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Some of the great moments of history sneak up on businesspeople. Two years ago, Britain looked to be Europe's most economically rational country; now its companies seem to be rolling from one economic earthquake to another, with Brexit looking increasingly likely to be followed by the election of a near-Marxist prime minister, Jeremy Corbyn.
Looking back, two things stand out. First, there were some deep underlying "irrational" causes that business ignored, such as the pent-up anger against immigration and globalization. Second, there was a string of short-term political decisions that proved to be miscalculations. For decades, for example, attacking the European Union was a "free hit" for British politicians. If David Cameron had it to do over again, would he really have made the referendum on whether to stay in it a simple majority vote (or indeed called a vote at all)? Does Angela Merkel now regret giving Cameron so few concessions before the Brexit vote? Would the moderate Labour members of Parliament who helped Corbyn get on their party's leadership ballot in the name of political diversity really do that again?
Now, another rupture may be sneaking up on Europe, driven by a similar mixture of pent-up anger and short-term political maneuvering. This one is between the old West European democratic core of the EU, led by Merkel and increasingly by Emmanuel Macron, who are keen to integrate the euro zone, and the populist authoritarians of Eastern Europe, who dislike Brussels. This time the arguments are ones about political freedom and national sovereignty.
Eastern Europe's gripes are nothing a little anschluss couldn't cure.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @02:16AM (20 children)
It has a toothless parliament elected by the people, but actual power is held in the hands of the member countries' governments via the European Commission.
The European Commission is where all kinds of stupidity is thought up, forcing national parliaments to turn its effluent into national law.
Politically, it is a dumping ground for failed / retired politicians at the national level.
The EU has brought great benefits to Europeans, but it is in desperate need of reform, but that won't happen naturally, as member governments like the way things are set up to rule past the people.
A democratic EU would be a good arrangement for the regionalist movements the people are increasingly demanding, IMHO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @02:52AM
... at least not without pouring tons of resources into forcing people to submit. Even if you can get people to submit, the solution you achieve will only be transient, because our universe demands that environmental conditions change, often in unforeseen ways.
As with any complex system, a stable structure to the organization of society must emerge organically through the process of evolution by variation and selection, a process that takes its most civil form as voluntary exchange within a market of ideas (and of services).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Friday October 06 2017, @03:08AM (15 children)
What benefits, specifically?
Most if not everything it's done that's beneficial was already done or could have been done in the old Common Market system without creating a superfluous bureaucracy to invent work for themselves, and without the surrender of sovereignty demanded by the Junker in Brussels.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday October 06 2017, @04:09AM (14 children)
The old Common Market system didn't have a unified currency, and free trade and movement of labor between member states. That's probably done a lot of quantifiable good for the EU states' economies overall, though some nations have surely benefited more than others.
They should probably move to a two-tier currency system, with HighEuros being the stronger and LowEuros being the weaker, so that countries like Greece can adopt the weaker currency and avoid some of the problems they've been having with sharing the same currency as Germany. But that would complicate things internally a lot with trade so it might not be feasible.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @07:41AM
The whole issue with the Euro is that the EU was so eager to expand it allowed countries to enter that weren't up to the task. Also, EU countries more or less have to compete (loss of Greece is the profit for Germany). The whole Greece situation was the EU punishing them while recovering the losses that banks made by paying them public EU money. There are other solutions to the EU problems, but so far the only ones you hear are "moar market (protection)" (see your quote above). The inhabitants of the EU are screaming for these other solutions, but the EU does not listen... take this too long and you see the things we see in UK and now in Spain (although the Spain situation is a more internal struggle).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Aiwendil on Friday October 06 2017, @10:41AM (12 children)
Great, let me travel from here in sweden to meet some friends in the uk, on the way I might stop by some friends in denmark and the netherlands. What you nean I meed four currencies and a passport for that? And what do you mean I now need to carry an id-card at all times while being in denmark. And what do you mean I'm only allowed to stay in the netherlanda for a couple of months per stretch..
Compare that to visiting non-eu member iceland with a stopover in non-eu norway as a swede. Three currencies, no passport needed, and I can stay in either country indefinitely. However since they joined the schengen I need to carry an id-card at all times (didn't before) (funnily enough, I can get a new id issued in any nordic country [or its embassies across the globe]).
