Is Iceland getting ready to join the EU?
mikegalsworthy.substack.com
mikegalsworthy.substack.com
> By May 1992, the EEC had been renamed the EEA (European Economic Area) and all 7 member states of EFTA signed “The EEA Agreement” alongside the 12 member states of the EC.
The EEC was not renamed the EEA. The Maastricht treaty (signed February 1992, effective November 1993) established the European Union (EU), and renamed the "European Economic Community" (EEC) to the "European Community" (EC). Alongside the EEC-now-EC, there was also the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC, dissolved in 2002) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom, still exists), and the three linked Communities were known as the "European Communities", which was another expansion of "EC". And the EC formed one of the pillars of the European Union, until the Lisbon treaty (signed December 2007, effective December 2009) merged the European Community into the EU and it ceased to independently exist, although Euratom continues as essentially a subsidiary body of the EU. And then the EEA is a separate arrangement, established by a treaty between the EC, its member states, and the EFTA member states, signed May 1992, effective January 1994. So the EEC was not "renamed" to the EEA. The EEC/EC/EU and EEA are separate but overlapping arrangements – the EEA is geographically broader in scope, but topically narrower (certain EU laws and regulations are excluded from the EEA, and hence the EFTA states do not have to adopt them)
The EEA has much the same scope as the EEC. So in practice the EEC was renamed to the EEA (and the EC was instituted with a broader remit), even if the mechanics of how it was implemented are slightly different.
The EEA had several significant exclusions compared to the EEC/EC at the time of its founding: agriculture and fisheries (although it has some application to trade in those products), customs, external trade, taxation, monetary policy. Furthermore, under the Amsterdam treaty (effective 1999) the EC gained responsibilities for immigration, visas, asylum, and judicial cooperation in civil law (which were transferred from the non-EC part of the EU), and the EEA was not extended to cover those new areas (although some of them apply to the EEA member states through their independent membership of Schengen). The EEA is also excluded from the scope of the EU trade mark (f.k.a. community trade mark) and EU unitary patents. The EEA agreement promises future negotiations on extending EU patents to the EEA, but thus far nothing much has happened there, in part because actually getting a common EU patent system up and running turned out to be very difficult and despite being first proposed in the 1970s it took until 2023 to actually become a reality (the biggest obstacle, but not the only one, has been Spain's objection to Spanish not being one of the official languages of the EU patent system–the ultimate solution was to effectively give Spain an opt-out from it)
Exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. So the EEA is a much closer successor to the EEC than the EC, which has a significantly expanded scope, is.
It was not renamed to the EEA, in practice or otherwise. The EEA is a geographic part of Europe based on an agreement between the EFTA, the EU, and the various member states. The EEC was a supranational organisation with a whole internal structure (council, parliament, etc). They are not even the same kind of entity.
You can argue about the roles of these different bodies and how some of them were superseded by some others. Although non-EU, EEA member states are outside both the CPA and the CFP, which were cornerstones of the EEC. The EEA is not some mythical, ideologically pure version of the EU as it was back when it was only a common market (it never was). It’s a completely different thing. It was initially a way of functioning for countries that wanted to be close to the EC, but not too close. Saying that the EEA is the EEC renamed is plainly, factually wrong.
The EEC was renamed the EC and disappeared in 2009, at which point the EEA had been existing for 15 years.
> both the CPA and the CFP
Should be “both the CAP [common agriculture policy] and the CFP [common fisheries policy]”.
I always wonder how realistic is this? I assume we dont need special vessel for this shipping lane and we can somehow always clear all the ice before us.
With climate change there are longer and longer times of the year when there is no ice. And when it does reform it is often not as thick as before, so less robust ships may be needed.
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...
The Arctic is expected to be ice free by 2027. That is what matters when it comes to shipping.
https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/12/04/an-ice-free-arctic...
> the earliest ice-free conditions (the first single occurrence of an ice-free Arctic) *could* occur in 2020–2030s under all emission trajectories and are *likely* to occur by 2050
Plus your crew may need some downtime sometimes.
Costs of carrying fuel are negligible.
Most cargo shipping saves fuel by just running slower.
Perhaps a sky high dream but wouldn’t this effectively given ships unlimited fuel?
A more realistic option would be to build more large reactors on land, then use the heat and power to manufacture synthetic liquid fuel to burn in ship engines. Or to charge batteries for short range vessels.
For example, I saw a demonstration of a nuclear powered device (don’t want to say reactor per say) that was taped for a documentary I saw on PBS, it was the size of a water heater or so and had a self protection system in case of something like a rupture, that at least during the demonstration stopped it cold in its tracks preventing meltdown and made any recovered materials from tampering worthless. It was in the testing phase though, and this was at least 5 years ago. My understanding is they wanted it to power critical infrastructure onsite like hospitals but feasibly it could power a home if I recall correctly or possibly a couple homes.
Another thing I read about was using some form of partially enriched uranium as energy source for heating homes and water heating. It won’t power one but it’s not (and can’t possibly be if I recall correctly) weapons grade by any stretch of the imagination
Maybe we should as a society look a little closer at smaller reactors. Hard to say, I’m no expert
Crew requirements to operate a navy reactor are also probably pretty high. A cargo ship usually has a shockingly small crew.
There's proliferation concerns and you likely wouldn't be able to operate on some routes.
Limiting range also lets you use smaller craft with things like smaller fuel tanks.
Iceland does quite a business on this sitting between euro and American destinations. Greenland might get into this too.
Also probably gets some crews at home each night flying the leg back instead of needing to stay on the mainland for a day/night before doing a later return leg.
A bit of science fiction maybe, but they could use geothermal and wind energy to produce hydrogen.
Interestingly, cars have similar economics. Details vary quite a bit, but every 100lb (nearly two full tanks of gas for me) makes you 1% less efficient. It only really matters if you have driving habits that tend to burn that excess energy somewhere, like rolling in hot to a stop light and hitting your brakes rather than anticipating the light cycle and coasting in.
The value is cross-loading delivers greater network effects. You have many possible paths to get to your destination, and can pick the most optimal for your particular needs at each step.
Most container ships are on a sailing schedule - they visit a set number of ports, and generally stick to it (absent other issues).
So you can get out of your origin country quicker by just picking the next ship with the cheapest rates going to approximately the right location.
For the shipping lines it's more efficient to just pick up a lot of containers at once and visit multiple ports than try and get a full load to just one destination.
It also means that each port they visit they're also getting paid for new cargo for onward destinations, not running empty (or waiting for another full load) to do another trip.
Maersk list ship schedules here: https://www.maersk.com/schedules/portCalls and with a few clicks, it's obvious that most ships call at many ports.
...between SEO spam and AI generated nonsense proliferating like wildfire, that's becoming less and less tenable by the day.
However, like many network efforts it's a winner-takes-almost-all market. Tanjung Pelepas is just across the border in Malaysia but it was too little, too late.
A lot of Singapore’s thing is also manufacturing from raw imports and then shipping out processed goods.
Hawaii isn't a hub because it's the only land for thousands of miles. You want the hub to be on the way to wherever you're going, not a quarter of the way across the world from there.
A lot of Australia's resources are bought and sold via Singapore precisely for the tax advantages of funneling things through there without the actual resources going through their ports.
In fact, there are. If you look at ports by tonnage, Port Klang in Malaysia is bigger than Rotterdam, and Tanjung Priok in Indonesia is bigger than New York.
So you can fill up a ship in LA with containers going to 10 different Asian ports, and drop them all off in Singapore.
This works best if everyone does that at one central location.
You're right other Asian ports are very big, but I think they more serve as origin or destination.
For everyone else, Singapore is important because it sits right at the end of the historical trade route of the Straits of Malacca. There is a whole wikipedia entry about it.
Not a given, but an okay speculation fodder.
It belongs to the few thousands people that live there and want to be part of Denmark and Europe.
There's really no claim to Greenland other than "it's close".
The population of Greenland, per Wikipedia, is 56,583. The US could offer $50,000 to each man, woman, and child in Greenland. That's just over $2.8bn, which is pocket change for the US. The domestic (Greenlandic) politics around this could shift dramatically with such an offer. Throw in a few billion for Denmark (or a promise to continue to engage in NATO, or some other core interest of Denmark's) and you've probably got a sealed deal.
I'm not saying that the Greenlanders should do this, but it's not nearly as unrealistic as some people seem to think. I'd be surprised if Trump actually followed up on any of this though.
Re subsidies, the US federal government subsidised local and state governments to the tune of $1.1 trillion in 2023 alone, with funding disproportionately directed to poorer regions (such as Greenland, were it to join). That's not including direct spending on Native Americans, for which most Greenlanders would also be eligible. With no special arrangements whatsoever, Greenland would likely see a comparable amount of subsidy in the US as it does today (and very likely much greater economic growth). In reality, some level of subsidy guarantee for a period of some years could easily be part of the accession negotiations.
The real question isn't whether the US can afford Greenland - they can, many times over - the real question is the value of sovereignty (and I don't have the answer to that).
That's a laughable offer.
Believe it or not, Europeans are not on sale and they do not have that much sympathy or willingness to leave in the US. The few that do, do so for money they would not make in Europe. And money is not an issue for Greenlanders or Danes. They both do much better than people in many US states.
But where in the world did you get the idea people in Denmark do “much better” than people in even the poorest US state?
Median income in the poorest US state (Mississippi) is slightly higher than median income in Denmark, with much lower taxes even if you consider private health insurance a tax.
A similar analysis of people in the poorest decile, after famously stingy US transfer payments, has disposable income for the poor in Mississippi coming out ahead of being poor in Denmark.
I keep seeing folks make this argument. I would love to live in Denmark, but the reason to live there is not because of higher income. The US is just much, much richer than almost all of Europe (Switzerland and Luxembourg are the exceptions, not Denmark).
It’s totally fine to value things like social cohesion, terrific bike infrastructure, and low income inequality. Those are areas Denmark beats the US.
But income? It’s not even close.
Cost of living is much higher in Denmark, so making that adjustment isn't going to help your argument.
If you assume Danish university education is comparable to paying full freight at Harvard (which no one with a median Mississippi income would have to do) or some other heavy weighting on things that are private in the US, you might get close.
Certainly one can argue there's a large intangible benefit to not having to think about health insurance, and I for one place a large premium on having the opportunity to bike everywhere. I'm not arguing life in Denmark is bad.
No doubt there are many public services in Denmark that make transfer payments to the bottom quintile difficult to measure, but I just have never seen a credible argument that in terms of disposable consumer surplus, the median adult does better in Denmark than Mississippi, accounting for all reasonable costs.
And, of course, most Americans are richer than the median Mississippian.
It seems great to argue about the value of things Denmark is good at, but having a large consumer surplus just doesn't strike me as being one of those things. It's also not a value I think the median Dane agrees should be weighted that high, which is fine.
I’m from Iceland, who also suffered (though much much less; so much less it is not comparable) under danish colonization. And I’m of the opinion that the biggest help Iceland can offer, is cooperate in cultural events and institutions, such as sport competitions (especially football and handball), theater (a collaboration between the two national theaters would be lovely), music (there artists from each country should be constantly performing in the other), etc.
