff made by Communists, Capitalists, Muslims, fools, industrialists; all good enough for me. Halal kebab makers are the only true kebab makers! If a billion Chinese can use something without it being a problem, it seems quite likely that I can too. We're all the same species and have mostly the same problems.
It doesn't actually make sense that I need a foreign union to negotiate to let me use foreign goods. My own government could, I kid you not, just let me buy what I want and get it shipped over. It'd be easier. The local standards aren't perfect.
Me, too.
> They're safe enough.
How did I know that? Because, the EU and the US work closely together and the regulations make sure that they work with common standard levels.
Each country has a system which regulates which vaccines it considers safe. In EU this is expanded such that the permissions are valid for the common market. The EU has EXPANDED the region where vaccines are permitted under a common regulation, it has not reduced it. Just the opposite.
> Why shouldn't people in China be able to use European vaccines?
For example because China wants to reduce the influence of other countries? Because it wants to promote their own companies? Because foreign vaccines are too expensive?
> If a billion Chinese can use something without it being a problem
How do you know that it does not cause problems for you? Currently it looks like China has a problem with Vaccines.
> We're all the same species and have mostly the same problems.
That sounds silly. Governments, regulators, companies, ... all have different policies, interests, etc. That creates a lot of DIFFERENT problems.
> need a foreign union to negotiate to let me use foreign goods. My own government could
The EU is not a foreign union. It the Union I'm living in. Just like my city, my state, my country, the EU all have different responsibilities. Why should my country dictate laws to my city? It does. Because we are all the same species and have mostly the same problems. In my state, my country, the EU. Those all have negotiated the levels of power they are responsible for.
All your customs office has contributed here is a rubber stamp saying "the work the Americans have already done is good enough" in case you are a jingoist who doesn't trust the US standard. The potential downside is if they vacillate then they'll delay the vaccine availability despite the fact that the option was available.
I put it to you that this is why the EU gets a lot of hate. People struggle to come up with examples of where it helped things along. There are decent odds here that Trump's policies did more for you on this topic than your own regulators, which I think it not be what you want in an example that you bought up.
> For example because China wants to reduce the influence of other countries? Because it wants to promote their own companies? Because foreign vaccines are too expensive?
You argue a few lines down that the Chinese have a problem with vaccines, so I put it to you that you actually believe the Chinese policy is worse than nothing. These reasons are terrible excuses for not letting a product over a border. Literally sacrificing lives for business interests in defiance of what a free market would do.
>> We're all the same species and have mostly the same problems.
> That sounds silly.
I'm not sure I can argue against this, but I urge you to reconsider what species you are a part of, and what the implications are if the problems are being created by the regulators rather than the underlying reality.
The customs office does not test nor does it approve vaccines. That's done by the European Medicines Agency ( https://www.ema.europa.eu/en ). This Agency is under EU control. The respective US authorities are not under EU control, they are under the control of the US government.
I would also not expect that the US companies give me the same vaccines from the same production sites.
> who doesn't trust the US standard
I trust EU standards. Which my government can influence.
> People struggle to come up with examples of where it helped things along.
Maybe you, I can come up with lots of examples. EU standards are one. Your view on standards and regulations differs from most people.
> Literally sacrificing lives for business interests in defiance of what a free market would do
The Chinese market is not free. That should be known.
> but I urge you to reconsider what species you are a part of, and what the implications are if the problems are being created by the regulators rather than the underlying reality.
Nations, organisations, science, companies, money, laws, politics, ideology, are all reality. You seem to live in a fantasy world of 'species'.
We were talking about the very real pros and cons of the EU.
You provided a single "pro" EU datum about chargers that is a) real and b) IMO trivializing at best wrt the benefits of EU-membership as the EU currently exists.
I gave you what I considered to be a more representative example: the convenience of shipping times/costs intra-EU. Brexit gives us plenty of data to compare pre vs. post on this issue.
Now you're waxing philosophical about whether the EU is necessary to achieve the "pro" that I gave you.
It's as if I just slid down the flagpole in Super Mario Bros., but now the game wants me to go backwards and consider how to build other routes for this same level.
Nothing surprising, if not the fact the western citizens allowed it to happen without revolting. Most likely they were glued to their phones while it happened.
The first two are essentially just a matter of geography; pretty sure it would have played out the same in broad lines if there had been no EU. If anything, I expect it would be worse: a more divided Europe would have been easier to defy by Putin. To call this a "diplomatic failure" is a huge simplification; you can only do so much diplomacy with someone who is not willing to engage in diplomacy with you. Ask Neville Chamberlain how his diplomacy worked out.
The US is convinced it needs an humongous army to do all sorts of useful things, like dropping napalm on children in Vietnam, drone strikes on journalists, invasion of countries for no clear reason in particular with intentionally falsified data. You know, essential stuff like that.
I'm putting it rather sharply here and I do think the US military does good things too and I "half believe" in Pax Americana, sort of, but let's not kid ourselves and claim that the US military is needed for the defence of Europe. Defend from whom, exactly? Russia? The Soviet military was already collapsing in the 80s together with the rest of the Soviet union, and we've all seen how well they're doing in Ukraine. That view is about 50 years out of date. We even have our own nukes, should it really come down to it. And who else is there to seriously threaten Europe/EU militarily? No one, basically. Even during the second world war things are not as simple as "the United States single-handedly comes to save the day in Europe" as some Americans seem to believe.
That ‘success’ came largely from western investment and western consumption, and at the cost of ~100,000,000 lives under Mao.
Huh!?
No way. The CCP is a massive failure economically.
Taiwan was part of China. Taiwan had massive growth while China was stagnant. Taiwan is one of the richest countries in the world, China is still one of the poorer countries in the world today. China ranks 66 below Costa Rica and Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
The true successes are places like South Korea and Taiwan that started exactly in the same place as China and delivered massive economic growth in an incredibly short time.
I'm not sure what the key is here, but maybe it is this.
