> joining the EU has been national suicide for every other country that submitted to it
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.
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?