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As a EU citizen I have always been (and still am) a strong advocate for the European Union. I think the founding of the European Union was one of the greatest t

• sparkling 8y ago
  The EU needs a full "rewrite". The levels or bureaucratic nonsense are unbelievable. Just the sheer number of laws and regulations being pumped out every year is crazy.
  • akie 8y ago
    That's such nonsense.
    • sparkling 8y ago
      Care to elaborate?
  • DanBC 8y ago
    Without looking, how many laws and regulations are being pumped out each year?
    • sparkling 8y ago
      In 2017 alone, the EU signed 430 international agreements, passed over 3400 pieces of legislation, passed 103 adjustments to various EFTA regulations.
• timrichard 8y ago
  Retaining the "piece"... WW2 ended in 1945. The EU came into being in 1993. Was it retaining it in previous guises as a trade federation - the EEC, and before that the European Coal and Steel Community? Or are you thinking of NATO? > The concept of open borders in (most of) Europe is something I would never want to miss. In what context? "I don't have to show my passport on holidays - yay!" or "people can drive from a ghetto on the outskirts of Brussels with a trunkload of Kalashnikov's, spray bullets at Paris cafe society, and immediately afterwards they can be traced to.....er dunno..."
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • tyfon 8y ago
    The coal and steel union was set up to prevent another WW2 as it's main purpose. And I think that part is still important since when you trade you don't fight.. Usually :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Commun...
  • Sammi 8y ago
    The European Coal and Steel Community was explicitly started to stop war in Europe. As the original proposal of the community said directly: "The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible" [0]. Steel and coal (or more generally energy) are necessary in order to to wage war. Pooling these things in a super national organization makes war between the member states impossible. [0] https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-day/schuman-declaration_en https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-day...
    • growlist 8y ago
      This claim that the EU/predecessor organisations have secured the peace since WW2 is often made but I think is impossible to verify, since we have no way of rerunning history without the EU in place. Some point to NATO as far more significant a guarantor of peace than the EU.
• nickik 8y ago
  I'm sorry but this is just not a credible story. The current day EU simply did not exist for most of Post-WW, so it can absolutely not have been a reason why there was no war. I am in favor of things like free movement of goods and services. I also in favor working together on things like European Space Agency. However these sudo-democratic want-be centralized state is totally against the history of European has already caused a endless serious of disaster and mismanagement. It is this form a bureaucratic technocratic center state that is primarily responsible for the nationalistic backlash we are seeing. I am really happy that I live in Switzerland and we managed to avoid actually being in the EU even while being pretty tightly integrated.
  • ginko 8y ago
    >However these sudo-democratic want-be centralized state is totally against the history of European has already caused a endless serious of disaster and mismanagement. How is the EU particularly undemocratic? I'm Austrian and most of the European branches map relatively well to our own federal structure. (Nationalrat -> European parliament, Government -> Commission, Bundesrat -> Council(although that one has more power)) The reason for stupid laws like this one is that conservative parties are currently dominating the European Parliament and national governments, so a direct result of people voting. And I don't see how being in Switzerland will save you from any of this since this law will almost certainly also apply to Switzerland if it comes into effect. Only difference being that you don't have any say on the matter.
    • nickik 8y ago
      For me a democracy polity should be more then a structure and the ability to vote. I would wager that most people in the EU have never even heard about this fundamental change to their lives, or even speak the language to understand the debate. Look at how the EU handled the economic crisis. Nothing democratic about the decision making. But many of the decisions still implemented under EU cover. The European parliament should not easily be allowed to make laws for everybody. Many countries didn't even get to vote popularly if they wanted to join. > And I don't see how being in Switzerland will save you from any of this since this law will almost certainly also apply to Switzerland if it comes into effect. Only difference being that you don't have any say on the matter. I was not talking about this one law, but rather in general.
• cc-d 8y ago
  > I full heartedly believe this institution played a major role in retaining the piece after World War 2 I think you are getting the UN/NATO and EU confused, friend. The rest of your post is spot on.
