You can't have short-term, mass migration without having something happen or change. We will see a huge change in European political landscape within the next few years. People have to slowly assimilate into a culture in order to allow for a gradual, peaceful change in that culture. Shocking these types of systems with any sort of migration is a recipient for instability.
Please keep in mind that this isn't any sort of stupid anti-Muslim rhetoric, just a geopolitical observation. I think if you look at the United States you'll see a model of Muslim integration.
The problem is that you assume they will assimilate, based on the current 2nd and 3rd generation MENA immigrants in Europe that might not be the case.
Europe isn't a good place for assimilation, you can be a 3rd generation "immigrant" living in France but you will not be French regardless of how PC they might appear to be.
European nationality is very much based on blood ties to the land, ethnic nationality was the driving force behind the emergence of Nations in Europe in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
Trying to compare them to "new world" nations, and specifically the US isn't really appropriate.
The US was built by immigrants and the moment you arrive regardless of who you are or where you come from (to some degree) you are an American, this is not the same for many European nations.
Additionally it seems that judging by past MENA immigration patterns assimilation is also very much opposed by the communities at large, even communities that socio-economically are not ghettos like many immigrant neighborhoods and even whole towns still seem to rather change their environment to fit their culture rather than assimilate to the existing one.
Don't confuse individual racism with national identity.
To be a French or Dutch is very different than being an American.
No one is pretending that the US is some paradise without prejudice but once you take the oath of allegiance you are an American regardless of your background.
As a dutch person ive heard this complaint as well. Although we dont really understand how it comes they dont feel like Dutch, the remark is common enough that there has to be something there.
I do want to add that strong social security doesnt seem to help with integration. I think part of the success of the US together with generational patience, is that to make a living you have to play along. So any economic mismatch is corrected by "force". Whereas here you can get a situation where the cultural values and habits that do not econonically fit (like raising your daughters to be housewives) are essentially supported by the welfare state, creating the opposite effect of how it is intended.
It should not be taken as a complaint, it's just what it is.
New world nations were founded on the premise of immigration and building a better world for yourself, people joke about the American dream but to some extent that is true.
Being an American or even a Canadian is more about the future and what you make out of yourself.
Being Dutch, German, French or Italian or many other nations is more about the past, you are who you are based on where you come from.
I'm not sure that this can change, nor do I necessarily think it should change, every nation and every nationality has it's own unique definition many of those are based on shared heritage and history which is tied to ethnic and familial roots.
It's "easy" to become a Dutch citizen but it's nearly impossible to become a Dutch national, in the US there is very little distinction since virtually everyone there is a migrant at some point or another, and while if we go back to the stone age you may also call European migrants for the US it's much more recent history.
The majority of the US population is 5 or less generations "American", compare it to the average Dutch or French native family and you get quite a different story.
>>> Don't confuse individual racism with national identity
I don't believe he's talking about individual racism but systematic racism employed by the US government, which historically preferred people from a certain background.
Italians and Irish people weren't even considered white. Chinatowns were basically invented in the US because Asian immigrants wouldn't (or not allowed to) integrate.
I see an overall trend of of authoritarianism and nationalism as a response to immigration and an increasingly changing world. There's also a pretty heavy streak of anti-intellectualism as voters were encouraged to fundamentally reject experts that gave (IMHO well-founded) warnings about the ill-effects of Brexit and Trump.
My own country, Canada, seems to be doing a good job, and I'm not sure but I think we have even higher immigration rates than Europe or the United States and we're still a fairly liberal, progressive and integrated society. I think our secret is selective immigration, we are much more selective than Europe in regards to who we let into the country and we don't have the illegal immigration issue on the scale that America does.
I think the trick to dealing with immigration is controlling for "which immigrants" which might be easier said than done if you are place like America or Europe with a bunch of people stampeding at your boarders wanting in.
Canada is in a comfortable position: It might be tenable to get from the Middle East or North Africa to Europe in a raft, but not to Canada (or the US, for that matter).
I would be very surprised if total (legal and illegal) Canadian immigration is anywhere close to US or Europe. Do you have any numbers to back this claim?
In mathematics, a rate is the ratio between two related quantities.[1] If the denominator of the ratio is expressed as a single unit of one of these quantities, and if it is assumed that this quantity can be changed systematically (i.e., is an independent variable), then the numerator of the ratio expresses the corresponding rate of change in the other (dependent) variable.
People/year? People/country? Per capita? Just putting quotes around a word doesn't clear anything up.
Even the idea of experts is being rightly criticized. Look at the flip-flopping recommendations of the US health dietary guidelines. What's true to the experts this year will be rejected some point later.
Not only that, but when you have centralized power it becomes much easier to corrupt and politicize. There's wisdom to decentralization.
No, it's not right to declare expert opinion to be the same as simple opinion, fad, or partisan propaganda. It is right to expect experts to change their guidance as they gain greater understanding of the objective truth of their fields.
Nor is it right to equivalate different fields of study, such as nutrition and economics. Some fields of study are much more stable than others due to the ease of proper sampling, hypothesis testing, and experiment replication. If you want to try to discredit economic experts, then focus on their failures, not the failures of other fields.
Last but not least, your claim that it is easier to corrupt and politicize centralized power is meaningless. Power only exists when it is centralized. Decentralization simply means creating multiple smaller groups of centralized power.
I think that the benefits of centralization, such as standardization of norms and forced unity, have proven far more beneficial to society as a whole than any increased chance of corruption.
