4 ms·

Why EU regions are redrawing their borders

33 points by galfarragem 7y ago

Fnoord 7y ago
Is it me or is this a terrible abuse of a regulation which itself is well intended?
- ucarion 7y ago
  I sort of fail to see why this is such a terrible abuse. Even in France, it doesn't seem absurd to recognize that St. Denis and Paris aren't really operating in the same economic world. It seems that Budapest, Warsaw, and Vilnius are in a similar boat? Globalization often has a way of dramatically centralizing wealth, and old borders might need updating.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Hmm. On the fundamentals, do you think it makes sense for poor rural regions to be governed under the same administration as wealthy cities? I hear a lot about how almost all of New York (state) suffers under the rules New York City puts into place. From the other direction, does it make sense for New York City to be technically located in four different states?
  - locopati 7y ago
    Or for NYC to be controlled by Albany (the state capital) on many matters (for example, public transit).
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  Well - if other nations have already 'split out' their capital regions - then this is really just normalization of regionality, it's kind of the opposite of gerrymandering, i.e. London/Paris are already slit from UK/France data, so maybe the other nations should as well. It wasn't done before because there's no reason to. It does feel a little like gerrymandering, but it's also rational. This is just one of many such tactics these countries are using, most of them deal with the Euro and ECB. In Canada, we have this as well, a complicated distribution agreement based on weird things. If anyone even hints at changing the formula it causes a political war. A example of 'maybe cheating' in Canada: provinces have to pay for other provinces infrastructure spending. In Quebec, they want to subsidize electricity as part of social welfare. If Quebec literally gave a direct subsidy to citizens for electricity, or, a tax rebate ... then the other provinces would not have to contribute to that program. So what Quebec does is gives $500M every year to the nationalized electricity company. That company then sells electricity at a loss to Quebec citizens, i.e. 'losing $500M' every year. But - because the money is given to 'Hydro Quebec' by the government, i.e. 'infrastructure spending' - then the rest o f the provinces have to help pay for it. Even though really it's just a backwards way to do a subsidy. I should admit - it's not an unreasonable way to run the program, it just has the added benefit that Alberta and Ontario have to help pay for it ... which in political terms (by that I mean money terms) is a huge, huge thing. If anyone puts up a fuss about it, it's like political civil war i.e. very, very sensitive. In the news recently, Greece's government has just told Germany they want hundreds of billions of dollars for 'reparations' from WWII. No kidding. World War II reparation requests in 2019! Which is very interesting to say the least, but it gives us some hints at the kind of financial/political warfare going on. One way around this problem might simply to use other forms of measurement. For example, EU can help pay to improve roads, bridges, networking etc. but not for other things. So a measure of the quality of infrastructure overall would be the impetus to invest. It's also more easy to swallow from a populist perspective, and as we see from recent elections ... that's a thing.
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  Can you explain why? There are poorer regions in Pest County that would be denied resources just because the average is skewed heavily by the richer people in the capital. Is that fair? Budapest really is on quite a different level than any other part of the country, it makes perfect sense to make it its own region. It's about 20% of Hungary's population and there are 8 NUTS-2 regions in Hungary.
- nitwit005 7y ago
  One also suspects the people who wrote the law knew this could be a problem and just ignored the issue, so there's at least two sets of poorly behaved people.
AcerbicZero 7y ago
It wasn't all that long ago that EU regions redrew their borders with Panzers/Rifles/Muskets/Swords/Sticks/Etc. All with the general goal being to increase their own resources at the expense of their neighbors. This is actually an interesting article, I just felt like waxing a bit philosophical. The more things change the more they stay the same, although I'm not trying to draw a direct comparison between military conquest and political rule bending.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
Maybe they could use a function that takes median/mean into account, not just mean. If the mean is way above median, well, maybe they still qualify.
littlestymaar 7y ago
TIL: Ireland is more «economically developed» than UK, France and Italy. Also, French region have been redesigned in 2015, and they have actually been merged instead of split.
- thatfrenchguy 7y ago
  Yo all that tax dodging by multinationals help !
- kzrdude 7y ago
  They use GDP as a measure (or regional equivalent).
anw 7y ago
While the subject on this is very interesting, the presentation of this article is very well done! The transition of the regions as you progress through the article greatly enhances the cohesion (no pun intended).
ericol 7y ago
Interesting how in Spain it can be observed that, besides Madrid, the more developed areas are Catalonia and the provinces of the basque country, those preciselly that claim they give too much and receive too little. Another thing that should be also taken into account (At least in the case of Spain) is area population, as not even 30% of the population live in those areas, being Catalonia the more populated.