> Are the countries supposed to split up and go back to competing with each other in an increasingly harsher global market?
countries are still competing with each other inside the trading block, only they have had many of the advantages they used to have available to them - e.g. their currency and central bank, their deficit spending, the ability to control inputs to their economy - taken away.
It's a trade off. It may be right, it may be wrong, but there's a lot of looking at the EU from one perspective only, it's nice to hear other perspectives.
For me, I don't see how a EU that doesn't federalise, i.e. doesn't have a single economic policy, doesn't have a single demos, can survive.
But even then, most of us live in countries that do have a single fiscal policy, a single demos, a freedom of movement of labour, goods, capital etc within our own country; and still it doesn't work without massive compensation to correct the inequalities that it brings. We have domestic governments trying (or most often not trying) and failing to deal with this imbalance even within a country.
I don't see how this will ever be possible at a supernational scale.
It does have a single demos, which is something the EU doesn't currently have. People will accept in some way to see federal money directed (or debt guaranteed) at communities they are geographically distant to, yet feel solidarity with in some way.
I personally feel the demos issue is the key rather than the monetary policy.
Separately, I’m not sure that US folks are actually any better at accepting the distribution of their taxes far afield than anyone else but I suppose that could make sense.
it is true that 'does / doesn't work' is subjective.
There is something to be said for trying to keep basic civilizational order amidst uncontrollable greed and an ocean of dark money, with just a few men getting obnoxiously rich and then using the resources to "burn it all down" because they feel victimized. Or something.
European elites enrich themselves by legislative capture. In any true Wild West capitalism, European elites would fail immediately, because they’re so utterly uncompetitive. That’s why no such “Wild West” capitalism exists anywhere near Europe.
But there’s no shortage of invented horrors about “Wild West” capitalism in Europe - this, in the same countries you need a government license to be self employed, where starting a business is next to impossible, and God forbid you use this word for your wine unless it was produced in these precise ten square metres of France - the same ten square metres conveniently owned by the same families who send their sons and daughters to write this legislation.
Europe is a corporatist, aristocratic economy that keeps its people in check by keeping the prosperity and freedom of actual capitalist societies from them, and by inventing capitalistic boogeymen to maintain the legislative moat built around its elites.
By devaluing their currency to make their exports competitive and improve their unemployment. The European Union's currency umbrella is precisely why the PIGS countries have been suffering ever since the 2011 Euro debt crisis with general economic stagnation, and why the UK could escape it.
Nothing stops countries from making trade agreements with one another and still maintaining their economic sovereignty.
For a common central bank and currency union, each country de facto has to give into a federalism of central debt issuance and budgetary powers. We have this in the United States: the federal government can run a deficit and print money, individual states cannot. We have a republic and California (most populous state) gets more representation than Wyoming (least populous).
For the EU to work long term, every country is going to have to give up more and more power / fiscal autonomy to Brussels each year for the currency to work. What happened when Greece was going to default on its debt? Germany stepped in, bailed them out, and started stealing their assets (airports, ports) because they weren't going to let the currency tank. Granted, Greece has some issues but whether they like it or not Greece defaulting on their debt affects the whole currency block. Greece issued its own debt.
The reality of the eurozone is that it has made rich countries exports cheaper (Germany, France) and made marginal countries poorer (Italy, Spain, Portugal).
If you grew up in Croatia speaking Croat and possibly English, do you really think the Greek labor market is open to you? Could you in all practicality relocate to Belgium and start a business?
Anti globalism sentiments are in every country these days. I personally don't see euro countries giving any more power to the European Commission, and I see the project ultimately failing.
My 2 cents. I don't have a dog in this race, and don't really think the EU is "good" or "bad."
I don't think that's a great comparison. It's not just a choice for now, but a multi-generation plan. If we don't share now, we're just going to end up with the possibility of poorer countries getting into more extreme governments as requested by suffering population and eventually waves of refugees.
It's more of a choice of supporting a neighbour in development with the prospect of better trade in the future, or saying "not my problem, let my grandchild deal with the fallout".
Italy is not a marginal country. It's the world's 8th largest economy, way larger than such EU heavyweights as Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland.
> If you grew up in Croatia speaking Croat and possibly English, do you really think the Greek labor market is open to you? Could you in all practicality relocate to Belgium and start a business?
If you grew up in Croatia, you for sure speak English and possibly German or Italian as well.
It would not be as easy to relocate your business as, perhaps from one US state to another, but that's mostly because of local law differences in how a business must operate.
I know people who basically just got up and moved (to the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland and Germany) and they had no problem whatsoever.
I was able to do it just because I'm in software and I work with english speaking clients outside the EU and I'm just shopping for the best eu country that gives me the best weather / services / lifestyle with the lower taxes.
People outside of software have a hard time and are stuck in their country, exactly like they were before the EU.
Your combo sounds like Portugal. I agree there are probably differences between countries, but from what I've seen if your trade is in demand in the target country, it's relatively easy.
And it's even easier if there's an expat community you can reach out to for advice.
Hell, I couldn't live, work, state a business in most of the USA and we all speak the same language and share a lot of the same culture, currency, federal government. Etc.
Not really. It's very popular for Croats to move to Ireland to drive trucks for instance. There are businesses set up by Croatians in other EU countries that hire Croats who don't speak any other languages. People get the help of friends and family when they immigrate. It's been like that for many immigrants worldwide for a long time.
Same applies to Spain
The difference in wages is large and unemployment in rich EU countries low - that's a potent combination.
My personal experience is that after brexit a lot of people are more pro-eu than before. Of course it is just anecdata.
America does fiscal transfers. Poorer states get money from richer states. It wouldnt work if they were all routinely forced to borrow money and declare bankruptcy.
"Business investment is growing again above the EU average. A strong pipeline of EU co-funded investment projects for the next four years is expected to provide an additional boost to investment. "
https://www.rosalux.eu/es/article/1585.the-economic-evolutio...
