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Well, the EU was not made to improve the economies of its members. Its main goal is to intertwine them enough to make another big war way too painful.

by kaybe 8y ago

toyg 8y ago
And to make Europeans strong enough to be peers to US and then-USSR, rather than being their battlefield. This has become even more urgent now that China and India have accelerated their inevitable rise to superpower status.
nickik 8y ago
Funny that mostly not how they sold it to the poor countries, or even the rich countries. That might have been what the elites believed, more political ingratiation. That of course is good for them as well. In reality when they 'sold' this is was all about economics. And the routes of the whole thing are economic as well.
- toyg 8y ago
  You have aims, and you have ways. The signatories on the Treaty of Rome all had very explicit political aims - it was 1957, the Cold War was in full swing, something had to be done. They simply had the intuition that the only way to reach these aims was through economic integration first, because the continent was still too raw from two centuries of total war. With the years, the model was so successful that others joined because of the economic benefits alone. But it was never just about business, not even Thatcher seriously believed that; it was about the realities of a world where European countries, kings of the planet for half a millennia, were going to become fundamentally irrelevant in a few generations, and risked being again the battlefield between global superpowers.
zozbot123 8y ago
No surprise there. "When goods don't cross borders, armies will."
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  I've heard that, but there are a lot of counter-examples. The colonial wars in China and elsewhere happened in order to force China to participate in trade. Plenty of cases of the U.S.A. invading either to make sure their banks got reimbursed, or to prevent Europe from doing the same. Plenty of other examples one could give, but the chart on this article (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-the-world-looks-a-bit-like-it-did-before-world-war-i https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-the-world-looks-a...) may do. Free trade hit a peak in 1913, the highest it had perhaps ever been. The period that followed was not exactly peaceful.

Well, the EU was not made to improve the economies of its members. Its main goal is to intertwine them enough to make another big war way too painful.

by kaybe 8y ago

Well, the EU was not made to improve the economies of its members. Its main goal is to intertwine them enough to make another big war way too painful.

toyg 8y ago

And to make Europeans strong enough to be peers to US and then-USSR, rather than being their battlefield. This has become even more urgent now that China and India have accelerated their inevitable rise to superpower status.

nickik 8y ago

Funny that mostly not how they sold it to the poor countries, or even the rich countries. That might have been what the elites believed, more political ingratiation. That of course is good for them as well. In reality when they 'sold' this is was all about economics. And the routes of the whole thing are economic as well.

toyg 8y ago
You have aims, and you have ways. The signatories on the Treaty of Rome all had very explicit political aims - it was 1957, the Cold War was in full swing, something had to be done. They simply had the intuition that the only way to reach these aims was through economic integration first, because the continent was still too raw from two centuries of total war. With the years, the model was so successful that others joined because of the economic benefits alone. But it was never just about business, not even Thatcher seriously believed that; it was about the realities of a world where European countries, kings of the planet for half a millennia, were going to become fundamentally irrelevant in a few generations, and risked being again the battlefield between global superpowers.

zozbot123 8y ago

No surprise there. "When goods don't cross borders, armies will."

rossdavidh 8y ago
I've heard that, but there are a lot of counter-examples. The colonial wars in China and elsewhere happened in order to force China to participate in trade. Plenty of cases of the U.S.A. invading either to make sure their banks got reimbursed, or to prevent Europe from doing the same. Plenty of other examples one could give, but the chart on this article (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-the-world-looks-a-bit-like-it-did-before-world-war-i https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-the-world-looks-a...) may do. Free trade hit a peak in 1913, the highest it had perhaps ever been. The period that followed was not exactly peaceful.