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[1] https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/single-market_en
And it is! People here are always complaining about the EU as if it's a single state, even though it's very clearly in the process of becoming one. It's a long road, we're not sure if we're going to make it all the way to the finish line (but I suspect we will), and we're going to have some happy little (and big) mistakes along the way. But for now it's imperfect, and it might be imperfect for a very long time to come. It's still a lot better than not having it, and we're actively working on improving it.
Rather: if you look at what the EU is doing, it is rather a huge advertisement that the EU should not become one.
Since the current situation is shit, and one EU national state will be shit, too, this only leaves one option. :-) So let's dissolve the EU before even more billions are wasted in this futile project.
- Number pages of lunatic regulations
- Money gone into the EU
- Not a metric, but fitting very different philosophies of how to handle the domestic currency under one umbrella (ECU, Euro) has lead to massive tensions between the involved countries and their populations in particular when the Euro crisis hiy (e.g. in German "Pleitegriechen" [bust Greeks], PIIGS (pigs) countries (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain)). If there wasn't a common currency, each country would have solved this problem on its own terms. Now there is hate that continues up to today, and these countries (including their citizens!) can be used as scapegoats.
It's better to be an EU MEP and do absolutely fuck all tbh.
In this case no, it would be a lot easier to make business without the EU than with it.
Having the EU should make things better and easier, not harder and worse, for the members of said EU.
I think that attempts at making the E.U. a state are doomed to fail. There are too many differences between countries, including customs, language, legal systems, etc. The United States of America works because all states largely inherited or adopted the British social contract. You can't replicate this in Europe. The E.U. should have never been more than a free trade agreement. The currency union was a big, fat mistake that amplified the Great Recession in many of the poorer E.U. states.
I actually think it would be quite a bit easier than it is to create the EU. There's a lot more broad cultural homogeneity between the countries in the Americas than there is within Europe. Even on the topic of language you've got the vast majority of all peoples speaking some combination of Spanish, English, and Portuguese. And Latin America has a bit more limited geopolitical concerns than Europe does which makes managing some tensions easier than it might otherwise be.
But I'm not sure why you are considering "it's hard to create the EU" to be a defense against complaints or criticism related to the EU itself. Maybe it's hard and it won't work and the criticism is reflecting that and others are pointing out that it's a flawed task to begin with for some number of reasons. For my own part I think it has been a fascinating topic and a remarkable accomplishment of statesmanship to even get the EU to this stage, albeit like anything there are some very valid drawbacks.
No, not really. Unless you believe the Hollywood view that everything south of the US border has a Sepia filter
Intra-Canada commerce is a PITA in itself
Do you think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the central American countries? (Mexico being North America, yes I know)
> Do you think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the central American countries?
Did you mean How do I think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the Central American countries? If so I'd say it's nuanced and many people in those countries have their own views and their own various problems to solve, just like folks in France have a different view on immigration than, say, Switzerland, or how Germany and France can't agree on a fighter jet project and are looking at different industrial policies, or how Spain has a lot less interest in Ukraine than Latvia does.
Of course South America is incredibly culturally diverse, but I think it's a lot more homogenous than Europe is not just in terms of policy but culturally too. But hey if you disagree, sure make your case if you'd like. I'm just discussing the topic based on my own perceptions. The EU has something like 27 official languages and an Americas block would likely have 3 or so - that itself is the kind of thing that makes integration a lot easier.
In Europe a lot of people speak English as a second language but by and large many member states speak predominantly more languages - Spanish in Spain, Portuguese in Portugal, French in France, Italian in Italy (there's 4 different major language groups right there) and when you add in economy size, prominence on the global stage, geopolitical interests, history, and more it seems to me, in my opinion of course, it's a bit more difficult to wrangle, say, Germany and France together who have collectively killed millions of each others citizens versus, idk, Mexico and Colombia who are certainly distinct and have their own rich national and regional cultures (just like the United States even) but speak the same language and, in my view, get a long a little bit better.