" Economic policy was also bolstered by a set of favourable circumstances, including the external depreciation of the euro, the relatively low price of oil, economic growth in the country’s main export destinations, Portugal’s ascent as a tourist destination (partly as a result of the political turmoil and instability in the Middle East) and the ECB’s accommodative monetary policy stance (which helped significantly reduce interest rates and minimise public interest outlay"
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/portugals-econom...
"Gomes also pointed out that the biggest boost Portugal received from Europe’s recovery came via exports, with the continent taking up 75% of the country’s exports of goods and services. "
I can link stuff all day here. Increases in quality of education, massive rises in investment, Lisbon has become (again) a world class capital, and if anything, Portugal is overheated from their EU membership.
I can never get over Portugal being included in this list and it immediately disqualifies for me all subsequent criticism of the EU as badly misguided. I don’t know the other countries on the list nearly as well, my experience with Portugal makes me suspect the entire anti EU argument is a argument in search of data instead of being based on data.
But in the long term, any centralization of systems such as the EU, or NATO, is dangerous. Because if you consider that everything in the world is a system, and all systems have flaws, then global systems have global flaws and will be exploited on a global level.
We peasants just don't have the resources to monitor how the plutocrats of the world exploit the world's systems to remain in power over us.
NATO doesn't really centralize power IMO; it's a very short and straight-forward treaty; the entire thing is 2 or 3 pages of text. NATO countries co-operate of course, but so do many non-NATO countries, and it's decided on a case-by-case basis by the countries themselves. There is no "NATO organisation" that can tell anyone to do anything. In practice, the US is the "leader" of NATO, but even their power is very limited in practice. You may recall that little kerfuffle in Iraq where half of NATO basically told the US to go fuck themselves and their stupid war (leading to hilarities such as "French fries" being rebranded as "freedom fries").
In each case countries are eager to join because they have so many benefits.
Your claims about plutocrats work in the opposite direction: corruption and influence is worse, and the rule of law is less effective when a country is smaller.
I mean things weren't exactly great before the EU and NATO tied Europe together - 10s of millions killed in two world wars in just 30 years.
> We peasants just don't have the resources to monitor how the plutocrats of the world exploit the world's systems to remain in power over us.
This is an understandable concern but on their own small countries struggle to effectively regulate large multinational corporations with revenues comparable to a country's GDP. I fear our only real hope of keeping the plutocrats in check is to band together.
EU has changed from an open market with very little reglation (relative to now), to an organization which dictates many more things than people would take for granted.
On the other hand, this is offset by smaller and poorer countries getting more of the EU money, but if you're not the direct recipient, you just get the regulation and higher prices with zero benefits... well, until the germans get fed up with working and paying high taxes for poor countries to get the money.
As someone from a country which has been in EU for almost 20 years, it's hard to predict anything, but we're probably better off being a part of eu (compared to if we stayed out), but there is a large anti EU sentiment growing, especially in the last few years, and even more hate concentrated against individuals, such as Ursula von der Leyen etc.
EU member nations are countries with literally hundreds if not thousands of years of storied history, all with varied cultures and traditions. It is impossible to unify such peoples in as heavy-handed a manner as the EU without harming and even destroying the identities of those member nations.
Cultural and national pride are things that are very real and not something to be tossed aside, they are the identities of those peoples and deserve to be respected.
The EU damages such things by way of instituting a single currency, removing the concept of borders, removing a nation's sovereign right to fiscal and economical policies, and more. I feel part of the reason Brexit ultimately came to be is because British pride could not allow EU encroachment to continue any further, and the EU will see more Brexits again sooner or later unless those fundamental issues are properly addressed.
A federation of states works for the United States of America because our states are, at the oldest, merely 200~300 years old, with most holding common or at least very similar heritages. There are less obstacles for such a union to overcome to be successful. The EU's member nations are wildly different by comparison and it is foolhardy to think an even more tightly-federated EU would be successful just like that.
lots of wars incl. the 1st, second and the cold war.
The EU has helped to create a larger Europe with much less conflicts. Having a single currency is a great advantage, borders are no longer necessary and, yes, nations are still responsible for their fiscal and economic policies.
> even destroying the identities of those member nations
the EU doesn't do that.
> EU will see more Brexits again sooner or later unless those fundamental issues are properly addressed
Actually it's the opposite. The UK was dumb enough to give up the single market, freedom of movement, common standards, common politics, solidarity, etc. The negative effects and the lack of positive effects of the Brexit are plain to see and the younger generation in the UK will demand the benefits back. Those lost the most because of Brexit.
The disintegration of the EU after the Brexit was always propaganda. If one read the British press, the EU was always collapsing the next day and the Eurozone would disappear. Nothing like that has happened, not even remotely.
> foolhardy to think an even more tightly-federated EU would be successful just like that
The EU is already a huge success.
> The EU is already a huge success.
I'd love to hear some proof of this
That's debatable and you'd want to bring some data if you're debating this.
I live in EU but I'd live in the UK if it weren't for the horrible weather. At least they don't have the immigration and poverty of the local population problem (which turns into thefts) that southern europe has.
Not to mention the covid bill which we'll have to pay within 10 years which the UK skipped.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores...
> At least they don't have the immigration and poverty of the local population problem
UK? The UK had some of the regions with high poverty in the EU. Outside of London there are regions of high poverty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_Kingdom
Just three years ago: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/12/11/the-uks-poore...
Brexit makes it all only worse. Now you need to compare the UK with the poorer regions of the EU to look better. The UK itself has one extremely rich region (inner London) and a lot of medium to poor regions.
UK regions compared to the EU average in 2014:
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/05/02/article-2617938-1...
Where do people struggle to not hunger?
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/map-reveals-uk-re...
Immigration? That's on an all-time high in the UK:
https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/news/2022/08/25/immigration...
Migrants are now coming from outside of the EU:
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/D09F/production/...
