Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU
bbc.com
bbc.com
As noted in the article, Iceland's fishing industry makes up something like 40% of their exports. Which is the only way a tiny island nation can afford essential imports. On top of that, Icelandic fishing is apparently carefully regulated to prevent overfishing, with the result that it is supposedly one of the few truly profitable fisheries in the world.
So maintaining control over their own fisheries may be a survival-level issue for Iceland.
On the other hand, they have a tiny population, no ability to defend themselves, and membership in the fraying NATO military alliance. So I can see why they're debating this issue. Aligning themselves more tightly with Europe doesn't fix their problems, but I can also see not wanting to go it alone.
(Edit: This is obviously a joke!)
And some of us still remember Greta & Jónsi, even out here in Australia.
But this is from memory; and given the sources I read may have been politicised (I'm British by birth), take with a pinch of salt.
(literally, Iceland having several decades of slightly-military-involved conflict with the UK about fishing near Iceland. Iceland won.)
The article mentions that sovereignty is a big issue. It should be because joining the EU means giving that up so that, I think, is the really crucial issue they should be thinking long and hard about (including, indeed, with respect to fisheries).
SAFE credits are an EU military thing.
So which goalpost is being moved here?
Talking about EU politics you have to use non English sources sometimes. Why not auto translate them?
Like if Russia lands on IS, there's no agreement to defend it even if it joined the union.
>Why not auto translate them?
I did, and I clearly mentioned it. And it supports what I said, isn't it? Can we please agree to read those letters in full, and not run to accuse me after finishing just the first sentence?
Ad hominem doesn't make anybody look smart. Dishonest ad hominem, I guess, even worse?
Now the EU is not a military alliance per se and Article 42.7 (which was essentially sneaked in by the Lisbon Treaty) is a bit fuzzy so members will consider all aspects and offer some assistance, sure, but scramble their whole military because that's "all the means in their power", no unless they see that the threat to themselves is critical not least because the article also states that it "shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States". So basically some help will be sent but calibrated by all the usual political and self-interest considerations.
So it does say required by all that is in their power. Whether that is enforceable is another measure, but that is true for a lot of rights.
Considering the huge ramifications of EU membership in all areas it still does seem ridiculously onerous if you are "just" after security and NATO-like alliances.
The EU is going the federalisation way. Even now member countries relinquished sovereignty on key aspects: border control and immigration, monetary policy and currency, trade policy, and then a bunch of other things. This is hugely significant for a country.
This is just a referendum on talks so won't "seal their fate" but kudos to them for holding it.
That number includes everything involving the fishing industry, such as equipment manufacturing. The size of the actual fishing and value-addative processing is often reported to be closer to 12-15% as a share of GDP.
I say this as an Icelander who voted yes in this vote, but would vote no next time if any deal would lead to us loosing control of our fisheries or having worse management policies pushed on us.
edit: spelling
Someone from Iceland tried to explain this all to me once, and if I understood correctly, it had less to do with the GDP (which also includes money circulating within Iceland) and more to do with the balance of trade, where fishing played a bigger role? But my information may have been misunderstood, or it may be out of date.
In any case, you have a stunningly gorgeous country and very nice people, and I wish you the best of luck in figuring all this out in a way that benefits Iceland.
Iceland‘s fisheries are controlled by what we call quota-kings. They are extremely rich owners of fishing quota (similar to USA’s oil barons) who are increasingly anti-social and obviously very unpopular among Iceland’s general public.
Iceland’s fishing system is kind of feudal in nature. People are allowed buy and trade and even rent fishing quotas. This means that the quota has accumulated into fewer and fewer hands of extremely rich individuals. The quota is then trickled down to fishing companies, and finally to fisherman, who have to spend a lot of money to rent the quota before they are allowed to fish.
This is a terrible system, and obviously the EU loves it (it even tried to copy it to solve the climate-crisis; and failed obviously). It fits smack into EUs neo-liberal trajectory. I don‘t think it is a fantasy at all the EU would adopt Iceland’s management policy at all. Nor do I think Iceland’s workers (including fishermen) have anything to worry about inside the EU. Trading ownership from our own feudal overlords to European bureaucrats would be a net positive in my books, however unlikely I find it.
That said I think it is unlikely Iceland will join anyway. Even if ‘yes’ wins. Iceland’s politicians have a history of ignoring the results of a national referendum if they don‘t like the results. They did this back in 2012 when the nation voted in favor of a new constitution (which relevantly would have actually transferred ownership of the fisheries to the Icelandic nation). A new government came to power and simply decided to ignore the results because their loved quota-kings would have lost power. I think something similar is likely to happen again.
Given the current system maybe the most honest one would be if the state ”owns” all the quota and then let fishermen bid for fishing rights.
But I have a feeling that will quickly become politicized with strange carve outs benefiting a few.
So you bid for 5, 10 years or whatever becomes a good balance between stability to invest in the business and an agile market.
Middlemen will only work if either these middlemen make the utilization more efficient or you make the requirements to bid so onerous that only these specialized middlemen have the competency to do fulfill them.
All it means is that they were expecting too large profit margins and someone called their bluff.
15 year contracts when large investments are required. Otherwise 5-10 years.
And you get a ”quota” for a guaranteed traffic to run for that period based on the requirements in the contract.
Just took the same idea and applied to fishing, to prevent the ”legacies” from monopolizing it while giving the public the income of their shared resources.
What’s the difference between a ferry and a fishing boat?
You can imagine on popular routes where you get to keep the proceeds that you instead pay for the right to operate it.
What’s the difference to paying for being allowed a quota to fish in the waters said ferry service runs a passenger service in?
Either way it is a public resource. On one side access to a countries fishing grounds to make money from it. On the other side access to a countries tax money to make money from it.
I get a feeling that you think fishermen should have some special heritage rights guaranteeing large profit margins rather than having to pay the public for the access to a shared resource.
If you introduce capitalism into the equation you are just opening the doors for the rich to exploit the workers in a systemic manner, and the workers in this case are fishermen.
Just do a standard fishing license you apply for and pay a nominal fee which can be refunded after some conditions are met, and then hand out quota evenly (or based on capabilities, history, etc.). Iceland already has a system similar to that called Strandveiðar for small fishing boats during a small window.
OR (and I like this better) ban trawling.
Without trawlers shoveling up entire populations and destroying the ecosystem around it, a lot of these issues will solve them selves.
This is a general pattern. The EU has many rules that are supposed to be enforced by its own institutions. But the attitude is very much to decide what rules to enforce based on ideological and political concerns, so the laws are largely meaningless.
In 2024, fishing/marine products was ~18% of total exports, which is still a massive deal, but only half as massive. (I believe tourism, the largest "export", is close to 40% of total exports.)
So I think Iceland is right to be wary.
Anyway, managing fisheries sustainably is difficult as a lot of fish migrates across huge distances and a lot of fishing is done in international waters. Ideally you need binding agreements between all states bordering an ocean region, which can be difficult when the states are in geopolitical conflict with each other ...
EU often is a mechanism to find a compromise (which makes the regulations so convoluted and bureaucratic ...), but too many special clauses to make a country happy means you got a similar debate on next subject.
One solution for Iceland would be to join the eurozone without becoming a member of the EU, as Kosovo and Montenegro have done. However, this would only be desirable if there really is a deadlock over fishing rights.