As I've noted elsewhere, you're conflating actual honest colonialism (Denmark's) with a hypothetical free choice to join the United States.
By what logic are the people of Iceland free to decide whether or not to join the European Union, but the people of Greenland are not free to decide whether to join the United States?
> And I’m of the opinion that the biggest help Iceland can offer, is cooperate in cultural events and institutions, such as sport competitions (especially football and handball), theater (a collaboration between the two national theaters would be lovely), music (there artists from each country should be constantly performing in the other), etc.
Sounds beautiful. I'm a big fan of this idea. I'd include the inhabitants of the Arctic regions of Canada and the US too.
I think you may be misunderstanding where my argument stems from.
It is off course for the people of Greenland to decide whether or not they will sell their country to the USA. However both their legislator and their people have made it abundantly clear that they are not for sale[1], so the argument here is kind of moot. What I‘m arguing in the other thread is that USA‘s prospects of buying Greenland are of colonialist nature. Those are colonial dreams and nothing else. Expending your territorial control is colonialism, even when you pay to convince your future subjects to fall willingly under your colonial rule, it is still colonialism.
My biggest fear in all of this is actually that Denmark will sell parts of Greenland from under the Greenlandic people in illegal deals with the USA similar to how the UK carved out the Chagos islands from their Mauritius colony just before independence and handed Diego Garcia to USA so they could build their military base there, expelling all the Chagosians that lived there in the meantime. USA and Denmark have already done so in North Greenland. A deal which in 50 years time will be found to be illegal but at that time it is too late to do anything about it. Such a deal would also be colonial behavior, both on the USA, and on Denmark.
Over here I‘m just pointing out that Greenland is lacking in some areas of their economy, and there are prices persuade some Greenlanders (I know some members of the Greenlandic home rule who would love a good old fashioned business deals with USA, both for mining and for their military operation [probably looking at how the martial assistance gave Iceland a bunch of infrastructure in return {wink, wink} for a couple of military bases and joining NATO]).
1: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/27/greenland_trump_colo...
The EU has many people and offices working on promoting and facilitating 'EU enlargement'. The EU offers tangible economic benefits to countries that join, including direct monetary payments, which it refuses to offer to non-members (as the UK found out the hard way). Is the EU therefore a colonialist power?
I think you're stretching the word colonialism well past its breaking point, and in so doing trying to erase the massive difference between real colonialism - such as Denmark's invasion and annexation of Greenland - and voluntary membership in a democratic union with economic benefits (such as the US, or the EU).
> My biggest fear in all of this is actually that Denmark will sell parts of Greenland from under the Greenlandic people
I agree that would be bad, but your fear is misplaced. The only people with the power to decide on Greenland's future are the Greenlanders. There's nothing wrong - despite your consistent use of words like 'sell' - with the US explaining or promoting the economic benefits of joining the Union (the EU does exactly the same), provided the final decision is made by the Greenlanders.
I think you are being naive if you think the USA is only talking about a bilateral agreement with Greenland which Greenland is free to enter or leave at anytime. The USA has in recent history purchased (or more commonly borrowed) territories with total disregards to the people that live there. They have on numerous occasions broken local laws (or more commonly gotten another colonial power to break their laws) to undermine the sovereignty of other countries. The most recent example is the military bases they keep in Iraq, despite Iraq telling them to leave (military bases the USA got by illegally invading and illegally occupying Iraq). I think it is a mistake to not take the USA at their words when they say they wont to annex new territory, and I think it is a good idea to assume their intentions are just as bad as they sound.
You can 'but Iraq!' all you want, but you're attempting to make the absolutely absurd argument that the US would somehow be more colonialist than literal, actual, historical colonialism. On the one hand is the US - a country whose greatest crime you can name is that they waged a war you didn't like once - and on the other is Denmark's centuries-long annexation and colonial occupation of the very country you claim to care about, including strenuous attempts to eradicate the local culture / customs and forced sterilisation of the indigenous people.
At the end of the day, the only distinction here is that you like one political union, and you do not like the other, so you blind yourself to the downsides of one and shamelessly slander the other. Unless the US spends two centuries ruthlessly attempting to wipe the Greenlanders out, I'll take 'proven historical fact' over vague aspersions around future hypotheticals vis-à-vis who is more of a 'colonialist'.
I reiterate my overall position: it falls to the people of Greenland to decide on their future, and they are fully capable of making their own decision, despite imperialist tut-tutting from Europe. The economic and security possibilities of joining the US are great, but independence is worthy too. The only horrible outcome here is continued subjugation to colonial European rule.
They can be exploited for the benefit of the residents, why on earth would they sell that for the undefined "benefits" of being an exploited territory of either the US or China?
Y'all can fear-monger about 'neo-colonialism', but the only nation that has ever exploited Greenland has been Denmark, what with its actual colonialism.
While Denmark is by far the biggest colonial exploiter of Greenland (including genocidal ethnodemographic policies as late as the 1970s), it is by no means the only one. Other exploiters include Norway, who tried to annex East Greenland, Faroe Islands, who set up a failed factory in South Greenland, Iceland, who has been exploiting the fisheries around Greenland, and—the second worse offender—USA who set up an illegal military base in Pituffik, North Greenland, including forcefully relocating its residents to Qaanaaq, crash landing a bomber armed with a nuclear bomb, illegally using Greenland to transport nuclear bombs, polluting their surroundings, etc.
PS. what you are describing as neo-colonialism, is just plain old fashion colonialism. Neo-colonialism is already a defined term which does not involve annexing territories. In fact its defining feature is exploitation without direct territorial control. In my opinion I wish it wasn’t called neo-colonialism, as it sort of diminishes the true horrors of European colonialism, and is not offering any meaningful distinction from the standard exploitation of global capitalism and neo-liberalism.
PPS. It can be argued that Iceland’s and the Faroes’ exploitation of Greenland are neo-colonial in nature, as opposed to pure colonial, like Denmark’s, Norway’s and the USA’s.
"Illegally" using Greenland to transport nuclear bombs? Illegal under whose law? The illegitimate dictates of the occupying Danish government?
You can point fingers and "what about?" all day long, but there's only state that colonised Greenland, and that is Denmark. Whereas the United States - while far from perfect - played a pivotal role in pressuring Europe to dismantle its rapacious colonial empires.
Ultimately, the only people who have the right to decide the future and laws of Greenland are the people of Greenland. Whether that is independence, joining the Union as an equal, or continued colony status under Denmark is a matter for them and them alone. Unlike Denmark, the US isn't going to invade and annex Greenland.
> In a Danish Supreme Court judgment of 28 November 2003 the move [forceful relocation from Pituffik to Qaanaaq to make way for the Thule airbase] was considered an expropriative intervention. During the proceedings it was recognized by the Danish government that the movement was a serious interference and an unlawful act against the local population.[1]
> In 1995, a political scandal arose in Denmark after a report revealed the government had given tacit permission for nuclear weapons to be located in Greenland, in contravention of Denmark's 1957 nuclear-free zone policy.[2]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaanaaq
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash
Both of these cases were Denmark breaking their own laws to fulfill American requests of US imperialism on their territory. This is very similar to how the UK broke their own laws to hand over Diego Garzia illegally from the Chagocean Islanders to build a USA military base.
The colonialism in those instances, even though the responsibility is ultimately on their colonizers (Denmark), the USA very much participates, and is the main perpetrator of these events.
Greenland, were it to choose to enter the US, would do so freely and in full understanding and acceptance of existing US law, with equal rights and representation in the Congress that makes said law.
There is no comparison between a free and informed entry into a union of equals, and the imposed legal regime of an occupying state (where the rule of law is apparently so weak that the metropolitan colonial government itself readily breaks its own laws).
The damages from these illegal activities remain to this day, they were done by the USA for USA benefits. USA is very much the exploiter here, there is no spinning it otherwise.
Greenland has more exploiters than just Denmark. USA is very much Greenland’s second worst exploiter in history.
Also a note here, this is all before the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (which the USA hasn’t signed), and before the establishment of the Inatsisartut. So Danish laws ware the only way in which Greenlanders were able to affect their own affairs. Denmark has since then granted Greenland autonomy and signed and ratified the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
From a purely legal perspective, the US is not bound by domestic Danish law under any circumstances (and vice versa: cf the doctrine of state immunity).
From the perspective of legal philosophy, the US cannot break Danish law in Greenland, because Danish law is not legitimate law in Greenland, any more than Israeli law is legitimate law in the West Bank. You'll certainly find other perspectives on this within legal philosophy, but any philosophical argument that attempts to reconcile the premise that (a) colonialism is illegitimate, and that (b) colonised or occupied people are nonetheless bound to obey the legal order instituted by an occupier is necessarily going to be quite contorted.
From the perspective of Western liberal-democratic political philosophy, government without the consent of the governed is illegitimate, its laws lack authority, and it is the right (and duty) of the people so governed to overthrow and disestablish that government, which they have no obligation to do peacefully or within the bounds of the existing political order (e.g. many wars of independence, American Revolution, etc).
Ergo, the US cannot violate domestic Danish law in Greenland, both because that's legally speaking nonsense (state immunity), and because domestic Danish law is not simply not legitimate in Greenland. Were Denmark not occupying Greenland at the time, the US government would be able to negotiate with Greenland about the possibility of placing a base there, and the Greenlanders themselves could decide whether this is something they want and what benefit they are able to secure from such a deal (Iceland, for example, has greatly benefited from such an arrangement, being able to secure its freedom from Danish colonialism with US assistance). Denmark's domestic laws, and the extent to which Denmark does or does not enforce its laws, is a domestic matter for Denmark. In as far as it purports to legislate for other countries, and then not even obey those laws itself, that's - again - a domestic matter for Denmark.
I hope this clarifies my argument.
You're watching the reflections on the wall of Plato's cave and think you have any understanding of the society that cast them.
Edit: I also see in your other comments that you praise Xi Jinping's China. Enough said.
Over a century ago is not recently, even relatively.
If an undiscovered, uninhabited island forms in international water, and some country claims it, if they want it in their permanent lands, they will annex it. There's not necessarily conflict or appropriation there.
The issue with annexation of Crimea or the Golan Heights is that the holding of the territory is by force, and annexation is an expression of intent to keep it, rather than simply occupy it on an indefinite but assumed temporary basis.
Fun fact, though, you can walk from Canada to Greenland. When the winter sea ice freezes. I think it's about 20 or 30 km. This has cross-pollinated people, language, culture for thousands of years in the north.
Previous to this, the Danish military would occasionally visit the island, leaving a flag, and a "Welcome to Denmark" sign and a bottle of Danish schnapps. Then the Canadian military would visit, plant their flag and a "Welcome to Canada" sign, and leave a bottle of Canadian whisky. Repeat. <3
Just because the US can take it off them if they really want? What would Denmark do about it realistically?
Why would he need a legal basis? It's clear he says stuff and then later we'll see.
The US doesn't need to annex Greenland, just set up a few bases there which can be more easily done. But even that has less benefits now than it had during the Cold War. If one wants to intercept hypersonic ICBMs they need satellites equipped with powerful lasers to zap'em. Kintetic interceptors in Greenland or space won't do.