Actually, the US dietary guidelines had very little to do with the "experts" and had everything to do with the government structures who based their recommendations on an incomplete set of research. [0]
[0] From http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-...: "In the intervening years, the N.I.H. spent several hundred million dollars trying to demonstrate a connection between eating fat and getting heart disease and, despite what we might think, it failed. Five major studies revealed no such link. A sixth, however, costing well over $100 million alone, concluded that reducing cholesterol by drug therapy could prevent heart disease. The N.I.H. administrators then made a leap of faith. Basil Rifkind, who oversaw the relevant trials for the N.I.H., described their logic this way: they had failed to demonstrate at great expense that eating less fat had any health benefits. But if a cholesterol-lowering drug could prevent heart attacks, then a low-fat, cholesterol-lowering diet should do the same."
The US takes in about a million legal immigrants per year [1], the EU took in 1.6 million immigrants from non EU countries in 2014 [2]. The US has a population of 320 million, and the EU has 508 million. So the immigration is about the same per capita. So I think it should be possible to deal with that.
Where did those immigrants come from? What is their socio-economic background? Are they refugees, or perhaps tech workers? What about those coming to Europe?
> Are the immigrants evenly distributed between them?
No. There was a hot debate about this in 2015, with countries that take more refugees than average [1] arguing for quotas that would implement a more even distribution. I distinctly remember that a compromise was made, and in the end, some 50 refugees were actually relocated to a different EU country.
> You can't have short-term, mass migration without having something happen or change.
I am generally confused by the claim of "mass migration". As this chart shows, EU migration of 2013 is below the rate of 2002 and is only now recovering from the 2008 economic crisis.
Same source, I used the graph generator to graph by country and year. The bottom 'light green' bar in each country's section is 2015, each successive bar above is one year prior.
You can see, in 2015, very notable increases in (in)migration rate for Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Malta, Slovakia, and Estonia. You can also see Italy's huge 2013 spike (in magenta).
I'm looking at the top graph (EU 28 countries) and not seeing anything alarming relative to prior years. I'm not sure why Europe should be disintegrating now and not a decade ago if the claim is solely that Europe's problems are due to migration.
> Then why is Europe experiencing such a huge problem now and not then?
It seems less likely the problem is immigration and more likely at last part of the problem is fear of immigrants. Studies such as the following show that anti-immigrant sentiment is more extreme among residents of rural places than among residents of urban places, even though immigrants are more likely to reside in urban communities.
Think about that: the people who are most affected by immigration are least worried about it, the ones least affected are most worried.
> That's an oversimplified chart that doesn't mean anything for this discussion.
If the claim is that migration alone is causing the problem, then it isn't oversimplified, it puts migration numbers into historical context. But if your claim is that it is not migration alone that is the issue, then possibly, yes, it is oversimplified. What other issues would you identity?
It's a worthwhile question and one worth comparing to the US today. Why is a sizable percentage of the US today afraid of immigrants despite no significant increase in immigration at all (unlike Europe)? In this case, assimilation is irrelevant yet this fear of immigration has been enough to put Trump in office.
It's speculation, but I think rural populations worldwide are experiencing poor economic conditions while the urban areas have enjoyed growth and prosperity. The primary reason for this is most likely that young and educated people move to the cities draining rural areas of talent. Further, rural industries in first world countries are no longer competitive enough to sustain rural economies. There's more than can be said here I'm sure.
I feel like it's more about the economy than immigrants. Ask somebody in Parkersburg, WV if they are angry at the Lebanese family that built a restaurant, or if they are angry about that economy in general
The issue is right there: previous immigrants in France hardly assimilated, so when a new wave comes in, without change in the country there is no reason for them to assimilate either.
I find it funny that the top comment in regards to the question "Is Europe Disintegrating?", is all about immigration.
I know you don't mean anything bad about it, as you have mentioned. I am simply pointing the fact that this comment, that is strictly related to immigration, is the one that is the most up voted.
To me, it shows that people see immigration as the biggest problem of Europe, or at least the most discussed.
I don't think immigration is the main reason people have anti-eu sentiments.
More problematic is the forced integration of diverse cultures and diverse economic backgrounds who don't speak the same language. Also there is a lot of obvious financial waste in its centre, lots of lobbyism and poor democratic safeguards. People, including me, feel they have no influence at all and a lot of the de decisions being made are not in the personen peoples interest. Massive immigration issues only examplify those issues.
1. Refugees are not citizens. They are to be deported when the "risky situation" in their zones of origin ends.
2. Balkan refugees were not problematic and were fully identified. The opposite is the case of current refugees from the Middle East. That's why these problems are arising now.
Pro EU sentiment increased markedly in pretty much all of Europe post-Brexit[1], and hopefully national politicians will stop playing the silly "do bad/unpopular things and then blame them on the EU"-game.
This game was thought to be without cost, now it is clear that it is not, and the ones who played it most extensively are paying the biggest price.
Europe is learning the same thing that the United States did in its early days: it's impossible for a union of disparate states to survive without strong, overarching federal authority. It's as unpalatable to member states now as it was to the original colonies, but the alternative is to be subsumed by some outside, more centrally organized power. The Russians understand this, which is why they work to encourage nationalism among EU members. Once the infighting has weakened everyone, they can swoop into the vacuum and become this central authority.