I don’t think this is a problem for the EU – quite the opposite, in fact. It strengthens the euro’s position in international trade, increases the number of users and boosts the volume of trade. More customers for the EU’s financial services sector.
There are a number of countries that unofficially use the US dollar as their currency for major transactions without asking anyone’s permission (Cambodia come to mind).
Isn't Mayotte part of France and been for quite some time? I'd guess they switched to the Euro together with France and all the other French territories, but maybe I'm wrong?
Monaco, Vatican and San Marino are however sovereign micro-states that switched to the euros because they already had a monetary agreement with France or Italy.
This only makes sense if the primary concern is native (Icelandic) politicians being unable to responsibly manage their currency. Otherwise, there's no advantage over just maintaining a stable exchange rate with the euro.
Very few countries seem to have the fiscal discipline to make joining the euro a sensible option.
Now there are of course many other considerations that might offset this downside to joining the eurozone. I would personally welcome our Icelandic friends joining the EU (if they chose to), but it's good for them to have a public debate about both the up- and downsides first.
Part of it would. There is a cost to maintaining your own currency that can drag down the economy.
Counterfeiting is an obvious one, getting software and markets to support is another one, but what parent above you is likely arguing against currency speculators/manipulators.
You need to defend it to keep it relatively stable so it stays as a store of value or your companies will just use dollars or euro anyway. If your currency is so small a firm in New York can force your currency to change by 50% in a night, regardless of the fundamentals of the businesses who use the króna, you have a problem. Using the Euro also means businesses do not have to pay conversion costs or deal with additional accounting issues for tracking the fluctuations in the currency.
Yes, relative to the size of Iceland's economy. Average daily ISK turnover on the interbank market is only 4 or 5 million EUR [1]. A single commercial transaction, like the purchase of a new trawler from abroad, can easily be worth 2-3x that amount and cause the exchange rate to spike due to the lack of liquidity.
[1] https://cb.is/news-and-publications/article/interbank-market...
And the króna is a very small boat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932011_Icelandic_fi...
But we recovered from it very quickly, and is often talked about. But we had currency exchange restrictions for quite some time to fix it. It worked.
But in the end, it was clear that unlike in Iceland, bankruptcies were not considerable, and so a bailout was going to happen. The only question was how the bailout would be structured.
Yanis Varoufakis made his name back then by going against the grain and proposing a hairsplit, but instead an approach was chosen where Greece never really defaulted, but its population was harshly punished for it.
That was indeed the "mainstream media" (I so hate that expression but it does apply) opinion. The reality is more prosaic: German (and French, but mostly German) banks would be screwed if those debts were defaulted upon.
Look at the GDP per capita of Greece since 2010. Looks like staying in the Eurozone didn't do them much good either...
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
This money was needed for public expenditure and to keep the Greek banking system running.
The biggest creditor banks of the Greek state were, in fact, Greek (ca. 50–60 bn. Euro).
The biggest foreign creditor banks were French (ca. 42 bn. Euro).
Accordingly, France was for more financial support (for Greece) to be payed by all EU member states.
The German banks were only a distant third (ca. 25 bn. Euro). But the German state was the biggest donor among the EU member states.
That is why Germany and some other net contributors e.g. the Netherlands were not too keen on keeping Greece in the EU zone at all costs. For them, the solution you named (“defaulting and keeping the euro”) would have been the rather advantageous, but not for Greek nor for other powerful member states. Nor for the Greek oligarchs – remember, Greek is a country of only about 10 million people who were not that well off – in whose hands may have ended most of the 360 bn Euros of the old debt? They liked the toxic fairy tales Varoufakis was telling (married to a member of the Stratos family).
Just fyi, Hungary had a ton of homeowners with loans in EUR and CHF and when the HUF collapsed the rates became untenable and the government just said "eh, fuck the banks, let's keep the previous exchange rate". The banks survived too.
It's a hard political decision but not an impossible one.
(Disclosure: I deeply disliked that government for other reasons and didn't have a loan, it was just interesting to see populism in action without obvious downsides materializing)
Reintroducing the Drachma was a "solution" to the political problem of cutting spending by creating hyperinflation, not anything else. So it makes no sense to default and keep using the Euro. The reason for defaulting is because you don't have enough euros....
There are so many treaties besides EU.
I would claim (both by living in Germany and the posted diagram) that for each of these values, most share this value, but not everybody. The problem is that for each value, the stakeholders who do/don't share it can be different. So, a lot of agreements are very complicated.
This is also in my opinion a central reason for the rising anti-EU sentiments in many countries: the more is dicated from above in Brussels/Strasbourg, the more often it happens that in some group who has a really strong opinion on this topic strong anti-EU sentiments will become socially very accepted in this group.
The solution that I would thus propose to keep these anti-EU sentiments not to escalate would be to keep the areas where the EU has any influence to those areas
- where there is an insanely strong consensus over what is "right" vs "wrong" over the whole EU, and
- which are politically rather uncontroversial (i.e. the opposite of being a political minefield).
The left is "Europe" but below isn't labeled.
This is just unnecessarily hard to read.
I remember in live TV debates for the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the Yes leader insisted that Scotland could not be prevented from using the Pound sterling. It's technically true, but a very, very bad idea.
I'm not convinced it is worth it. Generally world economies are tightly tied anyway and so what is right for large currencies is close enough for everybody. The less coupled you are to the world the more important it is that you can be different.
Basically the same pressure that would have adjusted your exchange rates instead adjusts how much of the fixed-rate currency exists in your country. With fluctuating rates the pain of a financial outflow is more evenly spread than with a government running out of money, unless the government adjusts taxes to compensate.
There are a number of countries/territories which have their “own” currency, but its value (exchange rate) is fixed directly to the USD:
• Hong Kong
• Saudi Arabia
• United Arab Emirates
• Qatar
• Jordan
• Oman
• Bahrain
• Panama
• etc
These are not failed states!
Yeah, I think that is what it 'being a mark for ...' means. Otherwise it would be 'a property of ...' .
The US did not have a central bank until 1914. And there was zero net inflation from 1800-1914. The central bank introduced endemic inflation, which appeared immediately.
If you scroll down a bit on this page, you can see the massive inflation/deflation spikes in ~10yr cycles that existed prior to central banking.
A 1914 dollar is worth $33 today. Great job, Fed!
Making sure that the nitwits stuffing their mattresses with dollar bills maintain their net worth is not the goal of our monetary policy, nor is a good goal. The goal is to ensure predictability.
We can make certain assumptions that the rate of inflation won't be far off from this when we evaluate certain financial risks.
Just as in modeling adjustable interest rates for compounding interest, we can make r depend on t, and at that point, it becomes an ODE problem: dP/dt = r(t) * P(t).
Of particular note, debt instruments are denominated in nominal dollars, and they're paid back in nominal dollars, but what concerns the creditor is the real value of those nominal payments. Economic growth has this pernicious habit of pushing nominal prices upward, and if the money supply and credit system don't grow commensurate with the resulting increased demand for liquidity, the real burden of existing nominal debts can rise sharply and unpredictably.
This means that borrowers can find themselves underwater on, e.g., mortgages while the nominal obligations remain fixed, and banks will swiftly foreclose on them and tighten credit when considering their balance sheets. Many of the panics of the 1800's included a lot of this very dynamic.
It's a very bad time.
What they give up is political control of their bank. There are advantages to having political control, but often political control is abused - which is why failed states have given up on it as part of their efforts to rebound. The US and EU both have controls in place to limit the power of politicians from making changes for political reasons.