Are lasers the way to go? ICBMs appear to weigh several dozen tons. (e.g. https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1044... )
You have to shine a lot of light on a 40-ton missile before you're going to interfere with the flight path. Would this approach work?
The Panama Canal belongs to Panama, Greenland belongs to its residents via Denmark, Canada is a sovereign nation.
Trump is just strutting, which is his standard position, pushing nonsense to his cult.
“The US used this justification during WWII to prevent Nazi control of Greenland.”
I’m not saying this is valid reasoning. But if I needed to build a movement to reclaim Greenland from the perfidious Danes, it’s how I would do it.
> want to be part of Denmark and Europe
Plus it'd be fairly odd to have independence then say "hey, let's let America buy us as a state"
But that is not what the US is in any way offering.
Trump wants a colony that can be exploited.
Politically getting independent wouldn’t be that difficult, they would just need to pass some laws, finish drafting a constitution, and have national referendum. If they can make the economic case for it, I think there would probably be an overwhelming majority in favor.
It's just another part of his shlock-and-awe campaign, like all these appointments of obviously unqualifed people to important positions. He does stuff like this to get people riled up, and ready to believe he's capable of anything. And always talking about him, non-stop.
Also, what's the point in loading and unloading in Iceland, when you're already fairly close to ports like Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg? I get that you could in theory ship around the pole, split your containers in Iceland and ship to the US and EU from there. It's just that unloading a container ship isn't that fast, and we're already shipping so much that the load could just be distributed across multiple ships with separate destinations.
If most of the population has district heating, there isn’t much of a load per residence.
But we can dream that it's free, right?
This site says 90% of the population is covered by the system.
https://www.greencitytimes.com/geothermal-district-heating-i...
Geothermal here is used for heating homes, electricity production comes from Hydropower generation (dams).
Source, an Icelander.
Source: the actual data.
The aluminum smelters are paying something like $0.02/kWh.
Foreign buyers who setup real industry will pay about $0.05/kWh.
Bitcoin miners will pay $0.10/kWh.
The real cost to produce from volcanic sources is under $0.01/kWh.
Denmark's 35¢/kWh for households is only 9¢/kWh for industrial users, and (from another site) even less for "very large industrial" users.
Iceland's figure isn't given.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
In case your electricity is run by the government you might also have Freedom of Information laws like Austria, Slovenia or Sweden that would grant you access to such public-sector contracts, if requested.
Though I don’t see much of an issue as that is just a contract between two private parties. What is the ownership structure like in Iceland?
Also in the case of some of the most electricity consuming industries they are mostly buying from themselves (Pohjolan Voima which is a owned by a group of heavy industry companies)
Electricity cost will always be higher during winter where it is needed for heating. And this is where households will also use more.
This is why you don’t see upm kymmene, stora enso, kemira, etc profits go down when electricity prices are high (they go up as they can sell what they don’t need for massive profits). This mainly applies during "normal" times (when olkiluoto nuclear plants go down which they own a big chunk of or something like that the situation might change)
> one of the biggest producers of refined aluminum
> Alcoa arrived in 2007 after Iceland built a giant power plant on the other side of the island, near a sparsely populated region where the fishing industry was in decline.
Iceland’s electric utility built five highland dams that capture glacial meltwater. The largest of the resulting reservoirs is roughly the size of Manhattan. The water is piped 25 miles to an underground power plant, then dropped a quarter-mile down another pipe to make the turbines spin. Finally, the resulting electricity is transmitted 47 miles on high-voltage lines to the ocean’s edge.
Electricity in Iceland costs about 30 percent less than what Alcoa might pay in the United States.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rahnj%C3%BAkar_Hydropow...
I would say that Norway has an advantage because Iceland's remoteness makes it more expensive to ship the bauxite there (there is no bauxite mining in Iceland itself) and the aluminum back. Still, it's apparently the second largest aluminum producer in Europe.
Thousands of jobs left the town and now a several billion dollar plant sits idle. The idea recently floated they sell the land, power and water rights to MSFT for their new water cooled data center’s nearby, but MSFT didn’t want to own all that infra.
But yet that's still where the lion's share of revenue for their Government comes from.
In either case, Europe and the US have such efficient rail/road freight that I can't see economics of putting a hub in Iceland making sense. You may as well have ships travel direct to the respective continental mainlands.
Iceland not all. You can easily get around them. The Azores were the trading and fruit manifactoring hub there instead. They could deliver all the fruits for all of Europe. What can Iceland deliver to Europe? They are also in the center, not the north route.
good one!
also, i was thinking about UK joining EFTA, though so far they didnt...
Why?
Iceland's interest rate is 8.5% https://www.cb.is/other/key-interest-rate/
EU's interest rate is 3% https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/ke...
The higher Icelandic rate is set for Icelanders by Icelanders in order to bring their 4.8% inflation rate down to the 2.5% target.
If Iceland adopted the EU's interest rate which is mainly set for France and Germany, that would be a 5% interest rate cut which is a massive stimulus. Icelandic inflation would skyrocket and there would be no chance of hitting the 2.5% target.
People should also look into Optimal Currency Area theory popularized by Paul Krugman eg https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/0...
The US Dollar works because of massive fiscal transfers from states on the coasts to states in the interior. The US also allows whole areas to deindustrialize like Detroit in order to solve the unavailability of currency adjustments between states.
Are Icelanders willing to subsidize Greece? Are they willing to forgo their ability to devalue their currency like in 2008? Without devaluation that means deindustrialization.
For all the above reasons, Iceland joining the EU would be the stupidest and most economically illiterate decision in it's history.
Nobody cares about inflation. They just need the right "democratic leaders". See Georgia. /s
The inflation absolutely matters.
Edited to remove Sweden because it's obliged to eventually adopt the euro.
Also, yeah, the Danish Krona is pegged to the euro at ~7.45 so there is little incentive to switch over.
Although it doesn’t make sense, because the influx of cheap money would make joining the EU an obvious boon for that class, wouldn’t it?
Can you elaborate?
A shock therapy Euro adoption is not in the interest of anyone.
The case of Sweden is interesting though, they don't have an opt-out clause so they are obligated to adopt the Euro eventually, but they exploited a loophole by not joining the newest version of European Exchange Rate Mechanism after the 1999, which prevents their entry in the Euro.
Of course, the EU often ignores its own treaties. So that's not a hard guarantee. But the first rule of the EU is that everyone has to pretend it follows its own rules even when it doesn't, so it's not like Icelandic leaders can just announce they'll join the EU but won't adopt the Euro.
> Denmark has a treaty opt-out from the obligation to join the eurozone even if it complies with all criteria.
They are required to say they will at some unspecified future date, but that's another matter.
All EU countries have to publicly commit to joining the Euro and doing the work to do so. They are therefore required to join it, under any reasonable interpretation of the treaty language. The fact that some countries realized they could just not do what they agreed to and/or hack their economy to avoid the entry criteria, without any consequences, is good evidence that the treaties are indeed meaningless. But lax enforcement isn't the same as no requirement. The EU Commission could change their stance at any time.
It has been a while since I last looked at this, but from memory a pre-condition for Euro adoption is spending a certain amount of time within some formal "convergence mechanism", however there is no obligation to join that convergence mechanism.
This could well be ERM-II which I have in mind.
It would not, simply because joining the Euro Area isn't a one time thing, but a series of steps, and they wouldn't move forward as long as the inflation is higher than in the rest of the EU.
> If Iceland adopted the EU's interest rate which is mainly set for France and Germany, that would be a 5% interest rate cut which is a massive stimulus.
Interests rate is only one of the factors involved in controlling inflation, and the fact that Italy has been able to adjust its economic policy in order to align its inflation figures to Maastricht requirements and join the Euro Area is a good proof of that.
> People should also look into Optimal Currency Area theory popularized by Paul Krugman
It has been popularized by Robert Mundell in the 60s, for which he got the Sveriges Riksank prize (the "Nobel") in 1999, not by Paul Krugman.
> For all the above reasons, Iceland joining the EU would be the stupidest and most economically illiterate decision in it's history.
The creation of the Euro is IMHO the "most economically illiterate decision in […] history" but moat of your arguments above miss the mark.
By "popularized" I mean brought to a modern audience in Krugman's New York Times column. It's Mundell's theory of course.
Interest rates are the main way to fight inflation. Glad we agree that the Euro is a silly currency union!
They cannot join Euro until inflation stops being higher, because that's simply how it works: countries must achieve “convergence criterias” before they can enter the single currency.
Startups?
I wonder in the coming years if we'll see the US actually become more like the EU. I expect there to be significant competition between Texas and California, in terms of industry, polity and philosophy. As the US continues to be internally fragmented politically, we're bound to see states compete actively, sometimes even to the detriment of other states. While we won't see a significant fragmentation like the EU, we will see a country that's so internally divided, there would be saboteurs and collaborators with enemies. We're kind of already seeing this, for example Texas and Florida shipping their illegals into Massachusetts and NY, states being firmly in the control of one party, with no room for switching governments, and the ever present question of states' rights.
Which is a game-theoretically sound choice given the lack of legal authority to prevent unlawful entry to begin with.
In the EU, you don't see countries arguing about which bathrooms people should use, or what model of creation they should teach children in schools. Yes, there is linguistic separation, but there is very little political and even cultural distinction between European countries, save for some hot button issues like immigration (which is also seeing alignment now).
Ask any European what European culture is, and you'll get a fair melange of what make Europe European (they might mention elements such as architecture, classical music, heck Roman Empire even). Ask an American about American culture and you'll get definitely different answers between Americans from even two red states.
Let's imagine for a second you want to create a startup making cell phones, or cars, or TVs etc. You base in say Texas for the taxes, but workforce can freely move to the Texas from California. They have zero language barrier, they have zero legal barrier. Legal, highly skilled immigrants in California can freely move to Texas for work. The product you make has to conform with both Cali and Texas laws, bud federal ones are unified. It needs to be localized for 1 single language. And it can be immediately sold to the 350mil market with minimal changes. Now if you do the same in France, you are limited with French workforce, because of the language barrier and legal barriers. Then to sell to the whole EU you need to comply with 24 laws and localize to 21 language. And support all that. EU company is less competitive on this basis alone, plus USA doing brain drain (which they foolishly want to limit now) is not helping.
And in fact, I think you have it exactly backwards in this case.
Many countries have dollarized their economies - replacing a local currency supported by high interest rates with the US dollar which has even lower interest rate than EUR - as a tool to tame inflation or kill hyper-inflation. Other - small non-EU countries have adopted the Euro for the same reason.
And with the same result - a massive fall in inflation.
This isn't just theory, this has been observed to work over and over again.
Iceland doesn't suffer from hyperinflation and it's already got an established central bank and trusted institutions. Lowering the interest rate in this environment would 100% lead to more inflation.
Plus Iceland relies on currency devaluation to cope with shocks. It would be crazy to give this up.
Considering its remoteness and population size, where Iceland sits today as country is an absolute success story. Don’t give up your sovereignty.