Let's just say that the "freedom" in EU is for vacation and seasonal workers, and downright restrictive compared to what we are used to in the nordic countries.
Btw, also - take a look at sweden (eu, non-euro), iceland (non-eu, non-euro) and finland (eu, euro) in terms of how well they deal with (and dealt with) the latest economic snafu.
With the possible exception of Denmark the nordic countries would have been a lot better off in a nordic union (and the nordic countries would probably have started to introduce a unified currency by now if finland hadn't joined the euro [discussion was started])
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Friday October 06 2017, @11:14AM (11 children)
UK is similar - back in the days of the common market we used to be able to travel through most of europe (this side of iron curtain obviously) with only a British Visitors Passport, which you could pick up while-you-wait at any local post office for a fiver.
Now, post Schengen, we have to have a full passport, at much greater expense and hassle, for any EU travel. Oddly, those from the EU _don't_ need a full passport to come to the UK, it's only a requirement for us to go there...
Maybe it was better before, maybe it wasn't, maybe we gained more than we lost, but it sure as hell is not better in every way now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @11:57AM (10 children)
UK citizens don't need passports to travel to EU countries.
Any member of an EU country may travel through any other EU country using only their national ID (which is indeed required).
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Friday October 06 2017, @06:03PM
There is no UK ID card (thankfully). That's why you need a passport to travel out of the UK.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Saturday October 07 2017, @11:18AM
Oops, yeah. However you still have a border checks.
Always forget that it is EEA tgat regulates passports and Schengen that regulates border checks.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday October 07 2017, @04:20PM (7 children)
> UK citizens don't need passports to travel to EU countries.
Really? What do we use then?
> Any member of an EU country may travel through any other EU country using only their national ID
Except for UK citizens, who (other than Gibraltar residents) have _no_ "national ID" _other_ than a passport.
Driving licence is not allowed under the rules, the old British Visitors Passport is also not allowed (which was why it was discontinued).
The EU rules were created knowing that they would exclude all UK forms of ID except a full passport.
Of course it is a level playing field, everyone is allowed to play with expensive golden balls or cheap white ones, UK citizens can't get white ones but that's ok, same rules for everyone...
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:40PM (6 children)
So the rules are that you can use either a passport, or a national ID, and you're complaining because UK doesn't have a national ID so you're forced to use a passport? Isn't that your own dumb fault for not having a national ID like everyone else? Do you think you should get some kind of special privileges just because you're from the UK or something?
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday October 11 2017, @09:27AM (5 children)
But the UK _did_ have an alternative national ID - the British Visitors Passport.
The EU rules were written to block that but to allow other European non-passport IDs.
The British visitors passport was killed as a result.
Yes, the UK could change and do everything the European way rather than the way we have done it for decades but the perception is that the "harmonisation" is all one way - the imposition of the european way (and the costs of changing) on the UK - and that is dangerous, it could lead to things like disillusionment with the EU and possibly people voting to leave it. Oh wait, it already did, QED.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:19PM (4 children)
Harmonization is necessary if you're going to be part of a union; you can't have everyone doing everything differently, it's just too inefficient. If every EU nation wanted to do things differently, it'd be a complete mess.
If the Brits don't want to get with the program and do things the way the rest of the union does, that's fine, they can leave. It won't be good for their economy though, but that's OK, if they want to have a crappy economy that's their right. Independence has its ups and downs: you get to do everything in your weird, quirky way without having to adopt someone else's way of doing things, but you miss out on the economic benefits of being in a union.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday October 13 2017, @09:36AM (3 children)
You have just neatly illustrated the problem: instead of harmonisation being about compromise, about evaluating the various systems and settling on the best one or meeting in the middle or agreeing to stay different, or choosing one country's system for some things and another country's for other, your attitude is "the brits should be the ones to change or should get out".
Well, fine, that's what we're doing. We may miss out on some economic benefits but we get to keep, for instance, the NHS, and I can no-longer survive without it so I am happy with that.