The EU doesn't really "unify" all the countries in to one. The US federal government has significantly more power than EU parliament has in many areas.
I also can't think of a single area where I feel my national identity is being destroyed or taken away from by the EU. In what ways does it do that?
You're missing the point of the EU. The EU was literally created to do this and to tone down national pride.
The purpose of the EU was to prevent wars in Europe. Europe was a hotbed for wars for hundreds of years. WW1 was not that special! We had countless wars in Europe, even wars that would be considered world wars in retrospect like Napoleon's romp across the continent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe
The founding idea of the EU is to intertwine countries, remove barriers between them, so that Europeans stop trying to kill one another because of cultural and national pride. That's why there are no borders, why there's a single market (the very origins of the single market are in tying together steel production between EU members so that they couldn't easily detach from one another and create their own war machines again), why there are common rules, etc.
There's a reason for that, which is that the US conquered or subjugated its neighbors rather than peacefully federating with them, and US states accepted a substantially lower level of sovereignty than any EU member. Texas tried to "Texit" only 16 years after it joined the US, and it received far less accommodation than the UK did in leaving the EU.
What a load of tripe. European nations are a relatively modern invention. Historically Europe has been ruled by various empires. Europe has historically looked more like the EU than a collection of countries. And though it all the local (mostly regional) culture has survived and thrived.
That's a win, not a loss. Holding people hostage is not a good thing...
It's like an American expecting no one to ever leave the US state of Georgia to look for a job.
Oh but they're in the EU now, they can't do that, so let's just let the peasants starve while the wealthy invest in german stocks.
I'm not saying Greece is a perfect system, but the EU way has been just way worse for Greek citizens.
Whether how the EU responded to the Greek crisis was all good or not is open for debate, I think we can nevertheless safely say that Greece was mostly responsible for its own debt and fiscal management problems.
Yes people should not be able to escape their governments' corruption and mismanagement, and suffer along with the rest of them.
That is a gross oversimplification of the US. To the point of being essentially untrue.
Hint: I wouldn't be asking this question if I didn't know the answer.
It's long since been established that pouring money at heatlhcare and education does not do much for improving outcomes. You need to somehow cultivate a culture of less dysfunction and money can't do that by itself. It take a sociopathical kind of dishonesty to sit there and tell us with a straight face that these states would be better if they just paid more taxes and ran higher touch governments. Even in states that want to run that way the ROI of each subsequent dollar is not great and a lot of these poorer states couldn't afford to run their states that way. It would be great if states like West Virginia could run expansive public healthcare programs like states like Massachusetts do but the money just isn't there and desire to run such a program and run it well isn't there either.
California-13% New York-9% Texas-8% Florida-6% Illinois-5% Ohio-4% Pennsylvania-4% New Jersey-4% Massachusetts-3% Minnesota-3% Washington-3% Georgia-3% North Carolina-2% Virginia-2% Michigan-2% Maryland-2% Tennessee-2% Missouri-2% Indiana-2% Colorado-2% Connecticut-2%
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state
https://www.moneyrates.com/research-center/federal-income-ta...
Indeed, residents of these states were underpaying federal income taxes, and the law was changed to remove the loophole.
More accurately, federal tax policy was previously neutral on state tax policy, and now it has an active thumb on the scale deliberately attempting to push state tax policy toward that favored by less-successful states.
People in Mississippi are purchasing their products. That money then goes to those companies, employees there, and then the government in taxes. The same goes for Florida and Colorado for vacations, for instance.
They wouldn’t have nearly the same amount of tax revenue if it wasn’t for the other states buying their stuff.
https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal...
Living outside London, there's nothing I can do in my daily life that doesn't result in a net transfer of wealth from my self, or from the public domain, into the private sector and therefore into London.
Every private or public interaction I have has been financialised. be that being forced to keep a car, having children in school, getting sick, renting or owning a house.
I could go to toilet in the middle of the park and that would result in net movement of wealth to London and offshore (someone would be sub-contracted to clean the park).
The dollar value of those things isn't high - financial and other services are "expensive", but ultimately useless, they just move money in a circle, but don't do anything to keep people alive and well.
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2016/05/25/know-where-your-f...
> for example, according to their methodology, a state that collects $1k in taxes per capita, and gets $4k from federal government, while spending $5k per capita, is more dependent on federal government than a state that collects $10k in taxes, gets $10k from feds and spends $20k, which is absurd.
Theoretically, Colorado should charge massive amounts of money for that water.
Every state helps each other out because we're united and grateful for each other!
Mississippi is home to and end of the most important river in the U.S. if not in the world. The Mississippi River is absolutely vital to U.S. economies in the past hundred years and of now. It provides cheap and energy efficient transportation that ships goods and material around the country and to the world. Shipping is the cheapest form of transportation. The River is one of the biggest competitive advantage the U.S. has.
Now, of course, OCA (optimal currency area) theory predicts that we need 0. different currencies, or otherwise 1. homogeneity (ie similar response to external shocks) - not the case in Europe, or 2. perfectly free factor movement (where factors are basically capital and labour) - not the case in Europe (mostly due to language), or 3. transfer payments.
Given that 1, 2 are not the case, Europe, by entering the EUR (thus foregoing 0) has basically committed to 3 - transfer payments. So, yeah. The rich EU countries now must pay for the poorer ones - that's the long-term consequence of the currency union.
Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than Germany or the UK. If it was in the EU it would be one of the rich countries.
<<Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than Germany or the UK.>>
Mississippi 42,411 USD
Germany 50,802 USD
UK 47,334 USDFigures for UK and Germany seem to vary quite a bit depending on who you ask. One site gives about $45k for 2021 UK[2] with lower projections for 2022 (maybe more about GBP:USD than anything else). The same site gives German GDP per capita[3] around $43k 2021.
I don't have a good explanation for the methodological differences that are producing such different results for the countries.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
[2]: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-per-capita
Source: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/us-gdp-per-capita-by-state-vs...