That's because of how US politics work. Less populous states have disproportionately higher political power. It's not a monetary policy thing. It's a core difference between US and European politics.
> The US also allows whole areas to deindustrialize
That's because Americans are free to live and work where they choose.
There's a lot more nuance here, if you look at Obama's memoir, he writes quite frankly about the dilemma of propping up the US auto industry with government dollars. When they (US automakers) asked for bailouts, he found them quite mismanaged, but if they went under a large portion of the US economy would find itself unemployed.
Their solution? Create an inner union of the EU countries that really matter (Germany, France, Beneleux ...etc). No I'm not making this up. It's not even the first time this idea was floated around. So to me it seems that the EU as a single block is almost finished.
you're drawing some pretty far-fetched conclusions here
Germany and France have always been the core of the EU (and its founding members).
(Arguing about engineering pedantries is, but that is something different.)
I don't necessarily think it is a good idea. I am a firm proponent of the EU. In a world where the other major powers are many times bigger than any individual European country, Europe cannot defends its interests when every member country is on its own. There are many issues with the current shape of the EU, but I see it as a necessary step on a path to something better.
And as for everything else, open borders, freedom of movement, standardisation of infrastructure etc. all can work without being mandated as well, if there is a common interest in them. The EU was designed, when there was no internet. Coordination can happen transparent and quickly without kafkaesk buerocratic institutions. And when there is no common interest to do things - then the EU in its current shape is not working so well either.
European defense structures rely on economic collaboration as well. There are lots and lots of multilateral weapon R&D programs that are only really possible because cross border collaboration between the involved companies is trivial because of the EU.
That is pretty much how I see the EU as it is. Maybe you are aware of the luxory of moving the whole parliament once a month between Bruessel and Strassbourg?
And calling my comment shortsighted is just inviting me to return the compliment and further degrade all debate btw.
I can't see how your vision is even the tiniest bit practical. It just ignores reality.
Or it acknowledges reality as it is. (I have seen lot's of europe)
I don't see a need for universal regulation of everything, which of course will get messy and weird.
I do see a need for standardisation of infrastructure. Track gauge of railways. No expensive roaming for telecommunication. Energy grid. Education certificates. Europol. Those things - and the debate there can also get exhausting for sure, but must not be.
But whether I will buy polish meat in what shape, or french cheese in what condition, is something I would like to decide on my own and don't need EU intervention. So no debates needed there, no complications of things that need no regulation.
I also don't see a need for a parliament that big at all, or actually a european parliament that has to physically meet in the first place. So expert comitees, that work on the bordercrossing problems yes - and then all the local state parliament can legalize the implementation.
Pretty much what is happening right now, just with less complications.
I feel this discussion thread has run its course. I said what I want to say and anything more would be pointless repetition.
My main point is and was, voluntarily coorperation beats forced cooperation most of the time. And if there is a will (even if it just comes out of the fear of external forces) - then even hardcore nationalists are able to compromise. Right now they use the EU to blame anything and block things out of general principle. Using the EU as a cheap scapegoat for own failures, but also for the feeling of it being imposed on them - and to this I can relate, even though I am far from being a nationalist.
The main issue is that the EPP is basically in service of Germany and France lost a lot of influence when most of their deputies joined Renew, a party which is less well integrated in the European Parliament apparatus. That and France failures to even start tackling the structural reforms it needs obviously.
Weird how everyone always forgets about Italy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_army
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Europe
You’ll notice it’s not exactly a clandestine conspiracy lol
That’s how it’s done: hard power and economic growth. Every empire in history had those two things. Europe has neither.
It’s even more true with the euro zone where some members are directly harmed by the high exchange rate.
It would make a lot of sense to go back to a smaller more integrated union with the countries which want it and leave the ones which only want the single market be part of a less integrated union.
Then again, considering Germany and France disagree about pretty much everything at the moment, I doubt it would go very far.
That option does exist, albeit in a bit of a roundabout way. Nothing is stopping a member country from leaving the EU and joining EFTA and the EEA afterwards. The fact that no country is seriously contemplating this is telling.
I don't know how old you are but as a European with a passing interest in politics I have been hearing this at least every month for the last ~20 years. And I'm sure it was said long before then.
What you need to understand is that the EU exists, and has pretty much always existed, in a constant state of crisis. There is always some major disagreement, some urgent problem. This is just a consequence of the EU's existence as an attempt to unify (in some respects) 27 pretty diverse member states. The EU has survived all of these crises to date. I'm not saying it will exist forever, but I see no reason to believe that the current set of crises will be the ones to kill it. The EU may change but I think it will trundle on for the foreseeable future.
Also, there is already an "inner union", it is called the eurozone. Again... constant state of crisis.
Our takeaway at the time was that this has to be the most effective billboard in the country as there is only one road between the major international airport and the capital.
Here are 2 recent reports
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/24/people-br...
https://encompass-europe.com/comment/clear-support-for-eu-me...
Also, as an European I know virtually no people opposing EU membership, when there are, it's generally less educated people thinking that the economy or whatever would be better.
It appears that opposing EU membership is kind of a taboo, and many educated people are afraid to express their opinion on the subject. Which tells you all you need to know about the legitimacy of EU.
To prevent that from happening there needs to be a resistance to EU expanding its power, and the most effective way countries can do that is to threaten to leave.
One is simple. EU does not have a single language. There is are shared values, shared vision, shared culture, or shared identity among regular people.
The cards are stacked against EU being succesful.
Both the far right and far left opposes the EU openly in France. Even amongst EU supporters there is a fair deal of criticisms levelled at the organisation.
I think your alleged taboo is very much self imposed.
You should be very careful with these kinds of sentiments. Openly contemptuous elitism is how we ended up with Trump in US.
In addition to contemptuous elitism and Trump, there is also agreement that the US is very divided.
Also, as the posts above suggest, people who oppose people who oppose the EU, do not meet these people with the same proportion they appear to exist according to polls. Which matches my experience that educated people are afraid to express their opposition to the EU.
Still does not prove causality, because causality on such an issue cannot be proven.
You need to look into second-order effects in order to get a clue what is happening. First second-order clue is that people are afraid to express their opinion. The second one is that opinion is very polarized and people are divided on the issue into "us" and "them", i.e. divided.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2016-eu-refere...
And statistical correlation based on census data?
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/educational-attain...
I remember the spikes in these kinds of editorials starting somewhere in early 10s.
It also happened with the Brexit, where it was mostly less educated workers and farmers supporting Brexit, exactly the demographic that got hurt the most by it.
The single clearest indicator was age. Old people - million who have died since 2016 - voted out, young people who have to live with the devious voted remain.
> University graduates and those with higher qualifications predominantly voted to remain. Blue-collar workers, particularly in traditional industrial areas and manual labor jobs, overwhelmingly supported Brexit. Reasons included economic discontent, perceived competition from EU migrants, and a desire for national sovereignty.
As usual, it's only people that have very low capacity to understand a complex world, those that are easier to sell dreams about "sovereignity" that end up screwing their own lives.
Somehow the same happens in the US where conservatives can win even while openly promoting policies against workers (but it's always easy to promise more manufacturing jobs and america first).
Being a farmer didn’t seem to make much difference one you remove other factors like age and education.
One of their manipulations is to promote the dismissal of expert opinion as "elitism" and that the "elites" are contemptuous of "the ordinary American".
It's bullshit and always has been factually incorrect.
Any funny enough, they still want to keep the parts that the Eurosceptics are fighting tooth and nail from being enacted :)
IMO the EU regulation doesn't go far enough as it excludes banning AI for "military use".
Had russia attacked a NATO country of the EU directly, said country would have been at a disadvantage.
There have been reports of experiments with autonomous drones in the russia-Ukraine war.
If the EU bans AI for military uses and our adversaries do not, I am afraid someday we will regret our mistake. But it will be too late.
None of what I mentioned necessarily implies a war crime, as far as I know.
The reason why Russia doesn't do this to Ukraine as a whole is because it is fighting this war with the ultimate goal of occupying and annexing Ukraine, so why would it destroy valuable resources like infrastructure and people needed to maintain it unless it serves some other goal? OTOH when it does serve some other goal (e.g. actually advancing the frontline), they have zero qualms about doing the same exact thing Israel does. I mean, Russia doesn't care all that much about lives of its own soldiers, given the kinds of tactics routinely used.
How Europe would be treated would similarly depend on what the goals of the war from Russian perspective would be.
Carpet bombing is tricky when your planes get blown out of the sky on a regular basis and your industry can't replace them as easily as it can replace artillery shells. That's the main reason why they're using glide bombs and missiles instead.
Oh, and you don't need to look at Mosul or Raqqa to see other examples, either. Grozny, in either the first or the second Chechen war, is a nice illustration of how Russia fight wars.
What is your basis for this belief?
This is an unprecedentely low civilian casualty count for a conflict of this intensity and duration. Such high ratio of military to civilian casualties has not been observed since WW1.
A quote: "The latest available assessment by the World Bank, European Commission, United Nations and Ukrainian government found that direct war damage in Ukraine had reached $152 billion as of December, 2023, with housing, transport, commerce and industry, energy and agriculture the worst-affected sectors." [1] By now, it should be over 200 billion.
The reasons why Russia failed to cause more damage have nothing to do with demoraphics, good will, or anything like that. After all, Russia sent to death hundreds of thousands of ITS OWN citizens. Had it cared about russian lives as much as you are trying to whitewash here, it would not have been fighting this war to begin with.
The real reasons why Russia has not caused more damage or killed more civilians, are, first, it has failed to achieve air superiority. Second, Ukraine, with the help of its allies, was able to set up more less effective air defense against missiles and drones.
"Nearly 12,000 missiles have been launched against Ukraine by Russia since this full-scale conflict started.
Some 80% of those have been intercepted by Ukraine." [2]
The number of drones must be comparable or higher.
The limited number of civilian casualties is easily explained by the number of refugees from Ukraine which is in the millions. Its definity not because Russia did not try too hard.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-russias-invasion-h...
Neither does the Ukraine or the US.
In one word: Good.
I hope to see even more "stupid AI regulation" in the future, fingers crossed.
Recently I benefited from a "stupid regulation" mandating minimum Internet speeds carriers need to provide. How dare the policy makers interfere with the extortionate prices every single ISP in the market colluded to impose on the population. Muh liberty!
Care to explain how any of that is undemocratic?
Even an extremely unpopular commissioner is at no risk of being voted out. For many years the UK's representative was disgraced former disgraced former MP Peter *Mandelson, one of the most hated people in the country, who could never have won any remotely democratic contest.
I think it’s a stretch to call Mandelson “one of the most hated people in the country”. What did he do exactly? By this point I’m sure the average person has mostly forgotten that he exists.
You are right, however, about the lack of real democratic accountability in the EU. The EU commission is the place to “fail up” - it’s where politicians go after their democratic viability has run out at home and the voters boot them out.
He had at least the image of a slimeball "spin doctor", seen as having control over the media and using it to control the narrative and cover up government wrongdoing. He was definitely publicly hated even before it emerged that he'd taken a bribe^Wundeclared interest-free loan from a person he was responsible for investigating. You're right that he's mostly forgotten nowadays.