I'm not arguing that there isn't a vibrancy in culture or that these countries are entirely homogenous. I'm arguing it would be easier to wrangle them together in a bloc of sorts than it was to get (and keep) the EU together.
For what it's worth a lot of cultural differences are becoming increasingly (unfortunately) minor differences at best because of globalization and the Internet and other communication technologies.
> and the destruction of thousands of spoken languages
Eh thousands of languages were destroyed by war and destitute and colonialization of various sorts throughout history. I'm not going to put a random assortment of them on a pedestal to get angry about just because they happened to be more recent (400 years ago). But anyway isn't China currently destroying spoken languages in places like Tibet and Xinjiang?
I think Europe and the Americas are differently heterogeneous and differently homogeneous. Certainly the Europeans have made more practical strides in building a coalition across their members than, say, South America or Central America. The reality is that Europe demonstrates a higher degree of solidarity between states than these other places. So it's strange to me to argue the opposite.
But if I understand, your assertion is that the Mayans, the islanders of the Caribbean, the people of Peru, or the Amazonians are less culturally different from one another than the citizens of, say, Greece and Norway? I'm not sure I buy it personally .. but I can see your argument.
I wouldn’t say my assertion is that the peoples you mention are less culturally different (I’m not sure and not sure how we measure that) my assertion is if you were to attempt to form a bloc that those cultural differences are very small relative to the whole.
Just like how in the US we have cultural influence from the tribal people that lived here but by and large it’s a small cultural aspect and not the predominant one. I’m not minimizing their importance, significance, or heritage. I’m just saying if you had to go and take people who live in these countries they would be easier to organize as a whole into something of a bloc because at the nation state level they are more, of course it’s just my opinion, homogeneous in interests than when the EU was being put together.
I’m interested in hearing what you think here as well. I’m just chit-chatting - sorry if I sound argumentative. I’m working on not sound like that as much.
not...really a solid argument for how well they would combine, but clearly a major contributor to how how much you know about them.
And FYI those languages didn't disappear 400 years ago. They are spoken today. Guatemala alone recognizes 25 current spoken languages - Spanish and 24 languages that are completely unrelated to any European language.
> For what it's worth a lot of cultural differences are becoming increasingly (unfortunately) minor differences at best because of globalization and the Internet and other communication technologies.
Good news! Many of these languages are still spoken today because these people still live in societies without the internet and other communication technologies! They don't even speak Spanish, their national official language, because they don't know anyone who speaks Spanish.
You don't have to know history, but try knowing a little bit more about current politics and geography before the sweeping statements?
It makes it easier. As a hypothetical you can imagine a pre-EU European continent for example, empire, colonies, and more. It would be much more difficult to get those countries to form a bloc because of the number of interests and where they conflict across the globe.
Now take a set of countries that do not have broad geopolitical considerations or have fewer - those countries simply have less to argue about and less complex arrangements to worry about. No colony, no overseas empire, no war.
It seems intuitive to me it’s much easier to get those countries to agree to various political arrangements and then we can mix in other considerations.
> And FYI those languages didn't disappear 400 years ago. They are spoken today. Guatemala alone recognizes 25 current spoken languages - Spanish and 24 languages that are completely unrelated to any European language.
I didn’t say they were gone - the person I was replying to said they were destroyed by Spanish and Portuguese colonialism. Separately, yes those languages are spoken, isn’t there some 180 languages spoken in New York? But you would still characterize the United States as an English speaking country. Just like no matter how many languages were spoken in Brazil it’s still a Portuguese speaking country.
> but clearly a major contributor to how how much you know about them.
> You don't have to know history, but try knowing a little bit more about current politics and geography before the sweeping statements?