The primary benefit of the union is economic. Either it scales back to that state and expand or move to be more like the US with EU countries resembling a state or province.
EU should really focus on its economic power, other things are weakening it. Already both EU and NAFTA are not competing well outside their regional economy, not just with China but with other developing countries hungry for thr euro and dollar so they can be consumers instead of low wage producers only, yet they are being forced to depend on each other instead because EU like the US is interested in politics more than commerce.
The more state-like evolution is also causing economies like Germany and France to dominate and be burdened with many things. A commerce first union would dynamically adjust incentives to allow all members to improve and bear economic burdens more fairly.
Lastly, commercr can't be maintained without military+intel. This means seriously considering booting members friendly to hostiles like Hungary with russia and have a mutual aid agreements like with NATO where members can fight of agressord like russia or china as a united force.
It's not that easy. Germany sponsors quite a lot of EU, however due to Germany's economic position the EU enables a lot of business across Europe with low friction. If Germany still had its own currency it would be too expensive for other countries, not to mention customs and common regulation.
For the citizen however it is mostly noticable by foreign workers migrating here, while going to Spain (Mallorca) or Italy for vacation is easy.
Some of the policies the EU pushes are good, some are bad. But the people have no say either way.
In turn, the people that the public gets to vote for are the ‘less powerful’, they are never on the news and it is totally unclear what they are even doing. All that is on the news are the undemocratically chosen people. It’s really not surprising that most people don’t bother voting for the EU and that a lot of them would vote to leave immediately given the chance.
What are you talking about? Members of EU member governments are directly elected by citizens, they're the ones making the decisions at the EU.
The administrators of the EU elected by governments, but they do no vote on, and have no power over legislation. All voting power comes from members governments, just like they vote for their own national legislation.
Give it up, you just have no idea how the EU works.
The people directly elected, the European Parliament, can’t introduce new rules and only get to rubber stamp rules made by others.
Meanwhile the rules are introduced by the European Commission which is not directly elected and thus not democratically accountable.
Consider the very existence of this Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_E...
And a choice quote
> The German Constitutional Court referred to a "structural democratic deficit" inherent in the construction of the European Union.
But the reality is that the undemocracy of the EU shows in the rules it produces. For example a functioning democracy doesn’t get away with wasting hundreds of millions on moving its seat between cities, for no practical reasons. A functioning democracy doesn’t get to push for an end to cash money and a start for monitoring every significant bank transaction, with no pushback from the electorate. And there’s plenty of other rules to choose from.
You’re confusing the EU with NATO. The EU has no role whatsoever in defence policy, and can claim absolutely no credit for peace in Europe. Neither during the Cold War (how would that even work? Occupied Germany somehow invading France? Most of Europe weren’t even members then), nor now. Zelensky isn’t travelling to Brussels to give a speech to the European Parliament, he’s flying to Washington instead. NATO.
Since civil wars have happened quite a bit, this seems…less difficult than you assume.
the alternative is to impose stricter controls on Germany such that it cannot use EU membership as an altruistic cudgel to march the continent into neufeudalist technocratic hell. its my prediction the children of the shengen generation in Croatia will look back on the moment with indifference or scorn.
Where?
> Germany such that it cannot use EU membership
Germany is in a minority position. Not even 20% of the EU population and small member states have larger voting power.
Let’s look at the past 40 years. Spain and Portugal have obviously gained immensely from membership. Sweden and Finland are better positioned inside the union than Norway which remained outside and became a rule-taker (implements EU law but gets no say). Former Soviet states like Estonia are very happy to be part of the West European community. Etc.
If you say “Greece,” then you’ll have to point to concrete evidence that the country would have somehow fared better outside the EU because it was such a basket case all along.
The moment that countries begin to feel EU rules are stepping too far is the moment that things will start to break down. If you avoid the issues of federal overreach that exist in the US and ensure each country fully maintains its own sovereignty then IMO everything will be fine.
When the freedom to disagree goes away, tensions will rise though.
The EU was built with the core aim to get Germany and France closer after WWII. This is a glaring success, it is enough to see how the current generation of ~18 yo see the past history of our countries (they do not care, not have any resentment).
The EU today is extremely unevenly distributed and I would seriously love to read why France should pay xMM€ to the EU (what do we gain, exactly, in terms of money).
And then there are countries such as Poland that gets a great net income of money, but has a government that hates the EU. And buys weapons from the US or South Korea. Sorry, but this is for me a leech.
Some countries such as Portugal also were (and still are) net receivers, but do not shit on the hand that brings the money.
I understand common culture and what not, but ultimately we have problems with paying hospitals and doctors so the high level considerations are for another day.
Croatians probably bet that the EU will - eventually - deliver on its promises.
Its not a crazy assumption.
The repeated existential crises might convince Europeans of their joint destiny. The result could be a prosperous, peaceful continent that is a role model for how people can coexist.
Welcome. 2023 starts with some good karma.
Not having to deal with surly border guards is also a significant bonus.
Turns out that immigration is at the booth, then the guy standing around ahead is the customs guy you're supposed pull ahead and stop for. Oops.
Looking forward to using some of the "EU traffic only" backroads crossings into Croatia that were inaccessible to me.
Hopefully nobody asks for proof of all my "visits" to Andorra ;)
The biggest differences besides the different banknotes is that exchange rate risk has been eliminated, interest rates have gone down and Croatia's credit rating has gone up.
I'm not suggesting for one minute that Croatia now is in the same state as Greece was 20 years ago. but improved credit rating based on the idea that the currency is effectively backed by the German and French economy, was one of the reasons for the debt crisis. German and French banks loaned them money that they shouldn't have, knowing that they would get bailed out.
Good luck to them though. It seems to have a similar population size to Scotland, so is interesting in terms of the independence debate in the UK.