Commissioners are proposed by their country and discussed with the head of the commission (which was selected by the whole European council) before being validated by the parliamentary committee in charge of its portfolio (composed of MEPs which are elected using direct universal suffrage and proportional representation (you can hardly be more democratic than that).
I understand that you have had issue in the past with the UK pick as commissioner. Sadly the UK uses first past the post election and has a party-chosen prime minister. I would thank you for not projecting the results of the poor democratic system used by your country on the Union in the future.
Well, no, they're proposed by the government of their country. Which generally means they're selected by the ruling party in that country.
> I understand that you have had issue in the past with the UK pick as commissioner. Sadly the UK uses first past the post election and has a party-chosen prime minister. I would thank you for not projecting the results of the poor democratic system used by your country on the Union in the future.
Huh? Party list systems (which is what alternatives to FPTP tend to boil down to) redouble the problem - you lose democratic accountability even at that lower level.
Yes, that’s how democracy works. Countries have elected governments.
> Party list systems (which is what alternatives to FPTP tend to boil down to)
Huh? It’s a proportional system and everyone is free to present their own list if they disagree with the existing organisation presenting lists. The fact that you can’t be bothered to take part in the political life of your country is not magically a loss of democratic accountability.
This is one of those "the law in its majestic equality" things. It's not practically possible to compete with the full-time political parties without being a full-time political party. And a society that separates its politicians from its people is as bad as that quote about separating its scholars from its warriors.
> The fact that you can’t be bothered to take part in the political life of your country
I get involved, more at a local level, but at a national level I vote, and occasionally I write to my MP - who is a named individual representing a fairly small number of people who can therefore actually hold him accountable. Piss off your constituents enough and it doesn't matter how much the party likes you. Which is a system I'm very happy with, and something that's deeply missing from the EU.
So you hate all modern democracies actually and it has nothing to do with the EU. Thank you that makes things a lot more clear.
> I write to my MP - who is a named individual representing a fairly small number of people who can therefore actually hold him accountable
It can be exactly the same for MEP. Countries are free to use a per region vote if they want. Turn out the UK chose to have national lists but France had 8 regional zones until 2018. It was entirely a UK decision.
Plus all MEP’s votes are public and easy to consult and they all have an address you can write to. The fact that people don’t even bother remembering how they are called is not per se a deficit of democracy in the EU.
The European Parliament is elected every few years by citizens in all member states.
The European Commission is nominated by the European Council and and confirmed by the European Parliament.
The European Council consists of government officials from the member states where they have been chosen by national democratic processes.
It may be a little complicated, but it's all rooted in democratic processes. Please stick to the facts and keep the populistic anti-EU nationalistic propaganda to yourself.
(Every kid in the EU has been learning those basic facts in school for decades, making it surprising that this populist nonsense still catches on with so many people. I have an easier time forgivin non-EU folks, but even those should check the facts before claiming things.)
> The European Council consists of government officials from the member states where they have been chosen by national democratic processes.
I disagree. Successful elected government officials from member states aren't governing the EU Commission and Council. They're governing their own member states, where they are elected by the public.
Unpopular, unsuccessful ex-government officials from member states are governing the EU, where they are appointed by bureaucrats.
Just look at the uninspiring Commissioners we've suffered over the last few years.
It's telling that the Von Der Leyen Commission scraped in with just 51.4% of MEP votes.
https://facts4eu.org/news/2024_dec_unpopular_eu_I
In her home country Germany, only 33% said she'd make a good Commission president.
https://www.politico.eu/article/most-germans-skeptical-of-ur...
Von der Leyen was not appointed by bureaucrats.
> It's telling that the Von Der Leyen Commission scraped in with just 51.4% of MEP votes.
That's nothing special in European voting systems. Various governments (regional or country wide) in Germany have small, but relatively stable majorities provided by coalitions. That's very different to the mostly two-party systems in the US or the UK.
It's not clear who specifically did the ceremonial nomination, but it was probably the CDU bureaucracy that made the decision.
Generally about the appointment of the commission:
https://commission.europa.eu/about/organisation/how-commissi...
Right, and like most large organisations it has a bureaucracy.
> Generally about the appointment of the commission
Right, note the vague "suggestions from member states". (Also note that the claimed accountability points have never been activated in practice)
Ursula on der Leyen was 2019 supported by Angela Merkel (Chancellor of Germany) as the future president of the EU commission. That's no secret. Macron also supported her. The European Council then nominated Ursula on der Leyen and she was accepted by the European Parliament. The Parliament is directly elected the citizens of the European Union.
The election of her was kind of unfortunate, since it was signalled by parties that the election to the parliament will also find the proposed EU commission president. But that was not the case. Since a candidate was not found (various parties and governments were not happy with the proposed candidates), the European Council finally proposed Ursula von der Leyen, which then also got a majority in the parliament.
Look, I don't like lots of things about the EU either. But the first step to being able to change sth is to acknowledge the facts. Claiming that von der Leyen wasn't democratically appointed is similar to Trump claiming the 2020 election was stolen. Not a great start.
Now there's an oxymoron if ever I saw one!
Where democracy is involved, we use the word "elected" -- not "appointed"
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/crisis-behind-the-euroc...
From Chapter 6: 'The Inherently Undemocratic EU Democracy'
'A number of prominent public intellectuals put pen to paper to warn not only of a crisis of European democracy, but of a crisis of the very ‘political institution’ of democracy, and particularly its representative and liberal variants. Contemporary manifestations of the ‘hollowing out’ of democracy following the Eurocrisis have taken many forms and several contributions in this volume have dealt with various aspects of the phenomenon.'
' .... a crisis of the EU’s own democratic credentials. Even as they insisted on its purely economic character, commentators were quick to criticise the undemocratic form that the emergency EMU-related responses to the Eurocrisis came to assume, particularly at the European level, where not only parliamentary processes, but also the Treaties’ legal prescriptions, were systematically circumvented'.
But the flat out denial that EU is in principle a democratic system is just a too simplistic view. It tends to be mostly touted by those populists who ultimately would like to see an authocratic state with themselves in charge.
Those will craft narratives that are patently untrue to drive their agenda.
Most folks still had the view that UK Parliament was in charge, not really appreciating the change. That also applied to our MPs, hence the Factomane cases.
Now if there had bee proper education in the UK as to the impact of EEC and EU membership, possibly Brexit would not have happened.
I am still stunned that Brexit was left to a 50% + epsilon referendum.
It's likely that majority support would have evaporated as soon as any leave deal was reached. No deal would have satisfied all the different reasons people voted leave.
Only Johnson was able to cut that Gordion Knot, albeit by lying to people to their face.
To be fair, Parliament forced a delay from Oct 2019 to Jan 2020, to ensure that there was some sort of agreement in place. And then it passed because there was a one-year transitionary period until Jan 2021 during which the UK stayed in the single market.
And now we've voted in a PM who promises building closer ties with the EU. And eventually the generation that rabidly voted to leave will disappear. Progress marches on slowly.
In the end we had an opportunity to reverse it, in 2017 and 2019, but said “no”
In Australia, a constitutional referendum requires a double majority to pass: both a majority nationally, and a state-wide majority in a majority of states (so at least 4 out of 6).
Unlike Australia, the UK has no written constitution, and is a unitary state with devolution instead of a federation. Still, Brexit was undeniably a constitutional-level issue, and taking the constituent countries as the analog to states, they could have adopted the same "double majority" rule in the UK for the Brexit referendum. And if they had, the referendum would have failed: it got a majority nationwide, but in only two out of four constituent countries (England and Wales but not Scotland and Northern Ireland).
A big problem the UK has – which Brexit has arguably only worsened – is its extreme lopsidedness – one of the constituent countries (England) is over 80% of the population, so a big enough English majority on any issue can override the will of the other three constituent countries. And yet there are essentially no constitutional provisions to protect against this. Adopting a "double majority" for the Brexit referendum would have been a small step in the direction of doing so, at least by establishing a precedent.
[0] The fact that it was legally non-binding is not an issue: the legislation could have simply specified the conditions under which the referendum would be "deemed to pass", and require some appropriate government official to make a formal declaration as to whether those conditions had been met or not.
requiring a double majority to leave would the definition of stacking the deck in your favour
In 1973, the UK was much closer to a pure unitary state – there was no Scottish Parliament, no Welsh Parliament; the existing devolution in Northern Ireland (the Parliament of Northern Ireland) had just been abolished the previous year and the attempts to reinstate it in 1974 and 1982 proved to be short-lived failures. By 2016 there was a devolved Scottish Parliament, a devolved Welsh Assembly (designated a Parliament in 2020), and a devolved Northern Ireland assembly.
I think the evolution of devolution (pardon the pun) is a recognition that the UK needed stronger protections for Scottish/Welsh/Northern Irish rights against the English supermajority, and a "double majority" for constitutional-level national referendums would be a step further in that direction.
The UK joined the EEC, a very different institution
It seems like democracy really is an experiment representative of our hope of human cooperation, and yet I'm constantly reminded that the way we actually implement and enact is very far from that ideal.
> Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
There was nothing about what should happen if "leave" won.
The referendum should have been for the UK to prepare a detailed plan for leaving the Union and then have a referendum on whether or not to implement that plan.
A simple question for a massively complex problem.
An "advisory" referendum that was guaranteed to be treated as legally binding (will of the people and all that).
Being advisory meant that it avoided what laws there were on referendum, like being able to disenfranchise UK expats of which there were a lot in the EU. Maybe this also allowed it to be a simple 50.1% majority as well, I forget.
Dominic Cummings and Vote Leave rang rings around everyone and got the result they wanted.
Politics is the art of the possible. The referendum was a once-in-a-generation chance to leave, voting for it was smart. If remain had won there's no way we would have left on any terms, nor reformed our relationship with the EU at all; quite the contrary.
https://policyexchange.org.uk/blogs/brics-and-the-commonweal...
It was in the question: leaving the EU. Leaving was what happened, and it wasn't particularly mysterious or complex.
> The referendum should have been for the UK to prepare a detailed plan for leaving the Union and then have a referendum on whether or not to implement that plan.
So they could rig the second? No, the EU wouldn't have agreed to any negotiations of the form "we might do it or we might not", and it would simply have pushed them to play even more hardball than they did (which in the end turned out to involve a lot of bluffing, many of their supposed red lines were crossed after the UK actually left).
Which would annoy the Brexitters that would like to defend vague remain instead of getting into the weeds, or just try to sell their own version of Brexit when it may end up being another version in the end. And the people who oppose voting reform. And I get the feeling the result would be remain wins by being the compromise second preference of a lot of voters.
You can play games with re-running things forever to try and get a Remain win, but the entire reason the referendum was run that way was an attempt to get a Remain win. That's why it was presented as an all-or-nothing vote when basically all the Eurosceptics who had been pushing for a referendum wanted something less than fully leaving to be on the menu (mostly a pile of reforms and much less distance/opting out of any future treaty changes/the ECJ/etc). Cameron specifically set it up as Leave/Remain because he thought nobody could countenance fully leaving and it would force a Remain (unreformed) victory. Obviously he was wrong.