33 points by galfarragem 7y ago

Fnoord 7y ago

Is it me or is this a terrible abuse of a regulation which itself is well intended?

ucarion 7y ago
I sort of fail to see why this is such a terrible abuse. Even in France, it doesn't seem absurd to recognize that St. Denis and Paris aren't really operating in the same economic world. It seems that Budapest, Warsaw, and Vilnius are in a similar boat? Globalization often has a way of dramatically centralizing wealth, and old borders might need updating.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
Hmm. On the fundamentals, do you think it makes sense for poor rural regions to be governed under the same administration as wealthy cities? I hear a lot about how almost all of New York (state) suffers under the rules New York City puts into place. From the other direction, does it make sense for New York City to be technically located in four different states?
- locopati 7y ago
  Or for NYC to be controlled by Albany (the state capital) on many matters (for example, public transit).
sonnyblarney 7y ago
Well - if other nations have already 'split out' their capital regions - then this is really just normalization of regionality, it's kind of the opposite of gerrymandering, i.e. London/Paris are already slit from UK/France data, so maybe the other nations should as well. It wasn't done before because there's no reason to. It does feel a little like gerrymandering, but it's also rational. This is just one of many such tactics these countries are using, most of them deal with the Euro and ECB. In Canada, we have this as well, a complicated distribution agreement based on weird things. If anyone even hints at changing the formula it causes a political war. A example of 'maybe cheating' in Canada: provinces have to pay for other provinces infrastructure spending. In Quebec, they want to subsidize electricity as part of social welfare. If Quebec literally gave a direct subsidy to citizens for electricity, or, a tax rebate ... then the other provinces would not have to contribute to that program. So what Quebec does is gives $500M every year to the nationalized electricity company. That company then sells electricity at a loss to Quebec citizens, i.e. 'losing $500M' every year. But - because the money is given to 'Hydro Quebec' by the government, i.e. 'infrastructure spending' - then the rest o f the provinces have to help pay for it. Even though really it's just a backwards way to do a subsidy. I should admit - it's not an unreasonable way to run the program, it just has the added benefit that Alberta and Ontario have to help pay for it ... which in political terms (by that I mean money terms) is a huge, huge thing. If anyone puts up a fuss about it, it's like political civil war i.e. very, very sensitive. In the news recently, Greece's government has just told Germany they want hundreds of billions of dollars for 'reparations' from WWII. No kidding. World War II reparation requests in 2019! Which is very interesting to say the least, but it gives us some hints at the kind of financial/political warfare going on. One way around this problem might simply to use other forms of measurement. For example, EU can help pay to improve roads, bridges, networking etc. but not for other things. So a measure of the quality of infrastructure overall would be the impetus to invest. It's also more easy to swallow from a populist perspective, and as we see from recent elections ... that's a thing.
bonoboTP 7y ago
Can you explain why? There are poorer regions in Pest County that would be denied resources just because the average is skewed heavily by the richer people in the capital. Is that fair? Budapest really is on quite a different level than any other part of the country, it makes perfect sense to make it its own region. It's about 20% of Hungary's population and there are 8 NUTS-2 regions in Hungary.
nitwit005 7y ago
One also suspects the people who wrote the law knew this could be a problem and just ignored the issue, so there's at least two sets of poorly behaved people.

AcerbicZero 7y ago

It wasn't all that long ago that EU regions redrew their borders with Panzers/Rifles/Muskets/Swords/Sticks/Etc. All with the general goal being to increase their own resources at the expense of their neighbors. This is actually an interesting article, I just felt like waxing a bit philosophical. The more things change the more they stay the same, although I'm not trying to draw a direct comparison between military conquest and political rule bending.

sonnyblarney 7y ago

Maybe they could use a function that takes median/mean into account, not just mean. If the mean is way above median, well, maybe they still qualify.

littlestymaar 7y ago

TIL: Ireland is more «economically developed» than UK, France and Italy. Also, French region have been redesigned in 2015, and they have actually been merged instead of split.

thatfrenchguy 7y ago
Yo all that tax dodging by multinationals help !
kzrdude 7y ago
They use GDP as a measure (or regional equivalent).

anw 7y ago

While the subject on this is very interesting, the presentation of this article is very well done! The transition of the regions as you progress through the article greatly enhances the cohesion (no pun intended).

ericol 7y ago

Interesting how in Spain it can be observed that, besides Madrid, the more developed areas are Catalonia and the provinces of the basque country, those preciselly that claim they give too much and receive too little. Another thing that should be also taken into account (At least in the case of Spain) is area population, as not even 30% of the population live in those areas, being Catalonia the more populated.