It comes with some major drawbacks: - no control of interest rates since these apply to everyone in the Eurozone regardless of the current economic situation of a particular country. - no more devaluation to get back some competitiveness on international markets - strict financial guidelines in theory (3% deficit max per year and 60% of GDP/debt ratio)
Finally, the biggest problem as it's been highlighted by many economists is that it spreads the risk to the whole Eurozone which sounds great in theory until you find yourself drowning in debt like Greece was in the 2010s or like France is nowadays.
Because now your government is borrowing in Euros, the markets move very slowly and the full impact of the finances of any Euro government is completely subdued since in the pool of countries that use the Euro there is Germany which is very good and very trustworthy creditor.
Take a look a what happened with Liz Truss in the UK, she made some rather stupid announcements and the markets reacted as they should and that lead to her removal and to a change of plans.
In France by contrast, no such changes have happened despite the fact that the French economy has been going downhill for awhile due to their 5%++ yearly deficits and their 120% debt ratio.
If France still had the Franc, then the markets would have forced the politicians in charge to either course correct and/or eventually to pass on multiple painful but necessary reforms.
Instead what we have is complete political paralysis and many presidential candidates are openly calling for a roll back of more pension reforms, lowering the retirement age to 60, increasing the pay of all the civil servants by 20% and more complete out of control spending.
The supposed EU fiscal rules have never been enforced anyway which means that countries don't really have any incentives to curb their spending since the ECB is always backing them.
For instance you can have a different interest rate when you have your own currency, however it will cause your currency value to shift over time in opposition to the interest rate difference. For instance I think New Zealand had 6%ish rates while the mainstream was 3%ish, as a result the NZ dollar devalued by 3%ish per year. If they wanted a stable currency value, they would've had to maintain interest rates comparable to their trading partners. The fact this isn't happening to Japan is a great mystery to economists because it normally does happen.
So, if you have Estonia that is in a slump and needs a boost, it can go to the ECB and say, look we need to lower the interest rates but if Germany is happy with the current rates, the likelihood that Estonia gets its way is basically nil.
Right now Germany is feeling the pain and despite the inflation picking up above the 2% target rate again, the ECB has not raised the rates further, why? My hunch is because Germany can't afford it and neither does France.
A monetary union is great on paper, in reality the big fish still eats the small fish. The only difference is that the small fish can try to do something outside whereas in the union it just goes along and hope for the best.
Finally, another big issue with the Euro is that there is no fiscal union between the states. So if a state like France struggles then if a federal Europe was to happen, the states who have money would give it to France in forms of tax transfers but doing so punishes the countries that have made the reforms, that have invested, that have saved money and reduced their deficits and will only incentivized countries which have not done so to continue having deficits in the future.
How would a German politician or Austrian politician explain to his/her constituents that there is no money for new schools or hospitals but there is cash to bail out Italy or France for the nth time because these countries have refused to do what was necessary to reform their country?
In any case, since the exchange rates are no longer providing the feedback that the markets used to give by repricing the currencies that existed before, the markets now use the interest rates of the debt as proxy for their confidence in each European state. Right now, there is a 85bp difference between France and Germany and its widening as time goes on so something will have to give soon.
Either the ECB caves and lower the rates which can increase inflation or France risk triggering a Euro crisis that will be much much worse than the Greek one.
And since a lot more countries are now in the Euro compared to the 2010s, the spread of the crisis will be greater by default.
Verðtryggð loans are popular when economy is hard, people can enter the real estate market.
Once things go in the opposite direction people change to Óverðtryggð lán.
Edit: I'm not the first one to point this out, so to add some new information: both of them used Deutsche Mark prior to Euro, Montenegro even under the union with Serbia.
That framing is.. strange.
One member of NATO has lost the plot. For everyone else, it’s stronger than ever.
If the US tries to attack a NATO member they’re going to find out just how serious the alliance is.
For example, Maersk shipping line in Danish, and carries 15% of the world’s shipping containers. If the US were to invade Greenland it would be illegal for Maersk to keep doing business with them. It’s unlikely NATO members will fight the US with bullets and bombs, but I guarantee they can still seriously hurt them. All NATO members selling all their US treasury bonds instantly would also be devastating.
I am not even sure the US would be able to completely dominate a conflict. While it obviously has the largest military, it's set up to depend on European military defensive and complementary roles in a large scale conflict. In particular US aggression supply and comms critically depend on Europe as ally. Not to mention nuclear defense and early warning infrastructure. Without Europe, there is a big, big ocean between the US and most everything.
For example in terms of military roles, the US lacks the stealthy submarines of European navies. Incidentally, it relies heavily on aircraft carriers for force projection. I think there is a chance European subs could wipe out US carriers and therefore significantly disable US attack abilities straight-away. There is evidence from prior combined exercises, where the US navy was pretty much owned by a single Swedish sub. They are really damn good. So, without deploying ships, what's the US gonna do? Bomb Greenland's tundra? Fly big, slow transporter planes there and hope the European subs won't use their AA missiles? The whole point of those subs is to be a massive pain to aggressive forces and the US assigned that role to Europe...
War against Europe means losing comms and nuclear defense/early warning infrastructure located there. The US would also immediately become vulnerable to Russia and China, and every conflict in the middle east too.
I think attacking Europe would be pretty idiotic from every perspective. Sadly, that doesn't mean much anymore.
While everything you said may be correct (I’m not an expert), I doubt NATO countries want to get in an energetic war with the US. It’s simply so costly in lives and resources and effort.
Hypothetically if the US “takes” Greenland I fully expect all the NATO countries to declare war on them (as article 5 requires), but not attack with military.
They’ll sell all their bonds and completely shut them out as if they don’t exist. Zero trade. No tech. No services (google, apple, etc). Not a single thing in or out to/from the us.
Yes it would really suck for every country, but I suspect it would suck less than either slowly letting the US walk all over them and slowly take any country they want, or an energetic war.
The US is putting its head in the sand and going backwards on renewables and vehicles and science and tech and so many more things. They’ll become an island if this happens.
I don’t put it past trump to try. It’s exactly the kind of “emergency” he needs to give himself emergency powers and stay in office indefinitely.
Not sure Europe could afford to abstain from a military response after being actually attacked. It would look extremely weak, disrespectful to their attacked/fallen troops and puts their military deterrent in question globally. You can wreak the economy only once cutting ties with the US and it got more impact domestically with a costly war starting. To deescalate, US society's pain expectations must max out immediately, before the people, media and economy can adapt to a new normal/narrative. Look at Ukraine, a slow, reluctant response makes everything worse. If Europe/US had maxed out their support immediately, Russia would have like pulled out. Years of extreme pain must be the message, another costly war dragging on forever, something Americans understand and feel tired of.
And I presume Canada would also not be too pleased, potentially having to up the stakes for a war in their neighborhood. A war which may just as well have fallen onto their own soil. It would be wise for them to stand with Europe, if they want to keep their own independence.
The US military leadership actually having to plan an all-out war with Europe, possibly Canada, may prompt some introspection and a chance for internal conflict. Rumor has it, behind the scenes, the US NATO generals already apologized to their European counterparts for Trump's remarks on Greenland. There is probably a non-zero chance, any attack order would cause a coup rather than a war with Europe. Domestic revolt will only happen, if such conflict is credibly the stupidest thing imaginable on every axis and when relevant actors are actually confronted with that reality.