Croatia has a good credit rating because it's shown fiscal restraint, but for the given good work it's done on it's fiscal position, it's now getting an even lower rate.If Croatians started acting like Greece, that wouldn't be the case. Investors have learned their lesson.
When EU countries could have been forging ahead, building on the natural base of social democracy and technological advancement, e.g. to become world leaders in future energy . Instead they have spend 20 years dealing with the internal inconsistencies and self imposed limitations of a single currency without a single fiscal / monetary policy.
I don't see it changing, but who knows.
EDIT. I do wish people would post counterpoint, rather than vote down something that I explicitly stated was my own humble opinion, and indeed ended on a conciliatory sentence. Down votes really should be used for trolling, or off topic to the poster they are replying to, not as a lazy way of replying.
If anything the local population that does not yet have the euro for everything is being scalped by their banks: debts are in euros but income is in the much weaker local currency. Most of them can't wait to switch but the access criteria are still fairly strict. Yes, the exporters also have a benefit: mostly because of the enlargement of the single market. But this is still within Europe, the comparison should be with the countries outside of Europe and then suddenly being part of a larger trade bloc with a single currency is a huge advantage.
1. Prevent war. The EU was designed for this purpose, after centuries of European warfare, by the survivors of WWII. You can't overestimate the damage WWI and WWII did to Europe; the next one would utilize more powerful means of destruction. You can see the problem with European conflict in the news right now.
2. Power: In a world of giants, with power already in the relatively massive US (fortunately an ally to EU countries), and shifting to some degree to China and India, little Croatia (or UK, IMHO) is a tiny minnow. The EU is a major power - the world's largest economy, IIRC.
#2 also impacts the US, and freedom and democracy, considerably. China's population relative to the US is about 4x, which is not far off the US relative to the UK. If China develops to even half the per capita productivity of the US, its economy will be ~twice as large. The same goes for India (which IMHO is a greater danger - people have their heads in the sand about Modi's openly aggressive nationalism). Without the EU as an ally, the US may be too small to compete.
The reality is the countries within the current EU experienced real growth which is likely to continue.
But if you want to cherry pick a few years it’s worth understanding the details. Germany’s per capita income increased from 41,572$ in 2010 to 47,974$/year in 2018 that’s a 15.4% increase despite a 14.4% drop in 2015. Notably that 14.4% 2015 drop was was linked to over 1.1 million asylum seekers from the Syrian War and part of a huge wave of legal and illegal immigration. Exclude that 2015 and Germany saw roughly the same per capita growth rate as the US.
> Some people still use stats from 2008. Since then EU is flat, both USA and China growing like crazy. India might catch up with EU in the next 20 years as well.
They are a member of the EU, but the seven non-eurozone members of the EU are Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Sweden.
I also pointed out that BlueTankEngine‘s statements about the eurozone was also wrong.
The idea that the EU is to be 'allied' with the US against China is an US-centric view, and implies subservience to the US because the goal really is to protect the US' position in the world. The EU should do what serves its interests best and that is not as hard a stance on China as the US would like.
No, it implies a realistic view of the world. Until the EU can handle it's own self defense it's inherently an unbalanced power arrangement.
The claim that Europe needs the US is like an abusive relationship where the abuser keeps devaluing its victim to maintain dominance: "you need me, you're nothing without me, you can't look after yourself without me"...
More generally, be it with the EU, China, or even India, the US need to come to terms with the fact that they are no longer the 'capo di tutti capi' and should treat others as equals.
I realise that this is a position that is in China's interests but that is also in Europe's interests and, really in "anyone that is not the US"'s interests.
It's not in the interests of people who want to be free, and desire peace and prosperity.
The subtext of these arguments is that there is no difference between China and the US, their vision, their goals, etc. It's demonstrably untrue. You can see it in the number of allies China has, even in their own neighborhood - they all much prefer the US.
This might be unpopular, but I think you are right. The EU must not be too aligned with the US, lest it gets dragged in the next Iraq. And, to be fair, it is valuable for the US to have an external point of view they can still more or less trust, but that can still be critical. You need friends to tell you when you’re doing a stupid mistake. At the same time, the interests of the US and the EU converge very often and unfriendly relations would be counter-productive.
It’s also useful to be able to play good cop/bad cop, with one partner being more accommodating like during the negotiations of the Iran nuclear deal (which failed in the end for unrelated reasons, but I believe we would have avoided a lot of grief regarding drones in Ukraine if we’d have kept the Iranian government on board).
The goal is to protect and grow freedom and democracy, and prosperity. Those require the international rules-based order (essentially, the equivalent of rule of law internationally) or you end up with rule by force, including war and oppression. To support that, you need a power able to act effectively and in a timely manner. The US has been the only option for that role since WWII, and Europe has strongly supported it.
Right after WWII, Europe was much too poor and devestated to play that role. Now they have the resources but not the political ability to make decisions and act: The US needs one person, the president, to act (within the law and in concert with others to make it politicaly viable). The EU requires approval by the leader of every country. As Kissinger famously said (paraphrasing): 'If I want to call Europe, who do I call?'
This a very limited reading of History. The main purpose of the coal and steel community was to make war between France and Germany impossible by making both countries dependent on each other. Read the Schuman declaration and the first Rome treaties, they are not that complicated. It always was political.
the original impetus being to use trade to solve a political problem, but the original impetus was not federalism, although I imagine there were federalists around at the time.
at some point it became about free trade. and then there was a realisation that free trade between unequal economies was not sustainable. And similarly that consumer rights in a world where infrastructure and technology barriers had been removed, were also not sustainable via the protectionism that public ownership and state control provided.
There was then a need to control the excesses of free markets and the four freedoms in general, and the need to liberalise sectors that were not in the private space.
Hence the need for political union.
Well, yes and no. What actually happened was that a united Europe was the desired outcome, with some discussion about the degree of unity. But they realised back in the 1950s that it would take some time, and they started doing it by steps, starting with the industry. So in that sense it was both. But that’s not what people mean when they moan about the EU being a perversion of the EEC which was supposed to be purely economic. It is usually followed by how the evil EU duped them and stole their sovereignty. It was not. The economic policies were tools to achieve a political goal.