  • Sammi 8y ago
    The two aren't mutually exclusive, so careful you don't set up a false dichotomy. And the EU as since it inception always been about making European nations interdependent, so that they cannot wage war against each other. As the original proposal for precursor to the EU said: "The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible" [0]. [0] https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-day/schuman-declaration_en https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-day...
    • vsl 8y ago
      Agreed. It definitely plays a role. So does NATO. So Internet. But you all too often hear the false claim that EU made Europe peaceful, so the above jab should be seen in the same lights: equally inaccurate explanation meant to iLlustrate the fallacy.
      • Sammi 8y ago
        The EU had from the beginning a stated goal of making peace in Europe, and it had an effective method of achieving this by making European states interdependent - you can't attack those you depend on. And Europe has been largely peaceful ever since. So of course the EU had a huge effect on making Europe peaceful.
• vixen99 8y ago
  You're right. It does indeed make it harder. Why add an unpleasant general assertion ('most') about EU critics? Can you say what proportion of the 17.5 million EU critics who voted for their country to leave the EU, are 'straight up racists'? And how are you so sure?
  • bertil 8y ago
    Yes, extensive polling on what motivated their vote was done, as well as interviews. The fact that Pakistan and Nigeria were not in the EU clearly seemed to have escaped the vast majority of respondents. You can be as defensive as you want, it won’t justify all the whistling during that campaign.
• iaml 8y ago
  A lot of the people who voted for this also want to end EU. Make of this what you will.
  • mickronome 8y ago
    Yep. It's quite clear that there are forces trying to affect EU in the hope of breaking it up, mostly to further a right-wing agenda of some sort, but also to simply destabilise it to decrease it's influence. For democracy as an ideology to work well, there might be a modicum of honesty necessary from it's actors, in that they try to enact only policy they actually believe in, and not aim to simply cause destruction and dissent. This is clearly nothing that is entirely unique to one ideology, as the past few years has clearly shown. It's unfortunate that the very stability that many seek seems to be the very thing that cause them, or others to cause instability. Maybe we as a species thrive on danger, and whenever it seems to disappear we invent some new imaginary spectre to take the place of those we erased. Like how vaccinations that have prevented untold amounts of suffering, now far to many people seem to consider it the cause of any ailments short of broken legs.
• T-N-T 8y ago
  > I full heartedly believe this institution played a major role in retaining the piece after World War 2. Not this canard again. Countries that have known peace within their homeland territory post WW2 were countries that either owned nuclear weapons, or befriended a power that owned nuclear weapons. The EU has nothing to do with peace within continental Europe. In fact it could NOT stop extremely bloody conflicts like the Kosovo War from happening. But I guess 1998 is ancient history? The nuclear bomb is the true peace maker. It's what made the US and USSR so frightened of even the possibility of a conflict between each other.
  • soVeryTired 8y ago
    > The nuclear bomb is the true peace maker. Sorry, then why has the US been involved in a major war every ten years since WW2?
    • T-N-T 8y ago
      >Sorry, then why has the US been involved in a major war every ten years since WW2? Because those countries didn't have nukes. Nukes create peace for those who own them, not those who don't. North Korea will never be invaded by the US as long as they have nukes. Same thing for Pakistan. It will not see the same fate as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lybia.. because it has nukes. Western Europe knows peace because its two strongest powers are nuclear powers (United Kingdom, France), while the remaining power, Germany, kept being pushed into proving it has become inoffensive such as signing a treaty prohibiting it from building nuclear weapons. There can be no war in Western Europe territory as long as the UK, France and the US don't want war. The last nail in the coffin to prove that the European Union is a paper tiger that has nothing to do with the absence of war in the continent is the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Nobody cared enough for Ukraine's fate to defend it and so Russia took whatever piece it wanted from it. The EU didn't end war in Europe. Nuclear powers ended war in -WESTERN- Europe, which is not all of Europe. It would be nice to stop forgetting that there's other countries to the east of Germany and Switzerland. Considering the annexation of Crimea, the idea that there's a guaranteed peace is merely a dream, not a reality.