NATO article 5 says they have to.
And I have no doubt they would. There is only one country that is reneging on their commitments. It ain’t Canada.
That's why merely the US rhetoric is damaging to the deterrence function of NATO (and global peace, nuclear disarmament for that matter). It's different for the EU, because the EU membership itself has collective defense obligations in case of attack. The EU got lucky France had an independent nuclear program, as we can't really count on the UK anymore, because they are not part of the EU anymore and also depend on the US technologically. That said, countries like Germany are expected to be able to gain nuclear capabilities quickly, if they have to.
>its fishing and marine industries make up almost 40% of exports.
you:
>Iceland's fishing industry makes up something like 40% of their exports
here we can see how a very small... re-framing (let's be charitable to op) completely changes the argument and subtly promotes a certain... viewpoint (again, let's be charitable and not call it an agenda)
This will likely strengthen NATO in the long term. But only if it doesn’t get tested by Russia in the short term.
That's if the bugger leaves office and doesn't start an insurrection like last time, and that the insurrection doesn't work like last time. Depends a lot on how much Americans actually want him gone, but alas you Americans seem to keep voting for him no matter how many corruption scandals he's in.
Is anyone over there taking responsibility?
Shouldn't the imports become cheaper once they are in the EU single market though?
For the interest of the HN crowd, here is the technical report:
You'll find that the Icelandic voting system is very low tech.
The electoral registry for each local precinct is printed out and each voter is marked as having voted by hand. Three copies are made and three independent staffers make their own marks in their copy. These registers then come with the ballots to the count site to possibly exclude absentee ballots.
We use a paper ballot, marked using a pencil. Votes are counted by hand using a system of double counting and verification. Numbers are checked and cross checked throughout the process.
The count is added and checked in an Excel sheet and then reported by telephone or sometimes live broadcast to the media. Official reporting is usually via custom reports in Excel to the national electoral commission.
Each constituency declares the local winner and the only outside impact is the total count of MPs for each party.
I would prefer something more complex that does give some of the smaller parties some MPs but no one seems particularly keen to change things.
I'm not sure if you are U.S. based or not, but if not, you need to understand the context as to why that system came to be. It wasn't all just nefarious. Voting intregity activists have argued for a two way verification system. Having paper ballots to provide a record that can be audited, as well as digital input so that you can achieve the goals of quick results. Obviously, two verification steps need to occur.
After the 2016 election, a lot of activists started pushing for each state to adopt this sort of system. In my particular state, NJ there used to be only electronic recording to a memory card which obviously can be tampered with. Now they have systems where you still input the votes digitally on a giant touchpad, but as soon as you make your selections, the choices you made are printed on paper and shown to you. Once you confirm that they are the selections you made, the paper is cut and dropped into a ballot box, giving you a paper record plus the digital copy.
The thing that NJ has not fully implemented is automatic two way verification. From my understading as of now results are still digitally tallied. I think Colorado has done in interesting process of mandatory risk limiting audits of the paper ballots to ensure no anamolies are present else the results are recounted manually. The problem with not doing some sort of two way verification is that the only time NJ would look back at the paper is if there's an obvious discrepancy or if a lawsuit gets filed. I'd argue that they need to take it a step further and do automatic two-way verification. Activists have proposed statistical risk auditing be implemented everywhere, so if there's any deviation, a full recount is automatically performed.
The biggest problem that I see right now is in a lot of the southern states or swing states that matter, the governments are not taking this issue seriously. And so they are still using direct electronic recording. So my frustration is: what's the point of putting in all this work if the states that really matter are not taking this seriously?
I get that people want results very quickly but I don't think paper is a restriction to that. There can just be a law that says you count votes every hour and add them to the tally. So at poll close, you only have to count a small number of late ballots and submit your totals. Everything would be done by 9:00 pm. The thing with double verification and recounts is that for 99%+ of races, the results aren't really in doubt. I do think that deviation from historical statistical patterns for a precinct should be an auto recount as well as results that are less than 1% (X votes) different. This is also where the FEC needs to step in and saw that there are federal rules for how voting must happen as this is a constitutional right, not simply a "do whatever you want" rule. Honestly, we need a new amendment to protect voting rights and stabilize the system a bit more.
The U.S., it should be clear by now, is just this patchwork of random laws and people blocking radical change at various levels. And everyone who wants to move forward is forced to find some other avenue to get some half baked solution in place just so they can get around the historical blocks. We see this in everything from zoning, to deploying Internet, to even fixing this system. There's just too much inertia to not change things.
Why would you not want to mark paper ballots with pens / ink which will be harder to change?
I think it's mainly to prevent smudges as the paper is folded to be put into the ballot box. Pencils are also more reliable than pens, and have a longer shelf life between votes, I'd imagine?
At the polling stations & counts I've been to and overseen there is pretty much zero opportunity (or interest) in changing people's votes on the papers. I'd imagine this is the same in most first-world countries. In fact, once I spotted and got corrected a paper missed for a candidate opposing the candidate I was a counting agent for.
'Fisheries' was a small but founding and perennial concern before and during Brexit but they were labelled 'ugly nationalists'.
The EU has benefits obviously but it's been failing Europe in critical ways for about 20 yeas now, and the crazy paradox is that the nationalist threat of Germany's withdrawal from the Euro itself - for really stupid 'stated' reasons, might actually be beneficial for very smart 'actual' reasons, as the strong currency favours Germany over everyone else.
The EU is in bad need of reform, much like FIFA or IOC or the hopelessly broken 2 party system in the US, it likely never will. Very ugly nationalists may come and tear it apart.
Nominally, I hope Iceland joins but it's not going to help anything very much.
The dynamic of Europe sending all the talent to US is probably just going to continue as it is.
Angela Merkel used to be my favourite politician because I thought she was so 'pragmatic' but I think in retrospect she was basically 'do nothing, kick the can down the road, don't rock the boat'.
In some ways, the 'second most dangerous' kind of politician because it's so alluring to even reasonable people.
The kinds of reforms that the EU needs ... which both re-instill a sense of national dynamism but at the same time provide even deeper integration other areas aka capital markets, defence ... almost nobody is talking about.
5 years into a conflict right on the borders, still can't get full sanctions, still buying Russian carbons, still can't get real access to that $100B Russian money, still totally dependent on the US, still have no proper munitions inventory, still don't have proper defence against ballistic missiles aka huge existential gaps in defence capabilities when the wolf is right at the door.
The CIA had to visit Kremlin few days ago to warn against NATO attack is basically admission that Europe, 80 years after WW2 is not fully sovereign. It was daddy DJT that still to this day, is the one at the table, doing the talking. Not Von Der Leyen, not anyone from Europe ... but an American.
The rise of 'ugly nationalism' may cause pro-EU people to rally and defend broken systems instead of reforming. There is a path through that storm that is a wining outcome however...
Trust beyond anything else, when money gets to be tight, and the lavish promised benefits of the state start to dry up, the member states will pull swords on each other faster than anyone else.
EU should have been more protective and aggressive against US companies. But, reproducing US economy choices would just make EU get loose democracy sooner.
I like those benefits: The shared currency, easy travel, they killed roaming fees! Also they're the only ones seriously taking on big tech. They made Apple ditch their dumb ass lightning cable.