From what I hear, most of those who find the EU "unpalatable" have huge misconceptions about how it is organized, how the various bodies are staffed, how representatives are chosen and what the different bodies do. It's in part because national news give little focus to it and, therefore, its function becomes obscure, prime material for propaganda.
> The Russians understand this, which is why they work to encourage nationalism among EU members.
The Americans would do that as well. Even those are friendly allies (compared to Russia or China say). It is still beneficial to play them against each other. Say retaliate against France by loosening tariffs for German made goods.
The US was founded on similar principles with regard to its states and had to revise its entire political system just thirteen years into its existence. When faced with various existential threats throughout its history, the US has always renegotiated these terms towards more centralized federal power. Europe faces a similar challenge now, and will either peacefully arrive at more centralized political authority, or dissolve and watch its former members be subsequently swallowed up by some larger outside power.
You have 2 nuclear powers in Europe, and a few other countries that host nukes under the NATO nuclear arms sharing treaty which gives them discretionary access to said arsenal.
You have NATO and even without a centralized government the European Economic Area and the European Free Trade Association which together form one of the largest economies in the world.
Europe would do just fine if it decides to scale back on the pan-European EU government faculties and just go back to it's let's make trade, not war roots.
And lastly there isn't a single outside power wanting or being capable of swallowing Europe, Russia doesn't have plans to expand westward beyond it's immediate strategic needs (mainly a warm water port), it only cares about security and mobility as well for the EU not to overstep and have NATO on Russia's borders or try to circumvent Russia's economy by taking control of the caspian and near east oil and gas routes.
Trade prevent war, the benefits of a central government beyond that are fairly limited, the Federal government didn't stop the US civil war from happening it might have initiated it, but the US had their civil war and came out stronger, and Europe had it's own share of not so civil wars and also came out stronger in the end.
Currently there about zero chance of war happening in Europe between European powers, whilst there is a lot of Euro-skepticism the worst that may come out of it is bye bye to the European Parliament and a few other institutions.
The EEA would still be there, the Council of Europe would still be there and everyone would go their merry way.
Well, I hope for all our sakes that a historically expansionist, authoritarian regime exercises as much restraint as you ascribe to them. I'm personally more skeptical. In an era where the US seems to be rapidly cozying up to Russia, denigrating NATO, and withdrawing public support for former allies, things are impossible until they are not.
Why do you presume that this has to be done militarily? The Russians have been funneling money and influence into the UK for decades. They're loaning money to Le Pen in France. There's no need to risk confrontation if you can get your politcal allies to cede everything to you that stands in your way.
European Union is not working because too many different economies are in the eurozone. I was a fervent Pro-EU, now realising a federation of independent countries might work better than a superstate.
EU in its simplest form is harmonization of rules and a bigger market for you to sell your goods. That part works exceptionally well. I don't see a single reason where that could be a negative in a mid to long term.
The euro zone, which tries to connect some very different economies is not working that great but EU countries can decide to stay out of that part.
And the effect is an insolvent banking system, mass unemployment in southern Europe and an inflation 'Horror-Kurve' in Germany. In effect, It's creating even larger imbalances than those it was trying to avoid.
not many, of the original EU founders only Sweden hasn't adopted euro.
The other 6 out of 25 that are not using the euro are all ex communist countries. and other two (Monte negro and Kosovo) adopted euro without being part of EU.
UK has never been EU.
Sweden was among the founder states when Euro was born, not the original states forming EEC in 1957.
Denmark is in ERM-II and its Krone has a EU controlled exchange rate against euro.
It is possible to be outside euro, but not advisable, the main market for the east non-euro countries is the EU zone, if euro falls down, their fragile economies will follow.
> All the non euro countries are working to be admitted
Now you are just making things up.
Edit: then you should rethink using Wikipedia as your source because that is not accurate. EU cannot force countries to join new treaties this way. The EC may really really want to, but they have no legal right to.
"The other nine members of the European Union continue to use their own national currencies, although most of them are obliged to adopt the euro in future."
> The euro zone, which tries to connect some very different economies is not working that great but EU countries can decide to stay out of that part.
Not all of them. I recall that the countries that joined after 2000 have a clause in their accession treaties that forces them to join the euro-zone once certain economic indicators pass certain thresholds.
Eh, no thanks. Then we can just scrap the EU and replace it with TTIP.
The entire point of the EU as an entity is that it allows people to move everywhere that companies and services can move to.
Additionally, the entire problem of the refugee crisis was that countries controlled their own border – and everyone refused to do anything, instead telling Greece to prevent them from entering, and Greece said they’d just open their borders. In fact, the EU only got control of the borders in September 2016! http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/...
Yes, the entire point of the EU is to allow people/companies to move everywhere. To that point, I think this explains why richer countries from the West of Europe have seen so many company relocations to Eastern countries, for many years now, as the labor is less expensive over there...
At the same time, people relocated from Eastern Europe to Western Europe.
A union needs free movement of goods, people, and resources; or a resource-sharing system, to ensure it stays fair.
That’s why free-trade agreements usually contain lots and lots of limitations to prevent it being actually free trade – and why the agreement Britain wants can never happen.
Actually, that kinda changed in September 2016 – because in the refugee crisis the countries were unable to control the outer EU borders properly, the EU got control of the national borders in September 2016, with the establishment of a European Border and Coast Guard: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/...
EDIT: I can’t respond to your comment, but please read the article.
Nope, EU countries have always had the possibility of border control (with some limitations).
