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Romanias GDP jumped from 122 billion to 214 billion from 2006 to 2008 after joining in 2007.
Poland had a similar jump.
In addition eastern countries receive immense financial subsidies.
Ireland and Luxemburg more or less monetise the fact that they can give companies access to the European market.
For larger countries ( Italy, Germany, France) the benefits are less visible, but being able to negotiate with large markets on eye level is of immense value to exporting economies.
In addition, if you read the Schuman address you might realise that the EU project never was about economics, it was and is about lasting peace. The only founding nation of the union that saw it as purely economic union was the UK.
Finally, anticipating the matter of immigration: Countries like Hungary, Greece and Italy that keep complaining about EU immigration policies, fail to acknowledge that in the absence of the EU they would be left alone with the arriving immigrants from Africa, while the rest of Europe would close its borders.
Looks like some creative accounting. Real GDP cannot almost double in two years.
That's what Frontex is all about. Same in Lithuania - not only it can close outer borders, but it has a requirement to do so.
So unless being sovereign is about having borders open, this argument doesn't work.
During the 2015 migrant crisis, did not refugees end up traveling to Germany while first entering Greece and Italy? If Dublin regulation really applied, Germany would not need to take the responsibility of the majority of the asylum seekers. At the same time, that only concerns for the asylum seekers and not the unregistered aliens.
They can't do so permanently, but they can provide some sort of a justification every six months and keep it closed, nobody can veto them.
Please restore the old economic union with the core countries. Iceland can join, too.
Peace, friendship, shared values, culture, diversity, stability, ...
We have a lot of benefits.
Why would we celebrate the EU's efforts to homogenise our national cultures?
I preferred the EU when it was a trading union as opposed to a utopian political experiment.
We still have or national identity. I live in Hamburg/Germany. Our identity is largely European since hundreds of years (see for example our history in the Hanse), before the German nation existed. We have a strong Regional and European identity.
> Why would we celebrate the EU's efforts to homogenise our national cultures?
The EU doesn't do that. In many ways it actually preserves local (and also regional) cultures. It sets a framework for democracy and law in Europe.
> I preferred the EU when it was a trading union as opposed to a utopian political experiment.
A trading union doesn't influence culture and politics?
The EU was never thought as just a trading union. It was set up as a process to get a peaceful Union for the European Countries after hundreds of years of wars. After the WWII which made clear that lasting peace can be achieved by deep cooperation.
That really conflicts with the "Freedom of movement for workers".
Cultures can not be preserved if people freely move between regions.
Now EU citizens can do it peacefully.
Freedom of movement in the EU also does not mean "people can move freely in Europe". It's a right for EU citizens. Not for all people. It's also for people who can actually afford to live at a new place.
Preserving a cultural heritage does not mean regions are suddenly cultural museums. Cultural regions also are not by single nations, they span across several nations or nations have several cultural regions.
For example in Germany there wasn't a 'Nation' for much of the history. Much of the culture came out of changing regions. Visit Munich, Aachen, Lübeck, Danzig (not even a part of Germany today) and look at their history. Different. Look at their cultural history: different. They are now living in a FEDERAL republic of states (Danzig is even in Poland, now). A Bundesrepublik of Bundesländer. This FEDERAL republic is also a member of the EU. People from German regions can move freely in the German states. They also can move freely in the EU.
Cultures in Europe developed and mixed since the beginning of human settlement on this continent. Now it still happens, peacefully.
I live in Northern Germany. There was an intense cultural exchange for hundreds of years, spanning several regions. Do you think that this is suddenly not a part of my cultural heritage?
Don't you think that modern transportation, modern communication, change things? Don't you think we need to find answers to changes? That we cope with changes? This platform here is international in English, from the US, spreading innovations and discussions about it. Don't you think that this has effects? Deep cultural effects??? Freedom of Movement in the EU is one of the answers to these changes we see.