That's my point: that's the most marginal thing imaginable, it's borderline tabloid populism - even though yes, admittedly over a lot of issues, it' beneficial obviously.
The 'common market' is pretty valuable and it's what the focus should be.
Literally nobody is against that - it's what everyone agrees on.
As far as travel and roaming fees - you don't need a centralized government for any of that. This is the 'political project' substituting for what you think are benefits of what is mostly shared regulations.
But the 'currency' thing is the most misleading.
Your ability to 'not change currency while on holiday' does not come for free!
It comes with a massive cost, and that is nation states cannot control their own monetary policy.
What 'feels like' some kind of obvious amazing benefit, is possibly the most ugly structural think holding all of Europe back.
The theory is - you cannot have shared currency unless there is absolute political and economic integration.
The 'Euro' can only work if basically you have 'Europe Federal Superstate' - one country.
When it was introduced, the population would 'not yet' accept federal political integration, and it was assumed that the inevitable 'Euro' crisis would be just cause for deeper political integration.
The 'Euro crisis' arrived in early 2010's (it was inevitable) and Europe did not go to 'full federal state' (thankfully), but - it's never recovered from that mess.
When periphery countries joined the Euro, it was kind of assumed that risk would be shared. Nations were given lending rates far below what was appropriate.
That massive building in Spain in the 2000's was caused by Euro integration - was 'low rate' euphoria - money washing over the country.
But it was not sustainable, crashed, and left many countries in a horrible state. No 'bailouts' from German taxpayers, and no 'Eurobonds' or shared risk - and worse - no ability to devalue the currency to spur economic activity.
Unless there are transfers of wealth or other mechanisms (North Europe will never accept) then ... Mediterranean Europe is stuck in an economic prison due to 'half complete' currency project.
The evidence on the other side is strong: places Sweden and Denmark - that at least maintained their own currencies - are in much better position. Literally those that avoided the Euro are arguably better off.
It's a complicated subject obviously - but my overall point is, the 'psychology of the Euro' aka 'no exchange on holiday' and the sense of unity around common currency etc. can be very misleading. The Euro could very well be one of Europe's worst problems - again - even if it has benefits as well.
'The Euro' might be the best symbol of all over what is 'perceived' to be good for Europe, but what is actually bad.
And 'the answer' is probably not a pendulum of 'more or less integration' - but actually less integration in some areas, more integration in others.
The 'good countries' that are effectively managed and where the citizens trust their own gov. more than European gov. - maybe.
But Europe will threaten to existentially punish those that leave.
Greece ... citizens would not trust their own government, and would dump national currency for flight to EU.
There would be a run on Greek banks to move their money to European banks.
In this case, the 'German straighjacket' may be preferrable.
And of course switching costs - it's massive, takes 5 years of planning and 10 years to implement.
What might work is a 'Greek Euro' - where there are some central controls and oversight but it's a national currency.
Very easily exchanged for other national Euros etc.
I wasn't aware of these things back then, but I've been sad to find out it's not like we weren't warned about exactly this way back in the 90s when the crucial first steps were taken. Including by Paul Krugman, of all people!
Of course, it was the 1990s, from "Winds of Change" to Western neoliberalism as the End of History. And the elite belief in integration advancing "one crisis at a time" was well-established by then. Easy to say now, but did they really think public debt crises and bailing out national governments would create better conditions for having a mature discussion about EU-level fiscal transfers and taxation without drawing in the worst of our national stereotypes and trust issues, zero-sum thinking, and widespread beliefs about the Brussels bureaucrats completely detached from the realities of the common man, issuing directives about the correct curvature range of cucumbers while shoveling regional aid funds to smooth-talking Neapolitan gangsters to promote more sustainable EU waste management strategies, or whatever?
And monetary union etc. is a very difficult concept to describe to regular people.
It's rational that people are attached to the 'concept of Europe' and worry about it being taken away from them, even though 'The EU is not Europe'.
One solution: a 'Periphery EU' status for UK, Norway, Switzerland - but ALSO - Morocco, Algeria, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia etc..
'EU light' could give the option for other states like Greece to downgrade into, maybe something could come out of that.
A more open Europe that somehow got over the 'immigration' problem could really integrate these huge new middle eastern areas, and maybe even a couple of African States.
It could be the biggest economy in the world.
There is no such thing. Every country still has its own rules. You can’t even have the same Netflix across the EU, it is still fragmented at country level.
I could go on, but there is no single market.
And they have the option to leave at any time.
Case and point: nobody is strongly complaining about getting Kroners for travel etc..
Imagine if every nation did with Denmark did - and made small adjustments - then you'd have 'currency harmonization'.
So I think you have a fair point but still, Denmark is not Euro.
Yes, it is nice for a day or two in another EU country, but pretty much that’s it.
Instead, some telecoms give you a generous number of "credits" for calls, transfer, etc, and sometimes try to limit these to your own country. Then you have to pay overage fees (the same in your home country or elsewhere within EU).
The legality (or ToS language around this) is dubious, but the fact that telecoms try to skirt around the rules doesn't mean they don't work - switch to a better provider.
I just spent a week in another EU country and didn't think for a second about data usage, calls, fees, etc.
Combined with not having to do fx or even carry a passport (national ID is enough), minimal queues at the airport and zero customs annoyance, travelling across continent was as much hassle going to the next town (modulo actual travel time).
(Not to mention the actual benefits of membership, in this case, EU institutions slowly but surely cleaning up house).
Stable empires have always been those that offered the greatest degrees of sovereignty to those under their rule, and I think that this should be somewhat self evident. When you try to enforce conformity across an empire, you're going to face resistance and even the mightiest of empires cannot sustain itself without a solid internal foundation.
Good luck showing causality here. Single EU nations have no way of competing with EU or China until we have real single market. In theory we have single market, but in practice every country introduces regulations on top of European ones and extending to other European countries is huge pain in the ass (and costs fortune).
European countries were literally at each other throats until 1945, then we gradually built the European Union.
But when you do things like force countries to accept immigrants they may not want to accept, or demand cultural conformity on issues that are not well received, you're undermining your union. Historically religion is a great example here, as it was always the thing that divided people the most. And the Empires that thrived were those that allowed people to maintain and practice their own religion. In modern times socio-political values largely act in the same role, and also form the same divisions. The only difference is it just comes from personal ideology instead of scripture. Unfortunately we still seem largely stuck at the era of calling each other blasphemers and calling for crusades.
Are you referring to what period?
[0]https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
I don't think there are any others wanting to leave after Brexit! Politicians like Le Pen don't campaign to leave any more.
I hear a lot about how the UK has suffered after Brexit, but none of my experiences there support it. Not the people I talk to, not my own experiences from before vs. after. I think people _want_ it to be true, which I find ugly.
The French RN is not openly campaigning on leaving anymore since its pretty scary to the voters but the intention of Le Pen is to hold a referendum to ask the French people to recognize the supreme rule of French law above EU law which would act as a soft exit since that means that France would no longer be bound by directives and other regulations which it doesnt agree with.
The other major parti France unbowed is even more direct and wants to set "fire" to some of the debt which would most likely trigger a Euro/Eu crisis and force either the ECB to bail out France or force France out of the Euro.
One thing I think myself is that there was an ugly _hope_ that the UK would suffer as a result. A hope which, as far as I can see, wasn't realised. Living in Europe, I saw a lot on the news about how the UK had shot itself in the foot and things were going badly, but when I visit friends, not so much.