I'd be happier if I had the option of living in France (have family there, speak the language, sort of), but the French rules require residents to have health insurance, which I cannot get (insurance market has a blanket ban on people with my condition). The French state health system would take me regardless my condition, but only after a 3month wait (with PUMA - used to be 5yrs to wait under CMU, doesn't matter, I can't survive 3 months without health care and I can't get insurance to cover the gap). So France will have to stay somewhere I visit with EHIC card or travel insurance (which I can still get), but even the EU freedom-of-movement doesn't let me live there. Of course if you are coming to the UK from EU you can (if you do it right) declare yourself ordinarily resident and access the NHS for free from the day you arrive, but that's a weird quirky British way of implementing freedom-of-movement, obviously...
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 13 2017, @03:06PM (2 children)
You have just neatly illustrated the problem: instead of harmonisation being about compromise, about evaluating the various systems and settling on the best one or meeting in the middle or agreeing to stay different, or choosing one country's system for some things and another country's for other, your attitude is "the brits should be the ones to change or should get out".
What the hell are you talking about? Presumably, they already *did* compromise, and settle on the best system or meet in the middle. The Brits are the ones who are mad because their crappy system wasn't good enough, and because everyone else didn't want to make an exception for them.
We may miss out on some economic benefits but we get to keep, for instance, the NHS
How the hell would staying in the EU take away your NHS? And with a wrecked economy (what does Britain still make again? Nothing?), how do you expect to pay for NHS? The only reason Britain still has any economic power is because it's a financial center, but that's going to wane after they leave the EU.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday October 14 2017, @11:17AM (1 child)
You already answered that question - the NHS is unique in Europe, it is in fact Europe's largest employer. It is a different system from the rest of Europe (but better, despite it's many faults, from my point of view), from your point of view it is a "crappy system that wasn't good enough" (_because_ it is different, and British).
The NHS would inevitably be killed by EU harmonization in one way or another because (in your words): "The Brits are the ones who are mad because their crappy system wasn't good enough, and because everyone else didn't want to make an exception for them." Notably TTIP (for one threat, and yes it's dead now but may be because of the brexit vote) had exceptions to protect the European-style state health care systems, but none for the NHS.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday October 14 2017, @04:49PM
Ok, now you're not making any sense at all. I'm not even a European, and I still know that healthcare systems are NOT homogenized across EU countries. The UK's is very different from Germany's, which is very different from France's, which is very different from Belgium's, etc. They're all entirely separate entities. I've never read of any attempt to create a homogeneous pan-EU healthcare system. What we were talking about before is ID cards, which is absolutely an issue the EU has every right to regulate and homogenize across the EU, if you want to be able to travel between EU member nations without a passport. Asking border guards to know about dozens of different ID cards and totally different rules for each one is simply stupid and absurd, and it's unfair because that means you're proposing that different countries' citizens get different rights in other nations. Healthcare isn't like that; there's little reason to homogenize it unless you're going to turn the whole EU into a big federal nation, which isn't going to happen in our lifetime.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @05:19AM
well yes, fuck the European Comission but they push a corporate/banker agenda into laws so that's where the stupidity really comes from
(Score: 5, Informative) by bolek_b on Friday October 06 2017, @09:37AM (1 child)
I wonder why the parent was modded "Troll" when all it does is state the facts. Phrase "democratic deficit" is being mentioned even in official circles. In recent years we could witness a lot of examples where rules and laws were violated (or their violation had been overlooked) by EU. To name one, during the migration crisis, the Dublin Regulation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation [wikipedia.org]) was simply ignored.
I live in Czech Republic and we as a nation are quite sensitive to control from bigger powers. Hundreds of years as a part of Austrian-Hungary Empire, then "democratically" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement [wikipedia.org]) conceded to Hitler, and almost immediately after the end of WWII we fell into Soviet-led bloc called "Warsaw Pact". These lessons are the reason why ordinary Czechs view many geopolitical events with a lot of scepticism. And I must say that the EU does gradually show more and more signs of non-democratic entity. For example, a stock answer for many questions is "More of Europe, more integration". Or a vote regarding firearms directive earlier this year: I was watching live broadcast and I almost threw up; no discussion allowed, no proposals of amendment allowed, just "raise your hands, ok, pass", done in 5 minutes.
Bringing a palestinian terrorist as a VIP speaker into European Parliament just couple of days ago is another insult, resulting in even Czech proponents of EU starting to question what is going on.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @04:42PM
they are NWO scum. that is what is going on. only the stupidest of fucks would believe a bunch of un-elected leeches could save them.