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Putin made some comments in the early 2000's to the effect that Russia sees itself as part of the European culture and might like to be part of the EU, but it w
by TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago
Putin made some comments in the early 2000's to the effect that Russia sees itself as part of the European culture and might like to be part of the EU, but it wants its own viewpoint on things to be respected. I suspect the latter is a crucial caveat. Presumably he'd never be okay with implementing a liberal democracy to EU standards or signing up to EU defence policy.
On the other side, I suspect that none of the existing EU members would be happy with having a new one that's so much larger in population than any of the others that it'd gain effectively a veto power over everything, to say nothing of the domestic political issues with potential east-to-west migration.
- hgsgm 3y agoEU voting power for issues that matter is state based in the European Commission, not population based.
- TazeTSchnitzel 3y agoI think that's oversimplified. The European Commission is the executive, not a legislative body. The EU has effectively a bicameral legislature formed by the Parliament and the Council. The Parliament has direct elections with seats apportioned to member states roughly corresponding to population. The Council represents member states directly, but they only sometimes have equal weight, because many things use qualified-majority voting (QMV) where a majority of states and represented population is required. Most things either need to pass through both of these legislatures, or if they're exclusive to the Council, are covered by QMV. The number of things covered by QMV has only grown with time and lots of these would be considered important. There are of course still some matters that require unanimity among states though.