Polls show the population regrets Brexit. [1]
> One thing I think myself is that there was an ugly _hope_ that the UK would suffer as a result. A hope which, as far as I can see, wasn't realised. Living in Europe, I saw a lot on the news about how the UK had shot itself in the foot and things were going badly, but when I visit friends, not so much.
The UK took a big hit to GDP as a result of Brexit [2], it drastically raised export costs [3] and ordinary people have faced steeper household bills ever since. [4] Meanwhile it led to increased immigration [5] with consequent social tensions.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-po...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/how-brexit-is-estimated-hav...
[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-uk-exp...
[4] https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cp628.pdf
[5] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2025/7729...
They also showed that Brexit wasn't going to pass and Trump wouldn't get elected.
57%?
Sorry, but a poll of 57% is a tossup. And could even swings the other way when you factor in closet brexiters/trumpers/etc in polls like these
> Support: 55% Opposition: 34%
57% is what I said and would have expected to see. Aside from that, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a poll on "do you regret brexit" is looking for a particular answer.
> The UK took a big hit to GDP as a result of Brexit
During that time period, we had Covid, global supply chain disruptions, Russias invasion of Ukrain, central banks raising interest rates, energy and food prices going up globally. Brexit was just one of many factors effecting the UK GDP. To say "GDP went down because of Brexit" is disingenuous.
> ordinary people have faced steeper household bills ever since
This one's the biggest clue that Brexit isn't as bad as people are making out. The EU country I'm living in, and those I've visited on holidays in the last years are also complaining of exactly the same thing. It's across EU (the world?), but people look at the UK and say "See, Brexit was bad".
So far as I'm concerned, if it had been about sovereignty, it's of course fine to say "we know leaving is expensive but we want out anyway". That's what money is for.
The changes due to having left also means that rejoining is likely to be as disconnected from the reality of the situation as leaving itself was: the opt-outs are unlikely to be permitted, the vetos are already being reduced for practical reasons.
> The EU is in bad need of reform, much like FIFA or IOC or the hopelessly broken 2 party system in the US, it likely never will. Very ugly nationalists may come and tear it apart.
Indeed, though it remains to be seen if those nationalists are within or without.
A threat from outside could be the trigger needed for reform, turning this free-trade union into something more like a nation. One on the inside could just end it.
Kind of rich to say after the "Labour" PM of the UK said he would not allow the six occupied counties of north Ireland have a border poll, reneging on the Good Friday Agreement.
This might sound like low bar, but my grandma was literally genocided.
They are already paying the price for not being de jure members. (Currency exchange costs, rate hedging is also costly, and they don't benefit from EU unified foreign policy - the current Trump scare for Greenland could come for them too - hence the argument to join.)
no doubt in my mind I'd vote no in their place
Urzula turnning of AC for others, but not for her.[1]
Russian helicopters sitting duck when wild fire rages[2]. Afterall these are Spanish property even though Russian made.
They do not want to find solution to this heat wave getting intense year by year other than war mongering. 35K excess deaths this year[3]. Next year it will be far worse.
Trying harder to install backdoors[4]
Keep postponing Ukrain joining EU, while they have suffered imensley.
These things are getting ridiculous day by day.
[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-commission-heatwave-hq-fo...
[2] https://www.intellinews.com/sanctions-on-russia-backfire-lea...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/25/at-least...
[4] https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-protecteu-strategy-encryption-b...
While there are reasons not to join, most commenters against it have no clue what they are talking about.
Indeed! As I just learned in this comment, the EU is about to collapse and Iceland would be stupid to board an already sinking.
Makes me wonder where these commenters get their information about Europe/EU from, and whether these comments are a projection of either ignorant or ideologically motivated animosity towards the EU.
For larger countries is much easier to deal with Europe when it's a bunch of small countries butting heads with their neighbors.
The USA would like to see nothing more than an explosive end to the EU and the Russians have been trying to kill any united front against their invasion plans for longer than the EU has been around.
Every major world power has the money and motive to spread misinformation about the EU. They're influencing extremist European parties to repeat their talking points so they can point at a source on the "inside" as well.
The more people think the EU is some kind of awful oppressive regime, the more power the other world powers will gain over Europeans.
Here's another interesting datum. In 2004, 3 of the top 5 economies in the world were part of the EU. [1] Today? 0. [2] So you have sharp decreases in global relevance paired with significant increases in internal issues and pressures. Perhaps you think the EU will overcome this, but to me at least - that's the view that doesn't align, at least not in an 'obvious' fashion, with the data.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/purchasing-power-of-th...
https://www.visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2016/6/1/us-inflat...
Are we supposed to believe you know something about it? Would be helpful to have a different perspective from people who know better or claim to.
So my question is: why? Why does this comment in particular deserves your attention as a “source your claims” flag, but the other one below about the eu commission being a dictatorship does not?
Well it’s just because I bumped into that comment first, really.
While I agree on the fact that sometimes comments aimed to the EU are overblown and inaccurate it’s also true that lazy answers like “people don’t know what they’re talking about” are not proving anything wrong
If the result is “yes” then a proposal with all terms and conditions for joining will be written down, and the Icelanders will vote again on whether to accept those terms and conditions or not.
But I wont be upset at them if they decided to keep the status quo with us!
Iceland already heavily integrated into the EU, the only outliers are currency, foreign policy, security, political institutions, customs and some trading sectors like fishing.
Currency (since the exchange rate to the Euro is what sets pricing in Iceland) and security are the reasons many want to get closer.
Not saying some of our export companies aren't enjoying the access to EU, but the people was against it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Norwegian_European_Union_...
what polls have to do with it? if the will of the people was against the eu deal, they should've voted against, they had 30 years to do it. norway is a democracy, right?
Is far from being fully integrated into EU. You have to pay customs on shipments, which can be delayed for weeks on borders.
You need to apply for the residence permit and you can lose it for trivially sounding reasons. - E.g. lying on the application which could mean " you mentioned in the application you wull look for job but lied and went to learn the language instead". - also look at the recent case of a woman and her daughter abused by some Swiss politician facing deportation because she moved to Switzerland for work officially, but in reality she moved to live with her Swiss romantic partner.
Switzerland still have bottles of water without permanently attached lid.
It's integrated in many ways but still far from being a member state.
My point is, that within EU you can freely move around with no restrictions and having to apply for residence permits.
And the case I mentioned wasn't even lying but a misunderstanding.
In Poland searching for a job is state of mind "I wish someone would hire me".
In switzerland it officialy means provably spending your full time effort on the job hunt.
The person I know couldn't find a job at first so decided to do an intensive German course (5x a week, 4h a day) to increase her hirability.
The immigration officer happily used it as a prove that she actually did not spend all her time looking for job, therefore lied.
See here: https://www.efta-studies.org/sectoral-access-to-the-single-m...
> You need to apply for the residence permit and you can lose it for trivially sounding reasons. - E.g. lying on the application
"Trivially sounding reasons".... lying on the application.
Lol.
----
Yes, I hyperbolized a little in my comment. But I'm tired of people oretending that Norway and Switzerland are somehow completely separate from the EU.
Except that that wasn't the discussion at all.
Quote: "I feel the UK were wrong to leave but Norway and Switzerland have a fantastic overall quality of life without and I'm not sure the benefits of membership unless you are financially poor country."
They are not "without". They are integrated through and through.
That's the point of my comment. They are not strictly "without".