If the Axis powers had won the war all the countries of Europe would have had even deeper "cooperation"
Cooperation is fine when everyone retains agency. It's the people who want us all to cooperate -under their system- that worry me.
There you've placed a link from Fascism and "National Socialism" to the EU.
Nice try.
The EU has many, many, many faults but at least in our case it serves as a crucial dampener to our worst ideas about public financing and spending. Homogenisation is a good thing for the bottom 50% of participants.
Care to elaborate with a couple of examples that can help me grok your POV? Honestly curious, because my personal perspective is nearly diametrically opposed.
I understand this is the point of EU policy, but if you are a country with a history and a future, given how it has gone for everyone else, why would you give that up?
The examples below are from giving up national accountability for their own policies to "harmonized" EU regulations:
- Greece's economic collapse as the consequence of predatory ECB lending
- Spain's economic collapse from related causes
- Germany's failure to manage its national energy needs due to EU "green" policies made it subject to Russian energy dependency. The US had to literally rescue Germany from itself by blowing up Nordstream
- Sweden's no-go zones
- Italy's costal humanitarian crisis'
- Ireland's collapse of their "tiger" economy and yet another serious migrant crisis
- In France, French people are treated as occupiers in their own cities, e.g. Bataclan, Hedbo, etc.
- general anti-family and anti-natalist policies have stopped replacement level birthrates in all EU countries.
The effectiveness of that type of border control is debatable, but it is already being done by other EU members.
The rest of your comment is similarly uninformed, just a random collection of irrelevant notions picked up from media; like arguing that the United States of America was a bad idea because traffic in Los Angeles is annoying and Florida has too many criminals.
Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the EU VAT Directive, which sets minimum tax rates?
And maybe you didn't know that the EU sets minimum Excise duties?
And be under no illusion, the EU is intervening in corporation tax rates. Read up on the 2020 Digital Services Tax and the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base.
Most big ones are above 20% and use it to get tax money for the government.
Also if you tried to sell/export something to EU you geneally use their VAT rate anyway.
My question was: realistiacally, which EU country would drop their rate to lower than the minimum 15%.
Most stay at above 20%. Switzerland somehow balances own budget with lower VAT. I doubt any EU country can lower the VAT below the EU mininum of 15% and balance their budget
"general anti-family and anti-natalist policies have stopped replacement level birthrates in all EU countries."
This problem is present everywhere outside Subsaharan Africa and Afghanistan, it cannot be pinned down on the EU. If Tehran, Beijing and San Francisco have the very same problem, it must go deeper than just "anti-natalist policies": all sorts of societies, religions and systems tend to react to modernity by an almost identical crash in births.
But your arguments are blaming "the EU" for clouds shadowing the sun, as to say - "the EU" doesn't have a strategy of maliciously importing migrants. And even if it did, migrants are not somehow magically bad. Having migration in Europe is not a new thing, it was so for thousands of years now - migrations of war refugees, religious and cultural groups, invasions and other restructurisations of countries...
To keep trade going + keep using internet, but also somehow stop people moving + culture changing is impossible. If you have freedom, you have freedom.
(And why do your arguments have a smell of "let's forget about Frontex"?)
> Germany's failure to manage its national energy needs due to EU "green" policies made it subject to Russian energy dependency.
Germany did not import EU green policies. It was a driver of those.
The offer of cheap energy from Russia combined with the corruption following that, caused German politicians (CDU/SPD) to make a series of mistakes, like expanding energy dependence from Russia without making sure energy needs are covered in times of a crisis (AFD and BSW are making the same mistake, only worse, worshipping the authoritarian & corrupt government of Putin). When Russia was invading the Ukraine, suddenly the Gas storages were not filled anymore - Russia trying to blackmail Germany. Putin influencers like Sarah Wagenknecht denied any Russian plans, just days before the invasion, when already a huge Russian military, ordered by Putin, at the Ukraine border. At the same time the US already warned allies about the Russian plans.