Those opt ours were enshrined in the treaties. There was no way to rescind them without the consent of the UK. You’re constructing a straw man.
People were pretty ill informed and voted leave for reasons like they were pissed off with the present situation, or they didn't like foreigners.
Which they were entitled to do but have ended up with a worse situation and worse foreigners.
The problem with not proceeding following a "50% + epsilon" is you're then suddenly ignoring the majority of the electorate which has its own political backlash.
The trick is to not have a referendum unless the outcome likely to be definitive. This is actually codified in the Good Friday agreement as a condition for the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to call an Irish unification referendum.
The referendum should have been two part. 1 want to leave or not? 2 how about this specific option (channel) or shall we forget the it all?
Why single out Hungary and Poland specifically? Is it worse than when Austria, Netherlands, France, etc. have a different opinion to the rest of the union and torpedo progress just to pander to the right wingers in their country?
Democracies in Europe. Hungary is at the lower end of the spectrum.
The removal of the former Polish government was largely driven by public disapproval of state fund mismanagement. In Hungary, a key element of the current government's platform appears to be the promotion of national identity, including ties with diaspora communities formed after WWI (The Treaty of Trianon), potentially with implications for future "geopolitical alignments" (the likelihood of which is debatable).
These results, while influenced by the d'Hondt system, reflect the sentiment of the voting population, which is a democratic process, in principle. The ruling methods are not 100% democratic though (rule of majority with respect for minority rights)
However, the opinions of my "more Western friends" on those topics "diverge from on-the-ground realities".
"Public" TV had literal North Korea level of propaganda too.
Even the (useless and bad) SMS service used to warn about bad weather... send out texts to remind old people to vote.
That's hilarious (not), given that so much discourse is about just how much democracy should be shaved off to get the desirable Democratic(tm) results (Supermajority for Brexit! Ban AFD! et al.).
We have long known that unanimity holds us back internationally, and that the switch to majority vote is way overdue - but leading European Union member states to accept that is going to be a long slog. We'll get there and we have started on the path: trade policy for example is already qualified majority voting.
The Qualified Majority Vote has been being used in increasing scope of policy areas for many years.
QMV was part of stuff from the 1986 SEA, and got a major boost in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, since it was recognised as practically being necessary to make any progress towards (and within) the Single Market.
In practice most decisions are still technically unanimous, because it looks better politically and it doesn't cost anything more (since a majority can simply pass whatever they want, they are not forced to concede anything to the obstructionists; with the newer rules, it's smarter for any isolated bloc to immediately trade any publicly-stated opposition for any minor favour they can get).
This is the reason why Orban, despite all his bombast, has no influence whatsoever on the actual decisions; but also why German resistance against overdue fiscal reforms has basically melted.
UK and Scandinavia got to opt out of the Euro, for example.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Faroe_Islands
Consider that icelandic mortgage interest rates are currently 9-11% but a few years ago they were 4% which was celebrated as historically extremely low rates.
The EU has an abysmal history of setting and managing ITQs in its waters, with Iceland having some of the best (but not at all perfect) managed waters in the world.
So there is plenty to be skeptical about when it comes to how negotiations would go on the matter.
No, this is mostly about fishing rights afaik. Britain also kept having issues on that front.
Now, every country joining the EU is expected to join the Euro at some point.
https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/euro/enlargement-euro-a...
"Who can join and when?
All EU Member States, except Denmark, are required to adopt the euro and join the euro area. To do this they must meet certain conditions known as 'convergence criteria'."
In theory yes, in practice no. The Swedish government has said repeatedly they don't plan to join despite being legally obliged to do so.
EU law says they have to do it, but it also says it can't be done without their active cooperation, and there is no penalty if they refuse to cooperate. The obligation is essentially toothless.
So Denmark having a formal opt-out from the Euro and Sweden not, is really more of a theoretical difference than a practically relevant one.
Sweden is long in the EU. CURRENTLY the expectation to new member states to join the Euro when joining the EU is different -> much higher.
Sweden was also long not in NATO. Now it is. Similar, support in polls for Euro introduction is rising.
I don't agree. It isn't just Sweden; Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Romania too. The time between EU accession and Euro adoption is normally a decade or more. If a government doesn't want to adopt the Euro, there are heaps of levers they can pull to slow the process down, and there is no way to punish a government for doing that. The easiest is that you have to join ERM II at least two years before adopting the Euro, but nobody can force you to join ERM II – so Sweden, Poland, Czechia, Hungary and Romania have all refused to join it. The only current ERM II members are Denmark (with a formal opt-out), and Bulgaria (which wants to adopt the Euro – it had hoped to do it 1 January 2025, but the ECB says their inflation is too high – 5.1%, the limit is 3.3%). If Bulgaria gets inflation down in 2025, they may succeed in joining on 1 January 2026.
When negotiating to join, the politicians say "sure, we promise we'll adopt the Euro", knowing that they'll likely be retired by the time joining the Euro is a real possibility.
> Sweden was also long not in NATO. Now it is. Similar, support in polls for Euro introduction is rising.
Yes, but that doesn't change the point – an EU member state (present or future) cannot be forced to adopt the Euro, it will only happen if the member state's government is willing, and they'll likely only be willing if it is sufficiently popular with their people.
> an EU member state (present or future) cannot be forced to adopt the Euro
Future members can be forced. They won't become EU members, without a clear will to adopt the policies which lead to the Euro.
Only if they changed the rules to make ERM II membership mandatory and automatic, or if they changed the Euro convergence criteria to remove the need for it. I've heard no talk they are planning to do so.
The non-Euro EU members have a say in the enlargement negotiation process too, and they don’t want new members to be forced into Euro adoption - it might weaken their own ability to resist that pressure in the future, plus additional non-Euro EU members are a potential source of new internal allies
> They won't become EU members, without a clear will to adopt the policies which lead to the Euro.
The government that negotiates to join the EU may do all they can to convince the EU that they want to join the Euro – they might even really mean it. Then, after accession, that government loses an election and get replaced by a new government which is anti-Euro. What can the EU do to stop that? Nothing.
If we join the EU we’re pretty much guaranteed to lose this exclusive access to our waters, and that will be devastating for the economy, given how the fishing industry is one of very few industries keeping the economy afloat. Especially considering exports to other countries.
you accept the entire body of law or you don't join
the UK and Norway both tried to negotiate away the fisheries policy when they submitted applications in the 70s
the UK "accepted" the CFP and and joined, Norway didn't and still remains outside
given then the odds of Iceland joining the EU are practically zero
I don't think you realise how small the Icelandic economy truly is, and how big an effect fluctuations in fishing quote already have on it.
Iceland already has full access to the single market and Schengen. Historically during times of economic shocks, having our own currency has been useful as it allowed for more flexibility (i.e currency controls, self governance over central bank rates etc). Would taking up the Euro make the island more resilient or less able to respond to shocks? Economists seem to not fully agree on the matter.
I have personally never bought into the scare mongering by the island's quota kings - and fully support making the fishing quota a nationally own resource along with propper utlization fee structures - but having a partner who's doctorate is in fisheries management and having personally had a lifelong interest in the matter my self, I don't believe for a second that our fisheries would be better off dictated by Brussels. I reserve the right to change my mind when, and if, a deal is ever presented that indicates otherwise.
Tourism is already back to pre pandemic levels, so I don't see how anything would change there. Iceland is and always will be a very expensive destination for tourists. Most things need to be shipped in, and joining the Union will not change that in any way.
Aluminum brings in a decent amount, via large scale electrical usage contracts made with the state owned electrical company. While these deals are secret, it is public knowlege that they are tied to the global price of aluminum. Having income in a foreign currency but expenditure in the domestic currency is surely a good thing for the government and all of it's agencies.
Would the government have access to better loans if joining the Union and taking up the euro? Perhaps. However, the loan rating for the Icelandic government is already fairly good, sitting at A+, that I'm not sure that there would be a big impact.
Just to make it clear, I am all for the European Union (heck, I even moved from Iceland and live on mainland Europe) but joining it isn't such a clear cut black/white calculus as your comments have made it sound like.
I also believe it would be better to be an EU member and part of the eurozone instead of having the flaky economic governance we have historically had.
Like you said the economic pillars of Iceland have become broader and more numerous than only the fisheries, and for all the talk of currency devaluation being beneficial, in effect it simply serves to allow the government and largest exporters offload all effects of economic downturns onto the Icelandic people and small businesses.
It is theoretically possible for Iceland to govern itself in such a way that it is stronger outside the EU than inside. Simply adhering to the Maastricht conditions would perhaps be enough, it just does not seem likely to me that there will ever be enough discipline to do so without actually joining the eurozone.
As I understand, part of the reason that Norway wanted to stay out of the EU was to fully control fishing in their territorial waters. I can understand why Iceland may wish to do the same.
Unlike Iceland, fishing is a negligible part of the U.K. economy (c0.1% vs c10%), yet was used by people who couldn’t give a stuff about fishing as a weapon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932011_Icelandic_fi...
(Though, perhaps it helps that the UK is no longer in the EU).
What they would have been allowed or forced to do and whether their response could have been the same.
https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnsons-secret-remain-arti...
But I also find it odd that Johnson became a guest host a few episodes after Deyton was kicked off in 2002. Was Johnson's adulterous nature not known at the time? Johnson's cocaine stories were, I think, 2005 (on the show itself), 2007, and 2019, and he hosted again in 2003, 2005, and 2006, at least the last of those should not have happened on the basis of the argument used against Deyton.
Peoples views change, and parties change. The Tory party of today is very different to that of thatcher, just like the republicans today are very different to Reagan’s
> As Greenland is one of the Overseas Countries and Territories of the European Union, citizens of Greenland are European Union citizens.
> In 1985, Greenland left the European Economic Community (EEC), unlike Denmark, which remains a member. The EEC later became the European Union (EU, renamed and expanded in scope in 1992). Greenland retains some ties through its associated relationship with the EU. However, EU law largely does not apply to Greenland except in the area of trade. Greenland is designated as a member of the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) and is thus officially not a part of the European Union, though Greenland can and does receive support from the European Development Fund, Multiannual Financial Framework, European Investment Bank and EU Programmes.
Similar to French and other oversees territories, they can move to and work in the EU, but other EU citizens can't do the reverse. Don't have to follow the laws, yet get funding regardless. Pretty sweet deal.
One of the issues they had with the EEC was basically European fishing fleets coming over and decimating their fishing stocks and thus food supplies and jobs.
The current Inuits are no more "native" than the Norse settlers, and in fact arrived later than the Scandinavians.
Comparing the treatment of Greenlanders in any way to "genocide" is terrible. A "misguided" Western intervention, perhaps, but mostly at the wish of the Greenlandic heads.
History rarely walks the paths prescribed by modern ideologues.
Forcing contraceptives and massacres are common methods of genocide, and while it's unlikely we'll find evidence of genocidal intent the danish has acted very much like a typical colonial power.
not only do you lack knowledge of North American history, you do not know the relationship between Norway and Denmark. Would you say the same thing about Iceland, because they are not Brown?