My comment hyperbolizes the integration, but it's not too far from the truth.
Well, one sits on vast amounts of oil and the other has been doing some dodgy financial stuff for very long time.
> Iceland is probably better off joining the Schengen but not EU.
It irritates me so much how some countries get to pick and choose. It's just ridiculous how some countries refuse to join Eurozone. The UK used to be in the EU, but wasn't part of Schengen. Now it's not part of anything, but is still in Horizon Europe?
If anything when your economy is based on European countries relying on your banking services, being part of EU makes it even easier for said countries to pour their money to your banks.
Whether it was the correct decision or not, it was done via a democratic vote. Now the leaders of the UK look to entangle the UK into the EU structure that is evidently against their mandate.
Then do you not support another vote that provides this option?
> how drastically opinions have shifted since
There is a way to conduct a poll that represents the engaged electorate - have another vote.
But in the meantime it is also entirely unambiguous that there is a clear mandate for a closer relationship - the gap is so huge (much larger than the support for the current status quo ever was) that there's no real need for another vote for that and voters can punish parties that support it at the next general election.
Of course it would be, but people would need some kind of understanding on what basis that would be on.
> It's pretty clear from polls [..]
I think there is only one way to know for sure.
> But in the meantime it is also entirely unambiguous that there is a clear mandate for a closer relationship [..]
People of the UK do not hate Europe, but there is evidence to suggest that people of the EU do not view the people of the UK favorably [1]. But I think the point of sovereignty and cost is a big one.
[1] https://uk.news.yahoo.com/yougov-survey-eu-crisis-uk-1209146...
You can argue their mandate is invalid due to the first-past-the-post system, but in that case the original decision to hold a referendum, and all subsequent governments that negotiated the terms of the EU exit are also invalid, since they all derived from first-past-the-post elections.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_the_United_King...
Democratic indeed...
The vote was non-binding due to the sovereignty of parliament [1]. It means that if a war broke out or the economy crashed, they would not be forced to continue at great detriment to the UK. But it doesn't mean that the vote was a mere suggestion - anybody who suggests such doesn't understand democracy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...
My suggestion was not that the referendum shouldn't stand because it was "advisory", but that there should have been rules applied around a referendum that could affect peoples lives so much. But, there are no such rules it seems, the majority in the Commons gets to decide that.
Which is why (almost a million?) British citizens in the EU were not allowed to vote, which doesn't seem very democratic.
And Europeans who were born in the UK and lived their entire life here.
It was a referendum of the the right sort of British citizen.
It could be argued also the other way, maybe people didn't engage or chose to continue because they were led to believe it wasn't possible to leave the UK.
> My suggestion was not that the referendum shouldn't stand because it was "advisory", but that there should have been rules applied around a referendum that could affect peoples lives so much. But, there are no such rules it seems, the majority in the Commons gets to decide that.
I think it was fumbled because nobody involved in enacting it were actually supportive of it, and the semi-permanent state (i.e. civil servants) were largely not in support.
> It was a referendum of the the right sort of British citizen.
I have more general thoughts about this, I think a country should be very careful about who or who can't vote.
[1] https://closer.ac.uk/contextual-data/turnout-uk-general-elec...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...
Secondly, the world got a lot more unstable since the US is pushing for a lawless might-makes-right world and taking an increasingly predatory posture there. From that perspective, the EU is becoming even more relevant. Poignant example is Canada taking more and more steps to integrate their economy with the EU, as well as to become part of its security architecture.
UPDATE: Leaving the Horizon program has apparently been too painful [1], seems the Swiss were retroactively allowed back from 2025 [2]. I don't know about Horizon 2028 though.
1. https://sifted.eu/articles/switzerland-startup-talent-brain-...
2. https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/strategy/strate...
One of the EU main principles is collaboration and win-win. It is not zero sum. Example: The Netherlands is wealthy and a net contributor, but would be poorer off from not being in the EU.
Also, be aware that your question easily leads to a follow-up question:
"Why don't we fund our own research and innovation?"
=> "Why do we fund research and innovation?"Therefore, having to follow EU law in some very specific areas, while remaining independent in others is a decent path, and a compromise very typical of Swiss policy
So perhaps the UK was wrong in joining in the first place.
> A Yes vote would not be a final decision on joining the EU. It would mean backing a move towards an accession agreement. Any deal would then have to be approved by a second referendum, as well by parliament
Makes sense. Which is why I was baffled when the UK just up and left after a referendum, as if it were legally binding or something.
Fully joining the EU involves giving up a lot of sovereignty to a body that's too distant from places like Canada or Iceland. These countries are right to fear that their own concerns would be forgotten or ignored if they were to join the EU. Just as different structures are needed when a company grows past a certain size, the EU needs new structures if it's going to grow its influence beyond continental Europe. A middle ground needs to exist.
It also needs to be very clear that associates, close allies, or whatnot are not inferior to full members, just less dependent on Brussels by choice because that's what makes sense for them.
Imagine that suddenly each US state gets more sovereignty and they just... make different decisions. California adopts Spanish as second official language, New York adopts metric system, Alabama permits sister/brother marriages, Utah declares Mormonism as official religion, and Wyoming stops contributing to US army. How are you supposed to do business in these conditions.
CA would have to amend their constitution, but could pick a second language.
NY already prefers metric
AL could probably allow those marriages, they're not big on allowing marriages though.
UT would be stopped by the establishment clause.
https://law.justia.com/constitution/california/article-iii/s...
Only the last two would be noteworthy and currently not allowed. The US adopted the metric as an official system alongside the US Customary system in 1866, and as the preferred system in 1975 (and, in between, redefined the entire US Customary system from an independent system to a system of metric-derived units.)
The US has no official language in law (Trump issued an executive order purporting to establish one in 2025), but numerous states and territories have adopted official languages in law (mostly long before Trump's federal gesture) — mostly English, but several territories also designate one additional language (differing by territory) and the State of Alaska has 21 indigenous languages given status as official languages alongside English.
And while no state allows sibling marriages, US states do differ in degree of consanguinity allowed for marriage, with about a 50/50 split on whether first cousins can marry, and a handful of states having restrictions on second cousins as well.
Love when people do "imagine if" and its mostly stuff that is indistinguishable from the status quo.
Maybe in a country the size of Iceland it's not as big a deal to run an election but it seems like a lot of work for what is just an advisory vote
Now that's true democracy.
If Icelanders don't want to join a democracy like that, negotiate until they do! After all, the politicians know what is best for the populace.
[1] https://www.techtimes.com/articles/320010/20260709/eu-parlia...
Why spend millions if not billions on all that, impose laws that are maybe bad for normal people, and then figure out that people don't actually want to join the EU?
And perhaps two referendums and working incrementally is wise in general, given the mess that was Brexit.
This first vote isn't committing the country or population to anything
* How will we handle X?
- Like Y.
* Sure, then, yes. I'm really looking forward to the wedding tomorrow.
- Nice, I never wanted to marry anyone in the first place.
???
Making requests to humans is never idempotent.
Coming up with agreement and then simply rejecting could postpone next opportunity or make the next agreement come from less hospitable starting point.
Last time I paid something like 25$ per hotdog (w/ buns & toppings) to import them from some guy and it could have gotten seized. Worth every penny though.
It is for them only to decide and they have clarity so they can make an informed decision.
"Yes, why?"
"Well they're about to sink and I think we should tether our ship to theirs."