Its just that not having border control is cheaper and allowing people work across birders is good for the economy. So basically until late 2016 the pros outweighed the cons.
Did you read the article? It says it right there. Hundreds of millions of dollars of fines for not doing what the EU says. Those are the facts. Fines. They are real.
If we're talking "what would work best for everyone in the world", then I kind of agree that many small "states" (or whatever) would perhaps be for the best, but that opportunity has passed with the existence of superstates like the US, China, India and Russia. In the world we currently exist, the only rational[1] thing to do is to amass as much power[2] as possible. There are upsides, though, e.g. the ability to divert away from fossil fuels and to invest in renewables. I mean, it's possible such a thing could happen in a decentralized system, but I think it would require "perfect" information, the majority of citizens being "rational" and/or perfectly "self+offspring-interested", etc.
It most definitely is and it takes a very starry eyed sort of person to expect otherwise. The idea that 20 or so different people with different languages, religions, mores, histories, frames of reference, economies could somehow achieve monetary or much less political union under the rule of an un-elected and un-accountable bureaucracy of "commissioners" who rule by means of "directives" (you couldn't make it sound more soviet-y even if you tried) was beyond ludicrous from day 1. A modest trade union with some freedom of movement for qualified workers was achievable and maybe in the end it will settle to just that. In fact I think the soviety approach to building the whole thing ensured its demise. Diverse people can collaborate productively and profitably under win-win free market arrangements. But in the EU system there's too many zero-sum games being constantly played and decided on a purely political level (rather than by market forces) and that creates a lot of bad blood pretty quickly. The reluctance of Germans to bail out southern Europeans is just an instance of that.
Or is it maybe actually elected, actually held accountable?
> The idea that 20 or so different people with different languages, religions, mores, histories, frames of reference, economies could somehow achieve monetary or much less political union
Aha, so how did the US do it? By the time it was formed, not even half of the people spoke a common language (There was quite a large amount of German and French immigrants in those days), it was full of groups with different religions and traditions.
The US did it by virtue of it being a lot more homogeneous when it was first created. Last time I checked they didn't need any translators when they were debating the constitution, nor is the US constitution printed in 17 official translations like all EU documents and treaties are. Also, most people actually came to these shores having nothing but bad memories (if not outright contempt) for the countries they left behind and they were eager to embrace a new identity. The new land had a dominant cultural identity and they quickly aligned to it. Finally, the experience of the revolutionary war and a few more major wars down the road helped with "bonding" - to use a cute phrase. None of above conditions hold for Europe. The French are not eager to shun their national character and start speaking German and the last time they went to war they fought against the Germans and the Italians, not alongside them.
Additionally, crossing the Atlantic served as a filter to select only those people that were truly desirous of becoming Americans. Disgruntled EU voters have the nasty habit of lingering around.
That's a quite humorously inaccurate depiction of early American unity. Under the Articles of Confederation, the burgeoning country almost collapsed because individual states pursued independent agendas that undermined the efficacy of the whole. The British would have loved for this to continue so they could sweep in and rest back control. Thankfully, the states later organized around the more centralized, federal authority outlined in what we today call our constitution.
First "un-elected and un-accountable bureaucracy" is wrong. The parliament is elected directly and the decision-making is not less democratic than any other member state.
Some problems and an example do not make the EU a failure. The economical and social advantages of EU have been already significant.
If you were not the 'sophisticate' troll that I think you are, I would have spend more time trying to explaining you this.
I keep having to point out that most of the criticism is based on false information and propaganda. The EU has done a really poor job with informing the public how it works.
I'd argue the exact opposite is true: an absence of strong centralized authority will be its undoing. The competing powers in the world, China, Russia, and the United States, are all organized around subsuming diverse social, economic, and geographic groups beneath centrally organized power. This allows them to amass tremendous resources towards pursuing their narrowly focused geopolitical agendas, and outcompete independent states or smaller coalitions. Despite how comforting nationalism can seem, the reality is that no one member of the EU is capable of independently resisting threats to their sovereignty from one of these groups. Any reprieve from "oppressive bureaucracy" is going to be eventually undone by a loss of autonomy from an outside force. It's not starry eyed, but a cold, cynical choice about the bigger thing to which you're going to belong.
Based on the following graph[1], yes. If the UK has voted to leave the with an EU favourability rating of 44, Greece at 27 and France at 38 will not be far behind.
Based on my recent experience of visiting Europe - yes, it is. I stayed mostly in France, was there during the Brexit vote, and everyone I spoke to was pretty keen on exiting the EU, voting right-wing, and seeing it all crumble. They also have several separatist movements, especially in Brittany, which seems to be more anti-EU than anti-French...
Living in one of the PIGS, I can tell there's not much going on here about leaving the EU. Nobody has seriously brought it up. That said, I see important problems in the EU going on now that must be solved:
1. I know the EU is completely against the "two-speed Europe". But that MUST be put in place if the EU is to survive. There's a clear divide between regions in the EU. It is a cultural divide in the way work is seen, perceived, in the way money is handled, on how corruption is seen by citizens, etc. That's why after decades the economies of the PIGS have not adjusted to the rest of the EU, and they probably will never adjust. It's a cultural thing that won't change.
Also, I suppose rich and poor countries don't equally agree with the amount socialism/interventionism the EU should be establishing. For example being from one of the PIGS I like interventionism from the EU because I see local politicians/courts/etc as useless. If you go to court and the verdict is stupid, you can go to a European court. But I suppose people from the north like their local politicians and courts and don't like it when the EU interferes.