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
As late as the 1970s Denmark was actively involved in demographic policies of the country. Including by secretly sterilizing women without consent, which is one of the criteria for genocide in Article II (d) “ Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”. And just like the Americans Indians, the Greenlandic Inuit had several forced relocations, including to Ittoqqortoormiit in 1925 and to Qaanaaq in 1953.
> The current Inuits [sic] are no more "native" than the Norse settlers
(added [sic] because Inuit is already plural, the singular form is Inuk)
What an utterly false narrative. Just because they migrated relatively late, it doesn’t make them any less indigenous. Greenlanders had unbroken settlements in their lands for a thousand years. The Norse left in the 15th century and than a different population returned 400 years later to colonize the Inuit. By this logic Italians could claim they are as indigenous to Britain as the Anglo-Saxons.
The "forced relocations" were due to famine!!! The towns were unsustainable due to extreme population growth.
> Greenlanders had unbroken settlements in their lands for a thousand years.
plainly wrong. Just like the Norse, the previous Greenlandic settlers died out.
> The towns were unsustainable due to extreme population growth.
Only if you are unwilling to put in the infrastructure to accommodate. The government of Denmark was racist and didn’t want to spend money that would benefit the people of Greenland.
> The "forced relocations" were due to famine!!!
Where do you get that? Ittoqqortoormiit was established in 1925 by relocating people from Ammassalik to prevent Norway (under Quisling) from establishing a colony there. Even though most the Inuit settlers went north voluntarily (undoubtedly because the hunting grounds were better up North) not everyone did.
The case for Qaanaaq—who were forcibly relocated from Pituffik in 1953 to build an American air base—is even more clear cut. The Danish courts have even ruled that the relocation was illegal and ordered reparations to be payed to the victims. You could argue that the hunting in Ammassalik wasn’t that great in the early 1920s (though saying there was a famine is very much an exaggeration), but there was no such thing in North Greenland in the 1950s. And the people were only relocated to the next fjord over, where the hunting cant have been that much different (in fact the presence of the American military must have made it worse).
>> Greenlanders had unbroken settlements in their lands for a thousand years.
> plainly wrong. Just like the Norse, the previous Greenlandic settlers died out.
Sorry, 700 years than, that is still 450 years longer than the Norwegian/Danish settlements. The Norse and the Inuit both migrated to North America around the same time (1000 CE). The Inuit started in Alaska and spread over to Greenland around 300 years later. Meanwhile the Norse only had 2 settlements in North America, over the course of some 400 years, which they finally abandoned, and didn’t return until 300 years later, by which time the Inuit had populated south and west Greenland with dozens of settlements.
It's a country inhabitated by Danish people, the fact that they are in the low thousands doesn't change the fact it's their land.
"They're stealing our fish!" gets voters riled up, even in countries where the fishing industry is economically insignificant and/or unprofitable.
French fishers don’t want to make the investments into their fleet, so they harassed French politicians until those spiked the pulse fishing research permits. This had the by-effect of (nearly) bankrupting the Dutch fishing fleet.
So no, fishing industry fights are not just an UK thing.
Well-off European states with lots of sea (Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the UK) are disproportionately likely to reject EU membership due to the Common Fisheries Policy.
It's too bad that the EU failed to recognise, way back in the EEC days, that having all these countries in the EU was far more important than some fish. (And just wait to see what a huge problem the Common Agricultural Policy is going to be for Ukrainian membership.)
Personally, I'd like to see Ukraine in the EU asap, but I'd also like the EU reformed into a democratic federation, such that the equivalent of the FBI has meaningful authority to investigate and prosecute corruption and rule of law irregularities in member states like Ukraine and Bulgaria.
Integration would be difficult on the agricultural front, but is something that the EU has been dealing with since inception.
One of the "benefits" of the war and the Ukrainian diaspora throughout Europe is that they will be able to integrate much faster than the previous Balkan and Balkan-adjaent countries as integration into Schengen would be able to be rapid.
Ukraine's engineering, mining, and agricultural industries would bring major advantages to the EU as a Union, diversifying engineering from dependence on Germany, and bringing broadscale agricultural efficiencies to the EU as well.
If there is one thing that Western EU countries have learned over the last 30 years, is that borders should be opened very slowly. With the current "black wave" sweeping the continent, there is no chance in hell that Ukraine will be admitted to Schengen in less than 10-15 years - if at all.
I'm not trying to rain on your parade, I'm just being realistic. Ukraine has all the problems of countries that were admitted to the EU too quickly, plus all the problems coming from scale and an agrarian economy. Just waving it in the EU would be a repetition of all the major missteps of the last 30 years.
They'll have all sorts of issues, but has there ever been a nation that has been so unanimous about wanting to join?
I think NATO membership is more likely to occur before EU membership, Ukraine won't accept anything less for their future protection, having fought the Russians to a standstill.
EU integration is more about the economics first. For example, Ukraine just cut off traffic of Russian oil/gas across its territory. That was a source of income for Ukraine that will have to be compensated after the war. Perhaps via damages paid by seized Russian assets.
What I hope that both of these perhaps decade long paths start in 2025.
It would make a good celebration in 2035 if both of those things have happened.
The main concerns about new states joining Schengen are usually that (a) there may be too many immigrants from the new member to the old members, and (b) that the external Schengen boundaries will be insufficiently protected by the new member state.
Neither problem applies to Ukraine - Ukrainians have had essentially free migration access to the Schengen since 2022, and Ukraine's borders with third-party states would be - by far - the best defended. Ukraine could join Schengen very easily (unlike the EU itself, which may indeed take years). I wouldn't be surprised if Ukraine becomes part of Schengen well before it joins the EU, á la Iceland.
But this excludes things such as farming and fishing, the latter of which has been very important for Iceland because the EU has never always got that right in a painful attempt to make all member states equally unhappy, and representation of where those rules are decided (Council, Parliament) or proposed (Commission).
Even outside the EEA, the size of the EU on the continent means European countries who want to do large amounts of frictional-less trading end up importing the EUs rules (e.g. Switzerland, post-Brexit UK) with no say on them.
If you know you're going to lose 10 no matter what, you might as well trade your opposition for something worth 2 or 3, so you lose less.
that is blatantly false
My understanding is that they're stable since the financial crisis.
Simply put, they want an inverse Brexit.
in any case nothing is ideal anyway. The question is what set of pros and cons are the best compromise. That is something for the people of Iceland to answer not outsiders like me (and perhaps you)
Also opening EU funding opportunities for plenty of infra enhancements.
Iceland's energy is highly renewable (hydro, geothermal), and they have substantial potential for mineral carbonation of CO2. Mafic rocks like basalt, particularly with high olivine content, are close to the top for targets for conversion of CO2 to carbonates.
By joining the EU they have voting power and influence over their own destiny which they lack under those agreements. Currently they must accept EU rules without being able to influence them.
No, they don't really must accept all rules. Only the ones that will benefit them. This will cease once they join the EU.
Implementation is overseen by the EFTA Surveillance Authority who can sue members in the EFTA court.
People here will say that we will lose control of our fishing rights but we already lost them to a handful of filthy rich families.
I speak as someone who has started both political party here (the Icelandic Pirate party) and participated in IMMI (International Modern Media Institute).
Please don't buy into the hype, we have turned over the Silk road servers to the USA despite not having a MLAAT with them and took down Khilafah.is on technicality when it suited us.
We also blocked the pirate bay after our version of MPAA / RIAA complained.
A few middle managers took the fall for the actual top bankers and served at most a few months in a country club-esque open prison for non-violent offenders. There was a news item years ago about one getting upset for losing weekend privileges to get ice cream at a local shop.
Our new constitution was thrown out for not being created in an acceptable manner.
Regarding your last question, we did bring in outside investigators from the EU for parts of initial investigation / prosecution.
I'd recommend Sigrún Davíðsdóttir's blog (http://uti.is/) if you want more detailed coverage of what actually happened here.
She's done excellent work.
https://www.rna.is/eldri-nefndir/addragandi-og-orsakir-falls...
This is not true (or at least it is not that simple [but you probably know that]). The new constitution is still a draft which was accepted to become a new constitution in a national referendum in 2012. There was nothing inadequate about the drafting of it except failure by the ruling parties to deliver in the results of the referendum (I have my theories as of why which I will say later).
I think you may be referring to the judgement which made the election for the constitutional congress (a separate election the one which asked if we should adopt it, or parts of it), which was voided over (a rather petty) technicality (again I have my theories as to why). The parliament were able to bypass this by simply hiring the same people that won this election to the congress. The only thing this changes is that the mandate for writing the draft came from parliament instead of via a national election. And since it was composed of the same people, it changed absolutely nothing.
Now why then hasn’t the new constitution been adopted even though the nation voted to adopt it 12 years ago?
My theory is that the ruling parties are opposed to it, and don’t want it, even though the nation clearly wants it. Why are they opposed to it? My theory is that they are sheltering the interest of the fishing companies, since the new constitution makes it abundantly clear that the fisheries belong to the people of Iceland, and are not to be bought and sold like they are currently.
I’ve read a lot about them and it’s basically always the same as reading information about it here: people saying the EU brings a lot of benefits and another person in reply of that comment saying it’s actually a non-EU treaty/document that’s to thank for that.
On the other hand the EU seems like it costs the country a lot of money to be in since the country has to do their part in supporting failing economies that are also part of the EU.
ref: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/work-abroad/index....
Ireland isn't in Schengen, but a French person can move there tomorrow for work or study etc. They have to show a passport at border control, but otherwise face a very similar situation as they would moving to Germany (fill in some papers, get a local tax id etc).
They each have many implementation details, like if you are in EU but not in Schengen you don't have access to certain common databases.
The desire of countries cherrypicking and sovereignty made Europe very complex structure, I can't wait to have Federal Europe with every country in it with a simplified structure. Can be like US, can be like Switzerland or Germany maybe but thise structures over structures is just way too much and its begging for simplification.
Apparently, %36 of Spanish businesses haven't heard of the Schengen area and another %18 have heard of it but don't know what is it: https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3177
For example: €100 EUR = 41,172.31 HUF (Hungarian Forint)
Granted, the only two countries to do so (Montenegro and Kosovo) never bothered with creating their own currency to begin with, they went straight to Euros post-independence (with some disgruntlement from the EU). And then there's also two (Bulgaria and Bosnia) which are technically not using Euros, but their currencies are pegged to Euros and stupidly simple to convert (1 EUR = 1.95583 BAM/BGN, so just multiply/divide by 2).
Why didn't they just set the peg to 2?
The initital rate was 1000 levs = 1 DM, in 1999 there was a denomination of 1000 : 1, same year the Euro happened and the Deutsche mark enjoyed the same rate to the Euro.
The hope was that the single currency would be soon followed by political union. Without this the Euro has been a disaster, leading to the European debt crisis, and painful austerity as the price of bailout.
The ability to control your overnight bank rates, and your monetary supply is important. I don't think the convenience of easy travel or easy(ier) trading of goods outweighs it at all.
The good thing is that the EU has improved since then.
On the flip side, Greece is also a great example of how powerful the EU can be. Greece would have absolutely collapsed outside the EU.