First, the EU Commission has way too much power, and honestly wants to play dictator. Look at ChatControl: Voted down more than once, but the Commission just repackages and resubmits, with some dirty backdoor tricks, until they get it through. Parliament is not allowed to propose legislation, only the Commission.
Second, regulatory hell. The continual avalanche of regulations out of Brussels cannot be overstated. People make fun of the bottle caps, but those are absolutely illustrative of how literally everything is over-regulated. This is one of the main reasons that European industry is struggling.
The main problem with it, is that when you vote on national elections, typically you are concerned with local issues. Housing, healthcare, transportation, employment, immigration, etc.
Nobody is really thinking "who will this party behave on the EU level?" Then they do shit like this and hide behind "we have to comply with the EU".
You're both right. The problem is it's the commission that sets the agenda for the parliament.
If you inverted it and had the elected parliament set the agenda for the national government appointed commission it would be far more likely to reflect the will of the people, which is precisely why it is the way it is.
Europe still hasn't learned the lessons of the French revolution, and is destined to keep repeating it.
The way the EU is composed right now, it is designed to be kneecapped by the national governments every time.
Oh, the humanity! And the lack of bottle tops in the streets.
I'd move to the US, but your lack of regulations scares the piss out of me. And your cops, and your electoral system, overall crime stats....
Your first paragraph rings true.
It is hard to decide whether this is funnier or sadder.
And let me ask you an even better question: Is Romania the country you see that has so many derogations from EU laws and can do what they like?
Fisheries is another of those and we have several data points to show the EU policies have generally been corrupt and a disaster for fisheries management.
1. The UK. As many know, the EU didn't start at the EU. It went through several predecessor organizations post-WW2 including the Common Market, the EEC and the EC. Those really began in the 1950s and the UK at that time declined to join and thus wasn't a founding member. At that point, fisheries weren't a common resource.
The UK began accession talks in 1970 (along with Denmark, Ireland and Norway). Hours before that the EEC changed its rules to make fisheries have common access to member states.
The UK has not always been the best custodian of the fisheries. They were historically overfished. But what's also clear is that the EU has been just as bad. There's a complex system on top of all of this about allowed fishing fleet sizes (by tonnage) and catch quotas. Over the years there have been many stories about how these quotas were increased through opaque (some would say backroom or even corrupt) deals. It hasn't worked;
2. Norway. Fisheries have always been a real sticking point for Norway and they're not open access. Norway didn't join the EU (or the EEC at the time) but instead they carved out an intermediate organization. The EEA I think? Here's a Venn diagram [1];
3. The UK (again). Continued access to fisheries by EU member states was a real sticking point and a major issue in the withdrawal agreement. It was also probably a factor in the Leave vote in fishing towns in the UK affected by all this. I believe the EU negotiated 6+ years of continued access.
That was meant to end this year but a 12 year extension was negotiated taking that to 2038. Think about that: why does this relatively tiny industry command such importance in the EU?
Iceland seemingly has been a relatively good steward for their fisheries. Were they to negotiate joining the EU, I think, much like Norway, it'll become a dealbreaker for both sides. And unlike the 1970s, I don't see the EU expanding the EEA or EFTA ro accomodate Iceland. It's a different time and Iceland just doesn't have Norway's negotiating position. Plus the political climate is different. Norway was NATO's bulwark against the USSR in the Cold War.
If I were an Icelander, I'd oppose any common access to fisheries, even if it meant being unable to join the EU.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1qbq43v/european_in...
Iceland is already a member of the EEA agreement, alongside Norway and a Liechtenstein [1]. As I have seen it, the EU have been quite friendly and accommodating towards the EEA countries.
Firstly, fishing is naturally an important issues for island nations and countries with a long coastline. Secondly, it is an important issue since it is one of the key industries that can sustain people in rural areas. So if you have a policy to promote people living in rural areas and prevent extreme urbanization, then fishing is one of if not the number one issue. So even if it's economic impact is minimal, it is an extremely important part of the overall political landscape for countries that want to sustain a independent food source and rural population.
But others have pointed out, the fishing rights have been largely bought up by a few wealthy people, so giving that up to EU does not matter that much to a lot of people anymore as the ones that owns it now are not liked and already run jt in a very EU like style, so there is not that much to loose, but a lot to gain. At least thats one prominent perspective.
The only negotiable is the length of the transition period.
And it isn't really a negotiable. It's up to the country when it wants to join the Euro. They just have to promise that they'll do it at some unspecified point in the future.
I do not know much about Iceland, only that, like New Zealand (and Canada), it is sometimes painted as some sort of progressive heaven that the US should aspire to.
Then, as you learn more, it turns out life isn't that great there.
There are countries outside the EU that have switched to the euro for this reason, such as Montenegro and Kosovo.
Doesn't the price fluctuation reflect an economic reality?
Related: couldn't a country adopt euros voluntarily without joining the EU? Like Ecuador adopted US dollars.
Also yes, a country can adopt the euro unilaterally, that's the case for Kosovo and Montenegro.
But that's a tough situation because they're not represented at the CBE, they don't get a say in how much money gets created, banks can't get financing from the CBE...
Yes the Euro is/was stable but not because there are many big countries using it.
The Euro is/was stable because behind it there was stable and relatively well managed democracy named Germany. Unfortunately Germany is not doing so well at the moment and that could deteriorate even faster in the future with the right wing populist gaining grounds who are openly campaigning on leaving the EU and the euro.
As you can imagine, without Germany, there is no euro.
The Euro also spreads the risk to other countries which means that one state's failure can propagate to others.
Look at what happened with Greece and the panic that it caused at the time and that was for a small country witha small GDP. Now look at France who is indebted to its eyeballs and on the verge of electing either a far-right or far-left president who both are EU-skeptics and will try to work around the EU if not completely undermine it.
What happens then? As always in a chain, you are only as strong as your weakest link and unfortunately for the Eurozone, France and Germany are both doing badly at the same time and it doesnt seem that there is any light at the end of the tunnel for both of them currently.
Italy is doing slightly better but its economy is smaller and it is still heavily indebted and it will not be able to carry the Euro itself if either France or Germany decide or are forced somehow to exit the Euro.
Alright, after looking at that, look at what happened to Greece (who adopter Euro as their currency).
Iceland complies with EU because it belongs to the EEA. It has nothing to do with "precence of EU across the sea".
UK doesn't have to comply with th EU. It has to if it t wants to be able to export stuff there.
Iceland has to comply with EU because it is in the EEA. The situation of Iceland is completely different than the situation of the UK.
The UK has to comply with the EU as much as Nicaragua, New Zealand, Namibia, etc.
If you are an exporter and exporting goods to EU you have to comply with EU rules if you like it or not and whether you are a member or not.
Iceland has to comply with the EU because it chose to belong to the EEA.
Other two countries in EEA are Norway and Liechtenstein.
We cannot even keep up with the EU-lite regulations today.
But anyways, the vote is most certainly, but close, no.
I was explaining to the commenter above me that Iceland already has to comply to EU regulations, because he seemed unaware of that.
Unsurprisingly, every thread on HN that mention EU seems to attract all sorts of people that have absolutely no idea of what the hell they are talking about.
What about losing to a madman who, over the last two years, started multiple wars, invaded several countries, and repeatedly mentioned Greenland? Who's to say he will stop there and not take Iceland too? After all, it's free real estate.