2. Many people don't like immigrants. Whether that's racism or not, or whether those people can be educated or not... that's irrelevant. The EU is literally shoving immigrants down people's throats. Immigration from A8 countries MUST be regulated (end of Schengen) and also countries should be able to decide if they want Muslim refugees or not.
Remember this is just my opinion and what I've seen around me as a citizen of one of the PIGS.
>>The EU is literally shoving immigrants down people's throats. Immigration from A8 countries MUST be regulated (end of Schengen)
This attitude saddens me - regulation would most likely mean that I would need to get a visa to stay where I am, where I work and where I pay my taxes, which is not how I imagined EU. Just a few years ago, I felt "at home" wherever I went, who cared which nationality you were, you could walk into a government office in Germany, Spain, UK, France, and you would be treated the same as a local citizen. Now? It seems like we are becoming 2nd category citizens, despite the only difference between being a "foreigner" and "natural citizen" is the label on my passport.
I think #2 varies widely within the EU. Immigration from outside the EU (especially Muslim immigration) is a hot-button issue everywhere, but intra-EU immigration is a less contentious issue in many countries. In the UK there is a lot of opposition to immigration from eastern Europe in general (and the proverbial "Polish plumber" is a fixture of political debate), but that's not as big a worry in, say, Germany, where people are mostly worried about Syrians and not very concerned about Poles.
You are very correct, but it depends on what your country has received.
My country for example received millions of Romanians/Bulgarians back in the day, so that's what people were against. There was a huge construction bubble, and they came en masse, leaving many locals without a job. As soon as the construction bubble popped, they left en masse. They also greatly increased the insecurity here, with really recurrent news about thefts committed by Romanians, pickpockets, etc. News were flooded with those events. So, you can imagine what the locals ended up thinking of them.
Natives wouldn't say anything negative about rest of slavs, Poles, etc because they simply never met them.
Yeah, trying to google that acronym would have been utterly futile.
Why do smart people assume that their own familiarity with a subject is a suitable guideline for tossing around opaque acronyms without prior definition? Why are people just supposed to know the acronym?
I suppose you didn't stay in France after the brexit. Seeing all the mess that it triggered, such as the fact that uk went behind france almost instantly in economic rankings, all this pretty much made everyone here realize those kind of votes do have consequences.
Now what it triggered is also that every single politician talks about reforming europe ( borders mainly, but also politicaly).
All in all, i'd say it pretty much tighten bounds across european countries than the opposite...until britain suddenly experience an extraordinary growth, that is.
> everyone I spoke to was pretty keen on exiting the EU
Exactly what kind of people did you talk to? I visited Paris after Brexit and outside some groups on the far right everyone where laughing at the crazy brittons...
Many in Germany and France consider UK hindering advancement in EU, and consider the Brexit a god send
I'm sorry for your experiences. Here in Ireland people seem to be very favorable to the EU. At the office we tender to call Brexit by more descriptive names such as Bruckup or Brusterfuck.
I don't know about primary, but I think a big one is the EU forcing countries to meet a quota of "refugee" immigration.
Poland for example is refusing to accept these immigrants and paying a pretty big fine for each one they turn away [1]. Other countries like France and Germany are buckling to the pressure from the EU and accepting them, and we've all seen how well that has worked out for them.
So I think not having to take this crap from the EU is one attractive reason to leave.
The interesting thing here that it's not "EU vs EU member countries" - members do come up with, and vote on ideas. It's not like evil EU parliament said that everyone has to take immigrants, so everyone now has to and that's it.
The move came about because of the flood of immigrants coming to Italy and Greece, mostly - and serious concern that neither one of those two countries can deal with the problem on their own. It has been decided(democratically, by representatives from each member country, not some evil court of villains!) that other member states will help lessen the burden, by taking a certain quota of immigrants, so that Italy and Greece don't collapse(even more). Yet in some media(particularly in the UK) it's portrayed as EU telling member countries what to do, without any notion that those countries also voted on this issue and agreed to it.
> Yet in some media(particularly in the UK) it's portrayed as EU telling member countries what to do, without any notion that those countries also voted on this issue and agreed to it.
this is true, but the EU institution used its power to force through a proposal which several countries were extremely upset with.
this was the first real example of Qualified Majority Voting being used in a controversial way, resulting in a lot of people becoming upset... suddenly the EU could no longer be seen as an institution that works almost entirely on consensus
it certainly modified my views on whether or not I wanted the EU institutions gaining more power, or even retaining the ones they have at the moment
It is not the EU telling these countries what to do. It is other EU countries telling other EU countries what to do, just because they have more votes.
What if one EU country wants to do something else? Can't different EU countries just choose to do their own thing, and be ruled by their OWN population, instead of people in Germany deciding what happens to people in Poland?
If greece doesn't want to deal with these immigrants then THEY should chose to close their own borders.
Self determination is the fundamental issue at stake here.
The EU IS telling countries what to do! People in Germany are deciding what happens to people in Poland!
Ugh. No, it's like a group of people deciding to do something together. Sometimes you don't like what the group is doing,but it's usually better to be in it than outside of it. I personally would love for EU to unite even further,just call it United States of Europe and stop saying that it's German people telling Polish people what to do or vice versa - it doesn't matter, or at least I wish it didn't.