      • 8y ago
• soVeryTired 8y ago
  > But seeing the lawmakers fucking up more and more on these kind of laws makes it harder to build a reasonable argument against all the so called "EU critics" (most of the time just straight up racists). I'm sorry but you do yourself a disservice if you paint people who don't agree with you as racists. Yes, concern about immigration is part of what drives euroskepticism, and some people are concerned about immigration because they're racist. But in the context of the migrant crisis I think it's foolish not to acknowledge that there's a legitimate debate to be had around immigration. For my part I'm happy with free movement within europe (and seriously bothered by the treatment of refugees arriving in Greece and Italy, but that's another story). What turned me into a euroskeptic was the financial crisis. The troika forced Greece into a depression in order to protect German banks' interests. Trichet held a gun to the Irish minister of finance's head, threatening to let the economy blow up unless the Irish taxpayer bailed out the banks. Bank bailouts like that have subsequently been made illegal under state aid laws. So that's where I am. The two european arms of the troika, the ECB and the European Commission, have far too much power with too little accountability. The european parliament is toothless, and when push comes to shove, countries look after their own interests first: if they don't, the electorate will find someone who will. The EU is a half-finished project, but the political will to finish it just isn't there. We either need to go fully federal, complete with fiscal transfers from Germany to Greece, or we need to roll back to being a trading bloc. The current situation is untenable, and it's one recession away from imploding.
  • l5870uoo9y 8y ago
    Behind the stagnation lies also a ideological conflict between France's centralism and Germany's liberalism. For EU to be a durable institution you will need to keep its scope limited, Europeans want their national identity too (and most also the EU).
  • magduf 8y ago
    The EU kinda reminds me of the US when it was governed by the Articles of Confederation. It didn't work out very well for us, since the central government had too little power, and we quickly had to come up with our Constitution which implemented a much stronger federal government.
• staticelf 8y ago
  How can you still be a strong advocate for the EU after this kind of shit gets passed? I do not understand how anyone can defend the EU when they continue to pass draconian laws in an undemocratic way.
• pergadad 8y ago
  It's a bit more complex. The EU produces a huge amount of legislation, but you only hear about the most weird/funny/outrageous one. Most things go through smoothly because they are so technical or orln topics that no one cares. Then once in a while you have this kind which is in some ways a big progress. Look at the education provisions in there. But here's how the EU works: the Commission (civil service) proposes a draft text. The parliament debates and changes it (mostly along national and political party group lines). The council (national governments) debate and change the same.commissiom proposal. Them council and parliament beat themselves over the head (with commission mediation and proposals on how to find common ground) until they find common ground on drafting that everyone can accept. Note, not one thing that everyone likes, but one that everyone can accept. Despite the bullshit you might read in UK media or the claims of tyrants like Orban who claim they fought (in their xitizens:against' interest, of course) other governments over this or that, it basically never happens that something is decided at EU level that one (or several) countries strongly disagree with. So you get this kind of pieces in each legislative document - with some bites for everyone and lots of things that have as their sole virtue that no one really hates them that much. Often no one even really understands each part in detail It's similar across the world (see the literally thousands of pages a legislation like Dodd-Frank in the US context can become) - the democratic process is messy; at EU level it's additionally messy because there are 28 national interests at stake and at play.
  • vsl 8y ago
    > it basically never happens that something is decided at EU level that one (or several) countries strongly disagree with That’s straight up delusional. Latest example I cared for: the guns restriction imposed on Czechia against its will, in an area EU has no business regulating in the first place, with repeated abuse of procedure. So egregious that Czechia sued over it. Never happens. (And as I learned from another comment here, I’m apparently a racist now for not liking this sort of abuses...) But then, your bias is pretty obvious from calling Orban a “tyrant”. You may not like his politics, he’s not much of a EU-loving leftist for sure, but come on.
• vsl 8y ago
  Thanks for calling me racist because I think EU should follow its own rules.