That must be the most preposterous thing I've read in while, no offense! :-)
My personal experience has been the exact opposite: That cultural differences (and political differences no less!) in the Americas and also prejudices towards each other are huge, both between countries and often even between individual regions. (And that's even if you exclude the US for a second.) Also, countries in the Americas have had rather different histories (both pre and post Columbus) with only partial overlap. Meanwhile, European countries' history is practically impossible to disentangle, probably thanks in parts to how small the continent is in comparison to the Americas. On top of that, European culture has also had entire millenia to amalgamate and harmonize to the point where, yes, we may still speak different languages but it's very common for people to be able to trace back their ancestors' history across half the continent. It provides us all with the same cultural backdrop and the same roots as to where we come from, whereas in the case of the Americas I would ask: What is the common backdrop here? What are those common roots on a continent that combines both the incredibly rich history of hundreds of different indigenous peoples (all with their individual languages and customs) and the history of Europe, Africa and (in parts) Asia together? The partially shared experience of Spanish colonialism, and English, Spanish and Portuguese as shared languages only get you so far.
Finally, if your claim is that Europe is culturally much more heterogeneous (which again I don't think it is), I'd argue we must have exported a lot of that to the Americas, too. :-)
An explanation for why some markets are smaller and fragmented is interesting academically but it doesn’t change that it’s not worth participating in.
Your country looks more like Germany (and if you know your history, that's no coincidence) than it looks like the EU.
> Overall proficiency: According to data from the European Union, over 43% of the total EU population speaks English as a second language, making it the most widely spoken non-native tongue across all 24 non-Anglophone countries in the bloc.
And Germany has 16 federal states.
The 10th amendment has been eviscerated by the courts. By a strict reading of its relatively simple language, most of what the federal government does is unconstitutional.
Today, USA is unabbreviated as the “United States of America”, but the country was founded as the “United States for Anerica”.
As such, I am strongly in favor of returning to our former glory by stripping the federal government of most of its power and transferring it to the states.
I am also wise enough to know that will never happen without a long and bloody revolution, and I am okay with that given the lived reality that has defined my life.
We live in tyranny. You may not feel the rolling boil of the water that surrounds you, my fellow Americans, but make no mistake: your goose is cooked.
Can you please put a date on when you think this happened and what were the turning event(s)?
Because you could mean a lot of different points over decades. And what and when you think was the turning point is pretty significant.
Anytime there is a spat, the federal government dangles those highway dollars to get their way.
Do you have actual sources for that?
(Funny thing, I googled the phrase in quotes, did not realize the misspelling, and was a bit frustrated that the only result was this comment on HN...)
This is simply incorrect, it has been the United States of America since the Declaration itself where it states: > We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled,
I'm not anti-federal government or anything but clearly we can see that there are issues in how the federal government has become so powerful and yet we're beholden to these two big-tent political parties leaving folks across the various states unhappy with decrees from Washington. Don't like Donald Trump's power over you? Maybe the federal government shouldn't have that power then?
If it was just single registration for EU and paying for each kg of plastic or electronics to member states (like you do with VAT already via VAT-OSS) then it wouldn't be such a big deal.
Even if you didn't have any agreement with recycling companies in each member state and you had to pay the highest per-kg fees it would still be manageable for small sellers.
Meanwhile if you want to sell a single circuit board you're looking at several thousand euro in registration fees and several months for processing just to sell legally to 4-5 countries in EU.
nobody in an EU member state thinks of themselves as a "state" in the EU, they're a country but in the EU
nobody would want the US kind of federalism. not to mention there isn't a single majority language aside from English for those that know it well enough
It'd be interesting to see the US try a real federation, but recent evidence suggests that's beyond its capabilities.
The US / Trump doesn’t even manage to renegotiate a trade agreement with Canada, although you speak the same language and your cultural proximity is about 95% - so maybe it’s time to get off your high horse buddy
Anybody seriously thinking that seems completely oblivious to how central EU is to the economies and every day lives of member states. There is a lot to criticise about EU but without it, the Europeans lives would be much worse and their economies would be nothing to speak of. It is very sad that populists managed to popularize the image of the bloated unnecessary monster. Even otherwise intellectually capable folks.