And I'm sure you know very well that "closing borders" wouldn't do a thing when immigrants arrive via boats and land on your beaches asking for asylum. You just can't send people back to active war zones, and that has nothing to do with EU regulations.
"it doesn't matter, or at least I wish it didn't."
It doesn't matter to you, but I am sure it matters a whole lot to the people of Poland (but fuck them, I guess?). Apparently they've changed their mind about this deal, and just want to be left alone.
The EU isn't a suicide pact. People can and will change their mind, and will change the deal along with it.
"You just can't send people back to active war zones, and that has nothing to do with EU regulations."
Then send them to Germany or Sweden. They love the refugees! It is a win win situation. If they really do believe all the things that they say, then it should be no problem, right?
>>It doesn't matter to you, but I am sure it matters a whole lot to the people of Poland (but fuck them, I guess?).
Well, I am Polish, and "a whole lot of people in Poland" want things that I absolutely disagree with(prohibition of gay marriage, abortion, they want the church to meddle with politics etc etc). So while I wouldn't say "fuck them", I would say that I disagree with their opinion strongly.
>>Then send them to Germany or Sweden. They love the refugees!
There's no need to go from one extreme to another. Basically the options are:
1) Send them back where they came from
2) Try to house them where they arrive
3) Try to distribute them around the EU evenly so that the burden on each country is minimal
Option 1 is probably what most people would want, but that doesn't make it feasible. Even if we assume that we know exactly where they are from, which is not always true, we could probably send back people to countries which are not torn by war. But that still leaves you with people who are genuienly fleeing war, and if you are advocating sending them back there, then well....I think we can finish the discussion here.
Second option is terrible, because neither Italy nor Greece have the capacity to handle this many immigrants. The best they(or anyone) could do is built a huge camp for them, but as you can imagine that would be a distaster very quickly, if done at that scale.
Option number 3 evokes a lot of negative emotions, but unless someone comes up with a better solution, it seems like the best way to go.
I think you're probably being sarcastic, but after the latest semi truck incident at the holiday market there were reportedly protests outside of Merkel's office. The right wing is gaining traction. I'd be surprised if she is still in power in 3 years.
It depends from who. A big one, in my opinion, is the loss of power/sovereignty, in the sense that countries of the EU have to follow the European Directives that are made in Bruxelles, and that if they don't, they have to pay huge penalty fees.
Another one is that, on a lot of different matters and areas, different countries just cannot obey to the same laws, and their history, language, and way of thinking are just fundamentally different.
No, they won't. You can't cherry pick in this situation. You got free movement in EU because of the Bosman ruling, it's the law, everything less than that is a step back and we can't afford steps back. It's like when your girlfriend asks for some space. It's the beginning of the end and. nothing good can come out of it.
Why not? We can change the law. The people don't want open borders. So change the law to get that. If the EU doesn't, then the whole thing will collapse as we get more brexits.
Brexit wouldn't have happened if Britain was allowed to have border controls.
> If the EU doesn't, then the whole thing will collapse
And then the people won't even have the option of going to Berlin and work as waitress, while people from Africa or middle east will continue to come here, undisturbed, without a super state trying to control the situation.
It's so obvious that the single states can't control immigration on their own.
"It's so obvious that the single states can't control immigration on their own."
Britain can. Breaking into there is MUCH harder than anywhere else. Island nation and all.
"and then the people won't even have the option of going to Berlin and work as waitress"
Orrr..... they will just negotiate and change the deal, so something like this CAN work. This is not all or nothing. There are better solutions, and they will be negotiated.
The EU and its member states will have to adapt. If they don't then yes: Disintegration and a return to rampant nationalism might be the consequence.
The EU in its current incarnation as a centralised, geographically-defined bloc could be considered a relic of colonial, pre-globalization times (as much as nation states are a remnant of pre-industrial, pre-Information Age times).
In order to be able to address the issues of the 21st century we need a much more decentralised structure, more devolution of government to the local level and more cooperation between these decentralised entities.
Large cities in different countries and their respective populations often have much more in common than people from rural regions have in common with these city dwellers (as evidenced by Brexit). Yet through arbitrary national borders they're simply lumped together.
The same applies to border regions. Why shouldn't companies and other organisations from different countries be able to work closer together more easily?
Finally, why should organisations such as the EU be defined in terms of geography instead of in terms of shared values? As of now, Canada for instance would be a much better fit to the EU economically and in terms of values than some of the Eastern European member states.
There are a few interesting articles about this subject and 'neo-medieval' overlapping authorities and multiple identities as a possible outcome:
> What Orbán has done, for example in his takeover of the media, undermines democracy itself.
Those of us who actually lived in Hungary know that the media needs to be regulated to prevent the media from picking our next president.
Orbán was the first politician who had the balls to call out the West on their irresponsible immigration policy, while everyone else was too busy being politically correct. The Austrian media blasted him, however when Austria started doing the same exact thing, they reported it differently.
Look at the Buzzfeed "reporting": they knew the document was most likely fake, yet they decided to publish it anyway.
Integrating all countries of eastern Europe at once and much too early was the beginning of the end. The countries that had been members before were getting so close economically and culturally that I think the current situation would not have been possible and a real united state might not have been only a dream. Politicians wanted too much and too early and did not take the population with them. I love my polish colleagues, but on a macro scale it did not really work.
Yes, the geopolitical motivations were pretty obvious. Of course you were labeled a hopeless conservative or conspiracy nutjob by the europhiles if you brought it up.