So even with the limitations on the EU, Greece did a lot better within the EU than it would have outside.
It was indeed a big backdoor attack to the Euro, exploited by GS [1], at least.
> Greece would have absolutely collapsed outside the EU.
Meat for the IMF, BlackRock and so on; Argentina's twin.
Global economy seems to be an ocean with Orca whales, they hit and eat alongside with sharks. The citizens turns to meat at same moment their politicians betray them [2], whether caused by ignorance or by malice (corruption).
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/feb/25/markets-pre...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/apr/18/goldman-sac... ( Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – it was a con )
PS: I wonder what happened to the perpetrators of the 2008 crisis.
By your theory, and by the endless claims of the anti-EU crowd, but it hasn't been. People use euros with no problem, every day, for transactions large and small. It's a major international currency, maybe second only to the dollar.
Every time I travel abroad, I transact in local currencies for transactions large and small all over the world using real-time currency exchange rates via the magic of the Visa/Mastercard network.
If that was the core thing the Euro was supposed to solve, the better solution today is just an EU wide digital payments standard.
The point still stands, a common currency without the ultimate unification part is just disadvantageous for most.
Where's the evidence of disaster?
The Euro crisis was a disaster for multiple countries.
I wouldn’t hold them up as a shining example of “good” or “we should do the same”.
Even in recent decades the US has done much better economically than the EU.
There is a huge difference between EU states and US states.
You are missing the point. The problem is not that transactions work, the problems are with interest rates and government borrowing.
Schengen governs border controls, not the right to work and residency, which is a function of EU membership, not Schengen membership.
I think Switzerland has a bilateral agreement with the EU (or via EFTA) that allows for free movement and employment of people, so they enjoy these freedom as well despite neither being in the EU nor the EEA (but they are a member of EFTA).
Belgium took 3 years to process the form for national insurance which caused me to draw down about 20,000 Euros. I couldn't drive my European vehicle in Belgium because I didn't have Belgium license plate which was required for insurance. Rather than working for the first 3months, I had to visit the gemeentehuis every alternate day to push some piece of paperwork to some government authority. I couldn't park my car in Belgium outside my property because I didn't have permission to do so because it wasn't a Belgian vehicle. In order to rent a property I needed a Belgian bank account, which I could only get if I was a Belgian resident, forcing me to live in a hotel temporarily and using that as my address. I required my accounts to be signed off by a Belgian notary, of which there is a government enforced limit, so to speak to one for a microsecond cost 1000 Euros minimum. At the time, operating a British company in Belgium cost 17,000 Euros fee. I still receive paperwork from the Belgian government more than 10 years after leaving.
The other countries aren't much better, and the only country that was easy to start working in was the UK.
You seem very unaware that your experience is not typical by any means.
"the relatively simple process of moving between countries."
But I wonder, how long ago that was?
This part is proper weird and (very) likely not complaint with the EU directives. All Eurozone banks must be treated the same. Since you appear to be British, that would preclude the Eurozone. Still all banks in the UK were allowed to transact in Euro although there was a spat where the guys in Brussels wanted to exclude London from the juice EU clearance.
Many years back (not in Belgium) I did get a bank account prior to obtaining the local residency. Moving to work within the EU has been absolutely hassle free for me. Again, I have not worked in Belgium.
After a year I realised I should have applied for a temporary residence permit (if you have FoM you are allowed to live as a resisent for 6 months without it), which took a few weeks to get.
This year I finally changed my drivers license over, as I couldn't get a parking permit without a local license. I've owned 2 vehicles with local plates before that. Took a few days to do that.
I did the same to Ireland a decade before, and my experience there was pretty much the same.
I wish I had more details on this. It just comes from a stray comment in a newspaper.
That you need to be a resident to open a bank account is silly, I admit, but KYC and AML are a problem banks have to work with. Even in the EU, you can disappear a bit over borders: my birth country tax office lost me only after one jump and I moved 6 times since then. I always have to call them and explain things as they still don't have a clue that I am not in in my home country anymore; it's been 20+ years...
Your experience sounds a while ago; things did get somewhat easier; my gripes are opening bank accounts (but we have neobanks now; not sure if that works with rent) which should be eu wide, nummerplates (you have to import your car if you move somewhere which I do find nonsense; it's a tax thing) and renting. The rest is pretty smooth. If these things, and preferably tax, can be done eu wide, it's good. I just do the stuff I agree with and ignore the rest; it is what the locals in every country I have been to do too: hell, I am the only one (that I know of) paying (significant) taxes in my town; people laugh at me at parties.
(Then a simple follow up which any Dane would also need to do if they moved between cities.)
The bank account was easy. I didn't bring a car, but I have friends that did and it wasn't complicated.
don't want my money to support that
Denmark's krona is also pegged to the Euro.
> Barcelona, previously a jewel of Europe, now has as many homeless as LA in some areas.
Ok, I just Googled: "Barcelona homelessness"
> In December 2023, Fundació Arrels, an organization that helps the homeless, reported that 1,384 people were living on the streets in Barcelona, the highest number ever recorded.
> The 2024 count estimated that the homeless population in Los Angeles County declined by 2.2% to 45,252.LA is also an order of magnitude bigger than Barcelona, so absolute numbers (even if carefully only tracking people sleeping rough) are a weird point of comparison.
Joking aside, I (as EU citizen) personally don't really care whether they join the EU or not. They're a bit too much out of the way, too small etc. And EFTA already covers a lot of it. But if they want to join it'd be nice.
If they join they should do it forever though and not change their mind again when another conservative government comes to power. I'm really sick of Britain with all their fussy wheeling and dealing around the Brexit era (and taking attention away from real issues). That can't happen again. For three years Brexit was in the news every day with them asking for stuff they knew was impossible and acting offended when they didn't get it. I'm really glad that's over but if Iceland is so divided on this issue the same could happen again.
As big as the political problems the US has been having in recent years are, I don't think that's likely to happen in the short-to-medium term. But, if these problems just keep on getting worse, then eventually it may become a very real possibility.
Peter Zeihan makes the case in one of his books for why Alberta should leave Canada and join the US. I’m not Canadian or American and have no dog in the fight, but it’s interesting reading.
While Alberta is often called “the Texas of Canada” there is not a single Albert a that would give up their healthcare to join the US. In many meaningful ways their standard of living would plummet overnight - healthcare, education, safety, violent crime, life expectancy, etc.
Rape: 16x higher
Total Crime: 5x higher
Murder rate: 3x higher
Prisoners per capita: 6x more
.. and it goes on
... would you want your community to change like that ?
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/Uni...
And why would the US's existing violent criminals move to Alberta?
Violent crime in the US is not evenly distributed.
So the better question is actually why is the average American such a violent criminal compared to the average Canadian? Answer that and you will have answered your question.
Likely lack of healthcare (desperation), lack of affordable education, debt, need to fill for-profit prisons, corporate lobbying to make regular people's lives worse, etc. etc.
> Violent crime in the US is not evenly distributed.
Neither is it in Canada.
If you want to cherry pick the "best" of the US and leave out the worst from any comparisons, you'd have to do that for whatever country you're comparing it to.
Nothing would "send" criminality there, over time any place joining the USA would become the USA, and by definition it would become the average of the USA (because it will be a part of the USA)
A lot of people like to think a place will become the USA in all the perceived "good" ways like higher potential salaries, lower income taxes, more freedom, etc., but they fail to realize a place will also become the USA in all the ways that make the USA so vastly different from every other developed nation (healthcare, education, violence, crime, etc.)
Your live is measurably worse because of it.
See the Clarity Act of 1999.
They have to amend the treaty anyway to allow a new member state to join, so why couldn't they just amend it to remove that limit at the same time?
What really matters here isn't the letter of treaties, it is the political reality that it ain't happening. Canada's economy is very tightly bound to that of the US, joining the EU would be erecting all these new barriers to Canada-US trade which would hurt the Canadian economy, and the reduced barriers to Canada-EU trade wouldn't be enough to counteract that. There is no escaping the geographical reality that the US is right next door, the EU an ocean away.
And the political reality is that no one in the EU wants to widen the discussion to countries like Morocco, so the rule that the country must be in Europe is useful.
And, really, Georgia (also granted candidate status) which is a problem in that a not insignificant fraction of the population isn't really sure if the EU is better than Russia.
But having a problem with expanding further east doesn't necessarily recommend that the EU should expand further south or west.
Trump has threatened 25% tariffs. If that were to happen I wonder if that ocean would suddenly seem much smaller.
They're Europeans, and a nice bunch.
also, legislation in EU is harmonized, i.e. all important legal bits between the different countries are the same (implementation might differ slightly)
(In fact, the people in several states in the EU thought it was a bad idea but their states' parliaments ratified Maastricht anyway.)
I'm guessing the EFTA/EEC agreements are nice enough.
Without wading into the partisan morass, I'll gently suggest that it might be worth checking in with alternative sources once in awhile. You don't have to agree, but it is always good to temper your views. If you are interested in these topics, it could be worth knowing what the stated intentions of an agenda are, as described by the proponents.
When I take the time for this my underlying principles may not change, but I do find uncharitable interpretations and deliberate misrepresentations presented by both sides. It helps to diffuse some of the most egregious hyperbole.
Otherwise, I find that I'm subjecting myself to the echochamber you describe.
As for learning the intentions behind an agenda, I think that's usually clear? Harsher punishments for crime is a common point from various parties for example, the point is to reduce crime, whereas research shows (as far as I could find) that there's a fairly low threshold beyond which it only functions as retribution while also increasing repeat offences because people lose everything after many years removed from society. But people don't do the research (not like I have time for researching everything either, so I don't have an opinion on many things) and so you get bad votes... But so like, it's not about partisanship but about what actually makes sense. Like nuclear energy, the parties I generally consider voting for are usually strongly against that, but I think they're misrepresenting (or not aware of) the facts in order to be in line with what their voters want from the party. I'm not partial to one party, I check what my options are for each election (note we don't have a 2-party system here either, so there's no big "us vs. them" besides perhaps racism parties)
I have no clue who Wilders is or what he represents, but if I read you correctly, just by applying logic, your second sentence seems to directly contradict your first sentence.
DJT is not an uncommon reference though. Donald J Trump is common as well.
Sorry to shatter your illusions, but geographically speaking Iceland is as much a part of North America as it is of Europe. <https://www.funiceland.is/nature/geology/tectonic-plates/
For example, one could look at Germany, in 50 years there was only little growth:
They are no longer a poor nation of fishermen. They are now among the wealthiest countries (per capita) in the world. They would not be well suited to taking Russia's role in the European economy.
About the closest similarity is that Iceland does have a significant energy sector. But it's hydro and geothermal, not well suited to export. They might make an awesome data center hub.
Try tourism, outstripped our biggest industry (fishing exports) years ago.
> They might make an awesome data center hub.
Except for the fact that we're equidistant to any major population center which means high latency to everyone. Might work for AI, crypto mining or the few other non-latency dependent hosting niches however.
- All of these are decent growth in my eyes.
- Germany might not be the best proxy for the EU economy in general.
- EU countries are doing better than non-EU countries in the region in aggregate.