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The EU is trying to have its cake and eat it too. An economic union with independent economies. A political union with independent politics. A human rights unio

The EU is trying to have its cake and eat it too. An economic union with independent economies. A political union with independent politics. A human rights union with ghettos of language. It's ridiculous that anyone thought a union between Ireland (where corporate tax is optional), Spain (where personal tax is optional), Germany (a straight-laced financial behemoth), the UK (the remnants of an empire) and Greece (a perpetual basketcase) would ever be successful.

zbentley 6y ago
> An economic union with independent economies Fair point. > A political union with independent politics. Yep, pretty sticky. > A human rights union with ghettos of language. Wait, what? What does language have to do with whether or not a nation- and culture-spanning political entity has a unifying notion of human rights? Lots of states and superstates have problems with human rights standards being inconsistently applied among their constituencies. But I don't see what that has to do with language.
- sjwright 6y ago
  Language is a barrier to cultural union. It can be a blindfold to the rest of the world who are not invited into many parts of contemporary Hungarian culture. It can be a blindfold for its citizens, limiting exposure to external culture. Without shared language, it's harder for the Hungarian people to be influenced by the culture and politics of its neighbours. Even on a more basic level, the fall of Index.hu is made a greater problem because there's no Hungarian-language media in neighbouring Austria or Slovakia.
rsynnott 6y ago
And yet it has been, really, quite successful. There are definitely serious issues, and I would expect it to in the long term either trend towards greater cohesion generally or a two-tier solution, but it works... better than it would necessarily be expected to. These sorts of massive divisions aren't that unusual in other cohesive state-like things, of course; compare the economies of New York and Mississippi, say. And the EU has tended to reduce the differences somewhat over time.
- sjwright 6y ago
  > And yet it has been, really, quite successful. Has it though? Because Hungary begs to differ. I'll agree that for a large subset (France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, in particular) the EU has indeed been a successful experiment. It was also successful for the UK until they deluded themselves into leaving. And if the EU decided to either (a) not expand as widely as possible or (b) not try to morph into a Federal Government of Europe, it would probably remain successful indefinitely. For now the EU has been established for a blink of an eye, relatively. Only time will tell how successful they can be in the long term.
  - regularfry 6y ago
    Hungary's only been in Schengen since 2007, and in the EU since 2004. In that time their GDP has tripled, and there's a huge jump over the accession period (which, oddly, flattens out when Orban takes power). Public debt hit a peak in 2010-2011, and is now 20% below that point. It's hard to see the economic effects as negative, looked at in isolation. Hungary has its own problems that the EU isn't positioned to solve. That's not evidence that the EU itself is a failure, or bad for states that join it.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - toyg 6y ago
    The union has been extremely successful for Spain, Italy and Portugal too, on many aspects. It forced local administrators to shape up in ways that were unthinkable before, and instilled into people that they should expect the same standard of life in Rome as in Stockholm. The long-term effects of this change of attitude are immense - systemic corruption in Italy has gone way down, environmental conditions have improved dramatically, connections and mobility have boomed. The Euro is not perfect but it wiped the periodic waves of heavy inflation that used to hit the working classes, and its worst excesses are slowly being addressed.
- defnotashton2 6y ago

zbentley 6y ago

> An economic union with independent economies Fair point. > A political union with independent politics. Yep, pretty sticky. > A human rights union with ghettos of language. Wait, what? What does language have to do with whether or not a nation- and culture-spanning political entity has a unifying notion of human rights? Lots of states and superstates have problems with human rights standards being inconsistently applied among their constituencies. But I don't see what that has to do with language.

sjwright 6y ago
Language is a barrier to cultural union. It can be a blindfold to the rest of the world who are not invited into many parts of contemporary Hungarian culture. It can be a blindfold for its citizens, limiting exposure to external culture. Without shared language, it's harder for the Hungarian people to be influenced by the culture and politics of its neighbours. Even on a more basic level, the fall of Index.hu is made a greater problem because there's no Hungarian-language media in neighbouring Austria or Slovakia.

rsynnott 6y ago

And yet it has been, really, quite successful. There are definitely serious issues, and I would expect it to in the long term either trend towards greater cohesion generally or a two-tier solution, but it works... better than it would necessarily be expected to. These sorts of massive divisions aren't that unusual in other cohesive state-like things, of course; compare the economies of New York and Mississippi, say. And the EU has tended to reduce the differences somewhat over time.

sjwright 6y ago
> And yet it has been, really, quite successful. Has it though? Because Hungary begs to differ. I'll agree that for a large subset (France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, in particular) the EU has indeed been a successful experiment. It was also successful for the UK until they deluded themselves into leaving. And if the EU decided to either (a) not expand as widely as possible or (b) not try to morph into a Federal Government of Europe, it would probably remain successful indefinitely. For now the EU has been established for a blink of an eye, relatively. Only time will tell how successful they can be in the long term.
- regularfry 6y ago
  Hungary's only been in Schengen since 2007, and in the EU since 2004. In that time their GDP has tripled, and there's a huge jump over the accession period (which, oddly, flattens out when Orban takes power). Public debt hit a peak in 2010-2011, and is now 20% below that point. It's hard to see the economic effects as negative, looked at in isolation. Hungary has its own problems that the EU isn't positioned to solve. That's not evidence that the EU itself is a failure, or bad for states that join it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- toyg 6y ago
  The union has been extremely successful for Spain, Italy and Portugal too, on many aspects. It forced local administrators to shape up in ways that were unthinkable before, and instilled into people that they should expect the same standard of life in Rome as in Stockholm. The long-term effects of this change of attitude are immense - systemic corruption in Italy has gone way down, environmental conditions have improved dramatically, connections and mobility have boomed. The Euro is not perfect but it wiped the periodic waves of heavy inflation that used to hit the working classes, and its worst excesses are slowly being addressed.
defnotashton2 6y ago