> but the original impetus was not federalism
The original impetus was a political union to avoid war and an “ever-closer union”. While federalists were never the majority, the target was clearly integration. Again, this is in the preamble of the Rome treaty establishing the EEC.
> Hence the need for political union.
Again, this is backwards. Political union required economic union as a first step.
The votes in the 70s / 80s, which were the basis of what we have now were about trade, not peace via trade.
you are referring to 'they' without qualifying 'they'.
Political union was never on a ballot paper in most countries. In the cases it was (Maastricht referendums) then it was not conclusive .
EDIT:
Apologies for being anglocentric, but the Labour (dominant political party in UK at the time) didn't seem to include inter-European aggression in its arguments against a supernational state in 1950
https://www.cvce.eu/en/obj/manifesto_by_the_national_executi...
It's a work in progress. Rome wasn't built in a day. It was always going to be tricky when trading sovereignty and given the different cultures.
But more importantly it's headed in the right direction and it's a glorious project for actual EU citizens.
You're not disagreeing, just adding additional context. A quick search established the following:
> The European Community (EC) was created in 1957 as a way to foster trade cooperation and reduce tensions in the aftermath of World War II.
So in effect, the trade alliance was started to avoid war; lessons were drawn from WWI tensions leading to WWII.
It's the usual argument of EU hater but it's not based on any fact. The are 2800000 in US Federal government and 32000 in European commission. Lots of cities have more employee than the European commission. For example, New-York city has 325000 employees !
Also, the wealthiest, most productive and innovative parts of the US have the highest taxes.
Please consider EU is not a de-facto federation, nor many of its founding members wants that.
So I am curious:
How would you envision the daily activity of an EU that should satisfy at least the following points:
- Countries does not want to delegate their full decision power to EU
- Each country wants to keep as much as possible their specific laws, habits, quircks while also wanting _easy_ access to the other country market, lands, citizens
- No country wants to be treated less equal then the others
- Still all countries wants to be together for a greater good (or maybe for the fear of what would happen if they will be alone - see UK now)
Thus I don't see any other way than having a big organisation that handles every small details, that handles with care each national pride and find the best way forward.
It might not seem that way but European countries still have in their collective memories both their own national pride, old disputes with neighbours and the memories of some extraordinary damaging wars.
And the reason it might not seem that European countries are still individual entities is EU. It managed to find the best path that is does not generate conflict.
After that things went very wrong, culminating in what we have today. Russia could have been part of the EU, as was certainly possible especially given the completely new dynamic that existed after the fall of the soviet union. That would truly have been a positive project.
I don't know if we could ever have undone the mistakes that were made from 1991 onwards, plenty of people tried to include Russian nationalism into international politics, but by then it was far too late, we were dealing with a mess that we had created.
For the last 10 years they have done the opposite and tried to legitimise themselves against this bogeyman i.e. implicitly stating that your only alternatives are a socially and economically liberal democracy that seems powerless to address systemic issues, or socially reactionary forces.
But the later keeps becoming more prominent due to the failure of the former.
Point 2 I agree with the sentiment.
Not in the time frame you're implying. In 1991, the EU did not even exist in its current form (it was established in 1993). Eastwards expansion only started in 2004, when Poland and Czechia were among the first former iron-curtain countries to join. Putin became PM of Russia in 1999.
India is one of the fee upcoming real democracies. It does not get the attention or respect it shoiuld in western media.
If 'the west' can't build out a good cooperative relationship with India, in the next 50 years we will loose relevance
I am just aware that, unlike Russia, they have real elections and the Western Media never talk about whats happening there.
Their election are less 'real' than in the past, as opposition media and other dissent is suppressed.
I'd caution people against forming strong opinions about Indian politicians based on western coverage of them. It comes across as uninformed and politically motivated.
I don't understand what you mean by nationalism here. Modi has made no attempt at expansionism or hawkish interference into other nations. Unlike the Congress, they have not sent in military to suppress political insurgencies in other nations (LTTE & Srilanka), and hasn't been putting opposition in prison (Indira Gandhi & Emergency).
Modi has maintained a cordial relationship with Sheikh Hasina's Bangladesh, send aid to Srilanka during their political implosion & has kept things generally quiet against Pakistan (a terror state). Each of the altercations against China have come after the CCP initiated aggression. On the economic front, he has opened the nation up to foreign investment in a way that rejects nationalism derived isolationism. India has also refused to engage in economic-warfare through sanctions like most countries in Europe.
The only nations that can afford to not be nationalistic are nations with no real threats. European egalitarianism came from the knowledge that the US covered its defense and strict immigration protocols keep non-Europeans out rather effectively. Now that we have seen a wave of unforeseen immigration & Russian military activity, the dormant nationalism among these same nations that lectured the world has sprung into action once again.
Name a country with real threats that is less nationalistic than India. It isn't a dirty word. There has been wide-spread bi=partisan agreement on this in India [1]. The only reason Modi appears nationalistic, is because of the wanton disregard Rahul Gandhi (and specifically him, less so than the party) shows towards the geopolitical interests of the nation.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/06/29/nationalism-...
I'd caution you about assuming where people get their information, or trying fruitlessly to reject all information in a very broad category.
> It isn't a dirty word.
It very much is a dirty word, that leads to war and brutality (including against Muslims in India). It was a/the primary cause of WWII, according to people like Churchill. It was outside mainstream politics for generations until the recent far-right nationalist-populist movement, which got power and - predictably for nationalists - try to overthrow the democratic power of the people. It leads to the worst of humanity.
Your portrayal of Modi is bizarre misinformation. Modi and the BJP openly sell themselves as open, aggressive Hindu nationalists.