I feel very weird that most of my recent comments have been book recommendations, never the less, as usual peripherally related. And yes, i know Europe is not a nation. Hence peripherally. :)
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/d...
Interesting article. I do believe that the EU will collapse, and that it is only a matter of time. First of all, there is not a single instance in History where a common currency, such as the Euro, succeeded. It always has collapsed. Different people in France have developed about this exact subject.
I believe that more and more people are in favor of existing the EU. In the case of France, the first thing that people need to understand, is that a referendum was held in 2005 in France, and that the people have been asked if they wanted to integrate the EU. The No won by over 55%. Even though, Sarkozy signed the treaty and put France into the EU.
EDIT: People also realize that people who run for presidency, only present a program that is actually the program of the EU... In the case of France, there are some specific laws and orientations that the EU is trying to push on the country, on different areas, such a Work law, or GMO. Those laws goes against what generations and generations of people fought for. Other people who run for president also put in their program stuff that would go against the EU program, and that is NOT APPLICABLE. If those were applied, the country would be fined heavily by the EU. Which I think, makes those politics either liers, or incompetents.
The second thing is that more and more people realize that the way it works isn't sustainable, and this for a simple reason; having 28 countries together, who have to obey to the same set of rules (EU treaties), in different area such as Education, Immigration, Finance, Farming, etc... is not possible. Why? Because the interest of Estonia in Immigration are totally different than France's interests in that same area. Italy interests in finance are different than UK, etc... You cannot apply the same rules to everybody.
A simple metaphor to understand the problem is this:
- If you own your own house, you can do whatever you want and paint your outside walls as you like.
- If you own an apartment in a 6 stories building, you probably wont have the freedom to put whatever window you want on it, and there will be a few rules that every story of the building will have to follow.
- Now take a building with 28 stories, is it now harder to make everyone happy? or easier?
If there is a leak under the roof, the owner of the last story will be mad and will want to do something about it. However, it won't be the others owners' priority to fix that. If the first floor has an issue of recurrent flooding, the people for the above stories won't have that as a priority either...
Now, if you want to modify the European treaty, you must have the unanimity of all its members. How is that possible, knowing that each country does not have the same interests/concerns, in any area? It's not. And this is probably why UK tried to negotiate with the EU on a different set of topics, before actually holding the referendum.
Not to mention that countries who are not in the EU, but are in Europe, are doing way better on a lot of aspects, than countries who are part of the EU. A lot of novel prices of economy also stood up and explained that the EU will collapse, and one of them even resigned from the BCE (Banque Centrale Europeenne), and joined a French political party who wants France to get out of the EU, using the Article 50 of the treaty.
European laws exist mostly for matters that concern everybody. Every member state can have its own set of rules.
>Not to mention that countries who are not in the EU, but are in Europe, are doing way better on a lot of aspects
This does not mean that being part of EU has something to do with it. For example, if you want to say Norway, you should compare it with Sweden or Finland, not with Portugal or Bulgaria.
Of course it exists for matters that concern everybody. Who said it's not?
The problem is that those laws are not modifiable because you need the unanimity of all the countries in the EU. Which is extremely difficult because, again, all the 28 countries have different interests in all areas of the treaty. It's basically stuck.
As far as you saying that every member state can have its own set of rules, no. We had this issue multiple times and found ourselves having to pay insane amount of penalties because we were not, for example, accepting to grow GMO in France. If the EU says "You guys should do this and that in that matter", we can't have a rule that goes against that. That is the real problem, I think that the people of each individual country do not decide anymore, and the people in charge have no power, since they cannot take their own decisions.
> The problem is that those laws are not modifiable because you need the unanimity of all the countries in the EU. Which is extremely difficult because, again, all the 28 countries have different interests in all areas of the treaty. It's basically stuck.
> As far as you saying that every member state can have its own set of rules, no. We had this issue multiple times and found ourselves having to pay insane amount of penalties because we were not, for example, accepting to grow GMO in France. If the EU says "You guys should do this and that in that matter", we can't have a rule that goes against that. That is the real problem, I think that the people of each individual country do not decide anymore, and the people in charge have no power, since they cannot take their own decisions.
That 'problem' is the same for every modern democracy. We continuously have to accept decisions that are made democratically, but they are just stupid (e.g. Brexit).
Your house/building analogy is flawed because there are extremely significant rules/regulations about what your house can look like and what materials you can use to build it leveed by all sorts of levels of government as well as HOAs. Doubly so if you live in a historical neighborhood.
And somehow people do manage to live in skyscrapers without flooding the first floor.
I'm not sure if anyone ever attempted a currency something like the Euro before.
> I'm not sure if anyone ever attempted a currency something like the Euro before.
Well, from 1865 to 1927 there was the 'Latin' monetary union, which failed because some countries (e.g. Greece) simply couldn't afford to produce the coinage and instead debased the currency.
USSR had one as well, the Soviet Ruble. You are right about the Latin Monetary Union, it is one of them. There was also the Scandinavian Monetary Union (SMU), and many more.
OK. I could start debating about HOAs and skyscrapers but I won't. I think people who read that metaphor understood what lays under it... Which is, the idea that you cannot take 28 countries who have a different History, different values, different interests, different language, different way of thinking, and ask them to all obey to the same rules and put them under the same constraints.
The metaphor is extremely poor because you can't "do whatever you want" with your house. In fact you are extremely limited with what you can do with your house.