> The US had to literally rescue Germany from itself by blowing up Nordstream
The US did not blow up Nordstream. Actually the US warned their allies of planned attacks. There is zero evidence for US involvement. The Nordstream pipelines were also useless, since they did not transport gas at that time.
Careful, that alone would get others flagged as a Russian asset. The name is just "Ukraine" now.
> Putin influencers like Sarah Wagenknecht denied any Russian plans, just days before the invasion when already a huge military was waiting at the Ukraine border.
Jordan Peterson has been interviewing Frederick Kagan (of the Iraq surge strategy fame) days after the invasion. Kagan said that no one in the U.S. foreign policy circles thought there would be an actual invasion.
I wonder what rescued Germans think about that.
https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
So I'd estimate that in an honest poll to reopen Nord Stream and protect it militarily you'd easily get 60% in favor. That aligns with the 61% of Germans who are against delivery of Taurus missiles:
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2024/03/12/...
That 61% is in danger of being ignored yet again if Merz becomes chancellor in Feburary next year, though it will be Trump who is in the driver's seat by then.
That's nonsense. There are AFD and BSW bought and paid by Russia telling this nonsense.
Russia has used their energy policy as a weapon to try to dominate Europe and to conquer countries. It was a huge mistake to fall into that trap.
Nord Stream is dead. Russia is a paria in Europe.
What do Germans think about the fact that either Ukraine, which received tens of billions of euros in money and weapons from Germany, or the US, who is Germany's ally, blew up the Nord Stream?
Actions like directing money to deprived areas, when national government would not; supporting cultural projects; supporting major infrastructure projects. Encouraging nations to work together and increasing mobility of citizens, so far it's seemed to be a most beneficial project.
What are your top 3 examples of 'how the EU is evil' (or more correctly, to paraphrase your last paragraph 'has evil people at the levers')?
Most countries don't have unique industry/resources in a globalized trade world.
Consequently, population size and economy are the final arbiters of relative trade power. The EU blocking up to create something of comparable negotiating power to the US and China is critical.
Nobody is ever thrilled with the sausage making of treaties and trade agreements -- that's the definition of compromise. But scale does give countries the best chance to strike the best deal possible.
Britain was by far the most annoying of the two during the whole negotiation and didn’t even play fair. The Home Office is currently being sued by the EU for not respecting its engagements related to foreign nationals.
The current situation is not punishment. The UK wanted to leave the single market and is now out of the single market. Turns out that leaving a common market including your main import and export partners is somehow disastrous for your economy. Who could have guessed? Certainly not the experts who spent months explaining at length to the UK population before the referendum.
This sentence doesn’t make sense. The trade agreements are part of being in the EU. Wanting to leave the EU is literally wanting to stop being part of the single market. Obviously they have worse trade. They decided to leave the trading union.
This is not punishment. This is literally what Britain asked for.
There are other trading unions and agreements that are possible besides EU, and it seems like EU has prevented UK from re-establishing the trading unions and agreements it had prior to joining the EU.
We can only speculate why, but it seems plausible and rational that EU is doing this as kind of a punishment and warning to other nations considering leaving the EU. UK benefits more from these agreements, while EU benefits less from these agreements.
On the other hand, EU is under an existential threat, and will disintegrate if other nations follow Brexit. So it is kind of rational (albeit only for the short term) for the EU leaders to think that EU benefits from preventing these agreements from happening if it prevents or hinders the disintegration.
Laughs in Irish
I don't know if you live in the EU. I do, and I like it lots.
I have also lived in the UK during the Brexit campaign, and was exposed to such a shower of self-seeking arseholes - some of whom still apparently wish to take from others, but grant themselves exemptions - will I hope remain a unique experience in my life.
Yes, yes, the EU has no end of fuckery. Yes, it's true. But better that, than bend the knee to the US, or Russia (UK, Hungary. Delete as appropriate.)
" joining the EU has been national suicide for every other country that submitted to it"
is lmao.