2. This is over-generalizing. A country like croatia might benefit more from being not into the EU. As an EU country they have to play by EU rules and standards. As a non-EU country, they can instead undermine EU policy (ie: lower taxes, cut standards, etc..) in order to attract companies (near-shoring).
> Without the EU as an ally, the US may be too small to compete.
The EU needs the US more than the US needs the EU. People who think the US is an ally to the EU are delusional. The US is undermining the EU to reduce its power and to reduce its dependency to it. The US will be happy to see the EU crash into a thousands easily manipulated city-states than the current status quo. Of course, there is the Russian threat for now which justifies the existence of the EU. But they are working on that (at the expense of the EU of course).
What we have seen is that EU-Europe has after hundreds of years of war now has a long period of stability. We see that it also has an effective EU-wide political moderation system for common values.
> As a non-EU country, they can instead undermine EU policy (ie: lower taxes, cut standards, etc..) in order to attract companies (near-shoring).
Taxes are not generally EU-wide regulated.
Near-shoring is much easier INSIDE the EU - being a near-shore offering company is inside the common market MASSIVELY simpler. That's for example why many German companies build factories in neighboring countries.
Countries geographically/economically next to the EU, but not inside the EU, are still under massive influence. Before the EU, most European countries synchronized their currency with the German DM (Deutsche Mark). There was also a monetary mechanism to do that. Basically the German central bank dictated much of the currency policy in EU, more or less indirectly. Nowadays that power has been delegated to the European central bank, where the German influence is reduced.
> The US will be happy to see the EU crash into a thousands easily manipulated city-states than the current status quo.
Not at all. Maybe the populist right of the republicans. Other than those, both Republicans and Democrats see the EU and its member states as allies. The EU provides stability and that is in the interest of everyone.
> the Russian threat for now which justifies the existence of the EU
The Russian threat justifies the existence of NATO. The EU has an independent justification of its existence. The existence of the EU is also a 'threat' to the Russian political system, since it exposes its lack of freedom, lack of democracy and the lack of prosperity of its people. Russia has nothing comparable to offer to its people and also not to the countries it tries to control.
> We can’t know for sure if the EU is preventing war. Smaller countries might think the EU is not serving them well and revolt. Germany might flip and decide to invade the other countries again. ... There is no reason or proofs that suggests it can’t happen again.
We can't prove anything about politics, if you mean 'prove like mathematical theorems', but we are hardly completely in the dark. Nothing like what you describe has ever happened in any mature democracy, as far as I know.
> A country like croatia might benefit more from being not into the EU.
You can type 'might', but what does it mean? I might win the lottery. Putin might become a Quaker and reject war. Who knows?
Incorrect. When UK left the EU economy became smaller than USA. Despite EU having 100+ million bigger population than USA!
Because it took in a lot of poorer nations after the fall of the wall. Especially those who were in the Soviet block. The USA had nothing like that. The USA has a single market and the leading currency. Without the single market Europe would be much further behind.
Part of the attraction of the EU for those countries was and is that trade and economic development is easier for those nations inside the EU.
Correct, that’s not the region it actively destabilizes.
> but they are the ones being aggressively nationalistic?
No one ever said they the one being aggressively nationalistic; its quite possible for many states to do that simultaneously.
Call me not surprised. After all, they were by far the closest friends of Nazis during the WWII.
"Generations come to fix the errors of past ones, otherwise what are we all doing here?"
Well, they aren't doing a really good job in Croatia, are they?
Well, he has a knack for singing praises about Ustaše. Those guys were the best friends of Hitler's Nazis during the WWII.
No-one outside the US uses US dollars. People from the US come to the UK, for example, and kick up a fuss because they can't pay for anything "but everyone accepts the dollar!" No, they don't.
Well yes and no. They have to get their hands on enough USD to replace their own currency, and even more if their economy expands.
Croatia is freely entering into this and is free to leave in the future as well, the same as the UK chose. This is a sovereign treaty like any other. They are not signing away their ability to change their mind in the future. So there is utterly no change in "sovereignty".
On key aspect is that Schengen does not harmonise immigration policy and actual external borders' security but removes internal borders. And of course the euro means the country loses control over its monetary policy.
Curious what do you think of the "West African CFA franc"?
Sovereignty is a legal-political concept, and it has nothing to do with economic tradeoffs or benefits. Adopting the euro obviously has both potential benefits and potential drawbacks, and choosing to adopt it is rationally expecting that the benefits outweight the drawbacks.
But that's just purely a matter of pragmatic decision-making. It does not affect Croatia's legal sovereignty.
I'm sure you've heard of these sayings:
He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation.
Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws.
But that's not what sovereignty means. I don't know how to make that any clearer.
Yes there are levers, but that doesn't make Croatia any less sovereign. Sovereignty is a word with an established, defined meaning -- it's completely and totally separate from economic influence, which is what you seem to be referring to.
My suggestion would be to provide a reasonable definition of the word "sovereignty" which logically excludes the benefits or harms that a central bank may impose on users of its currency.
[1] - https://www.rtvslo.si/slovenija/kaj-bo-z-mejnimi-prehodi-po-...
Roughly translated: 1400 police officers work at border. Most of them will be moved to other units, which will perform selective checks of passengers, goods and vehicles close to border and in country interior.
Don't spread misinformation.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/04/28/can-eu-countri...
A big waste of time when they do this in Toulouse on a flight from Brussels when you could drive to France faster without a border control.
Most of EU has legally done this, but actual application is more patchy:
https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen-borders-...
I believe it’s mostly related to the war in Ukraine, since I had no similar experience in the more western parts of Europe (Austria/Germany, Germany/France)
Not necessarily true, any country can legitimately or not (there are some regulations on this practice, often breached) force them, for mere political shows of force too, here's one recent such example.
https://www.euronews.com/travel/2022/11/17/france-italy-bord...
In practice, you'll just be driving across the border without stopping just like you do when driving from Austria to Slovenia, Germany to Austria or any other border.
Don't spread FUD.