Real life example: I can't put an extension on the front of my house because it's prescribed that my house must be set back from the road X feet. I can't build a third story because the max is two stories in my neighborhood. I can't bulldoze my house and build a duplex as my lot, as well as entire neighborhood, is zoned single family. I can't buy a 3000 square foot lot and build a house, my city says all houses have to have at least a 5000 square foot lot. I can't even leave my garbage can outside unless it's garbage day.
And I don't even have an HOA!
There's no "debate," you can't come even close to doing what you want to your house and you never could. And you know what, for the most part, everyone who lives here is happy with it.
> For now there is crisis and disintegration wherever I look: the eurozone is chronically dysfunctional, sunlit Athens is plunged into misery, young Spaniards with doctorates are reduced to serving as waiters in London or Berlin, the children of Portuguese friends seek work in Brazil and Angola
How much truth is there, to this statement i.e. "young Spaniards with PHDs are serving as Waiters in London or Berlin."
Anyone? I find it quite shocking and want to know if the Author is engaging in fear-mongering, or if Europe is indeed falling apart and the part about Greeks, young Spaniards and Portuguese peeps is true.
> How much truth is there, to this statement i.e. "young Spaniards with PHDs are serving as Waiters in London or Berlin." Anyone?
Plausible. Wage is higher in London and Berlin. As others put, unemployment among youth is very high in Spain. Finally, Europeans grow up speaking English as secondary language thanks to computers/IT. (For Civ players among us: smell the cultural victory?)
Also, if you apply for social benefits in NL you need to apply for one job a week and give proof about this to the government. You need to accept any 'socially acceptable work' regardless of your education (no, won't involve prostitution, but it can surely involve low wage jobs such as garbageman, waiter, or clerk in a store). If you went for a PhD in philosophy (not much money in that field), that is entirely your choice. Its also entirely possible you're unable to find a job right after you completed your education if that education isn't in high demand (if your PhD is tech-related you have nothing to worry). Except when job recruiters demand you have certain 'experience in the field'. Then you're screwed regardless.
In my experience, young Spanish PhDs go abroad (indeed, I'm one of those and know plenty, although not sure about my youth by now) to work in a related field. Not to be waiters.
It is true, actually. Lots of waiters with degrees in London. But most of them do not last much. It is a way to improve their English, try to get a job in the UK (getting to an entry-level job it is almost impossible in the South), and live in London. Note than normally do not want to stay in the UK permanently.
Also take with a grain of salt all this kind of articles. American and UK media likes to project their worldview in the political actors of continental Europe but the 20-something nations involved are varied and make the EU extremely complex.
Resident of Berlin here. Cannot dismiss this statement completely. At the height of the crisis in Spain, there was a noticable influx of Spanish people in a first-move-then-job situation. Most of them did not speak German, quite some also had troubles with English, despite education.
The Spanish presence is less visible now, I am guessing because some left, and the others got better integrated. Would not be surpised if some of the PhDs are prepping a few dozen of meals each evening...
This is what I have noticed too. It is a way to start living in the country and then get a job (specially a entry-level job). Also to improve their fluency in the language of that particular country. UK is specially popular because they speak English.
A minority of those well educated people might get stuck, though.
As long as austerity is enforced under the eu-mark the disintegration is a certainty.
The only way it could be saved would be to jettison the euro or at least the convergence criteria. Germany doesn't seem keen on a succesful EU, perhaps there's some underlaying anger over those last couple of attemps to ruin Europe. One can only guess.
edit: -deleted- this thread has been moved from the front-page, back 5 pages. There is no point making (nor leaving) good arguments in dead threads that no one can see nor take part in.
Erosion of rights, eh? My country, Sweden, doesn't have a constitutional court; possibly because of some strange belief that our politicians can't make bad laws. (The Swedish supreme court cannot strike down laws, only interpret them.) The European Court of Justice is essentially the only thing that's stopping the Swedish government from extending mass surveillance even further.
E.g., in 2014 the court ruled that mass data retention was violating basic human rights, killing the data retention directive. The Swedish government wanted to keep doing this anyway so they interpreted the ruling quite creatively, concluding that the Swedish implementation of the directive wasn't "bad enough", and forced ISPs/telcos to continue with mass data retention. This was challenged by a Swedish telco and right before Christmas the ECJ ruled in the telco's favor -- and then finally Swedish ISPs could (well, had to!) stop this particular form of surveillance.
So, I'm happy to be in the EU, for that reason and many other reasons.
Huh? It's about creating an identity, a single market, and in the process, creating peace. I don't feel it is attempting to destroy national identity, if anything, it allows it to thrive (as long as it is compatible with the EU idea). Same goes with individual and national rights. EU policy provides a common framework, and if anything, it only overpowers states in favour of its citizens (see ECJ).
The single market was and is designed for a collection of industrialized nations that no longer exist. 2/3 of the EU economy today is driven by services (80% in the UK) and yet there is no single market in services worthy of the name.
Even the EU commission admits that the single market is a dysfunctional mess; of course their answer to the productivity problem Europe has is 'more single market!'
> and in the process, creating peace.
It's only been through the interests of the US that peace has been maintained. The expansionary EU threatens that.
> it only overpowers states in favour of its citizens
In what world is it a good idea that unelected and unaccountable judges can overpower the elected and accountable governments of member states?
Please keep in mind that this isn't any sort of stupid anti-Muslim rhetoric, just a geopolitical observation. I think if you look at the United States you'll see a model of Muslim integration.