Is the European union a mistake?

[Quackers]

Shek what is wrong with allergiance to a nation state? I have little in common with Poles or Swedish why am I mean to treat them as brothers?

 

[Godwynn]

Interesting article on Germany and the European Union from today's Economist.

 

[Traitorfish]

Shek what is wrong with allergiance to a nation state? I have little in common with Poles or Swedish why am I mean to treat them as brothers?

The same reason, I suspect, that we expect anyone to treat as us brothers: the simple fact that we have more in common with them, or with any human being, than we do not. After all, if we defined ourselves only by our differences, then all society would be shattered in an instance; at the very least, this Union of ours would hardly survive!

 

[Shekwan]

Shek what is wrong with allergiance to a nation state? I have little in common with Poles or Swedish why am I mean to treat them as brothers?

Theres is nothing wrong with allegiance to a nation state. But we need to focus more on what we have in common with our fellow Europeans, be they Swedish, Polish or anything else. Broadly, we all adhere to the ideals of individualism, democracy and the Basic Human Rights of the ECHR. The same cannot be said of countries like China and Russia (for the time being anyways), and to compete with these huge entities we have to work together, focusing on our common European ideals rather than our petty national differences.

Being from the UK, I would have thought you would identify with the idea of overcoming national differences to form a Union that can challenge the rest of the world.

 

[Tekee]

So the argument for the EU's usefulness is that the continent would descend into genocide and war if the EU was dismantled. You either support the EU or you are a new Hitler.

 

[amadeus]

Are you a citizen?

You know that I am not.

 

[warpus]

You know that I am not.

I seriously had no idea. My guess was no, you're right

 

[amadeus]

I seriously had no idea. My guess was no, you're right

Oh, okay. I didn't know if there was some underlying rationale of "a non-citizen won't have the same informed opinion" or something to that effect. With the Greek crisis, I'm wondering if whether having a common currency is plausible... I'm thinking it could work if you had only a few countries in membership, but you face the inevitability that it's going to have to expand at some point.

As for a common parliament, what possibly necessitates one? I think everything should be left to the states.

 

[warpus]

Oh, okay. I didn't know if there was some underlying rationale of "a non-citizen won't have the same informed opinion" or something to that effect.

Yeah, it was something like that. Some of the benefits of the EU wouldn't be apparent unless you were there on teh ground.

In the case of Poland, for example, the EU is paying for a lot of infrastructure projects there Roads, highways, etc.

 

[Arwon]

Democracy flourishes in small numbers, was one of the apophthegmata of the ancient Greek civilization. Can any sort of meaningfull democracy exist in a union of over 500 million people, of so many different languages and cultures?

Oh hai there.

 

[Kyriakos]

Caste system doesnt mix well with Democracy

 

[Verbose]

Caste system doesnt mix well with Democracy

Well, neither does slavery...

 

[Verbose]

Here's a short piece from my morning paper for the day (in hack'n'slash translation):

Greece: How the crisis is changing the EU
Published today. 00:05 [Dagens Nyheter]

Signed – Annika Ström Melin.

On thursday the streests of Athens was again filled with demonstrators. At a time when the idea of on short-notice creating a dedicated European monetary fund has, somewhat unexpected, been given political support from both Berlin and Paris, and tentatively perhaps also from London. Signs like this tends to portent something shortly to become a reality

The financial woes of Greece are forcing the EU to take another step into the unknown. We are all sitting in the front row, watching history twist yet again. The Union is preparing another giant step towards a deeper European economic integration.

The EU develops in times of crisis, writes the political scientist Göran von Sydow in one of the contributions to the anthology ”Europaperspektiv” [European perspectives], the yearbook of the Swedish European political science researchers. He cites one of the world leading experts on the European Union, the American Moravcsik, who already in August of 2009 declared that the ”crisis has renewed the European solidarity and sense of purpose. Europe is stronger than ever.”

What has since then transpired reinforces Morvacsik's thesis. The often opaque and protracted negotiation process knows as the EU has a curious ability to adapt itself and develop in pace with the problems arising.

What happens, often does so quietly. Göran von Sydow points out with how surprisingly little controvery the European Union last fall agreed to implement a set of new and rather far-reaching laws regulating the financial markets. It was a definite step ahead, and it was taken with very little attention paid to it.

Nevertheless, tha crisis is putting the EU under severe strain. It is as yet an incomplete construction, and therefor sensitive. At this point it does not look very probable - but just maybe the Union will halt itself mid-step, and start to dither. If that happens the entire edifice will start to crackelate.

Consequently, the drama unfolding is not merely Greek, but European.

Here's the original 6 month old Newsweek Andrew Moravcsik article:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/209951

Europe's turnaround does not suggest a fall in nationalism, or a mass conversion to European ideals, as convinced federalists might wish. Nor does it follow from an elite conspiracy to impose a strong Europe on an unwilling public, as British tabloids crow. The motives are pragmatic, which is always the case when Europe takes a big step forward. The crisis taught Europeans that if they want to protect their prosperity, there is no alternative to tighter policy coordination. If European institutions are more advanced than those elsewhere in the world, it is simply because the continent is more interdependent—economically, legally, even culturally—than any other. In tough times, a united Europe is viewed, with some justification, as an economic and political safe haven.

So it's about the money.

If one desperately want Europe to be about "higher" values, then it's perhaps not so good news. The one nice thing about pragmatic solutions however, is that they have a tendency of working out.

 

[azzaman333]

The EU can't work instantly. If it is to succeed it will take quite a bit of time.

 

[Arwon]

Caste system doesnt mix well with Democracy

So? It's still a vibrant and democracy of over 1 billion people with dozens of official languages, a huge range of cultures and religions and, by some counts, over 1 million NGOs. There is no upper bound on the size or cultural diversity of a democracy. Above a certain size it probably needs to be a federal system to work, but it still does.

 

[Winner]

You couldn't be more wrong about this. Cultures can be forced into being, and Europe is a prime example of that. During the whole 19th and early 20th century all the countries in Europe were busy inventing a national culture from scratch (including a national language, and making up "history" about some glorious ancestors) or reinforcing what they had and erasing any differences.

Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia/Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Greece, etc... none of these even had a national language! Not even Italy.

First, I agree than 19th century nationalism created nations, not the other way round. It took existing sentiments and feelings and forged them into a newly defined notion of "nationality".

Second, I totally don't think it did it "from scratch". Since I obviously know the most about my own country, I'll say it's untrue that modern Czech was "invented" during the 19th century. It existed as a literary language even in the medieval era and later boomed during the Renaissance. It was then forcefully suppressed by the Habsburgs and fell out of use in sciences and "high" literature, thus it lacked many of the more "refined" terms that appeared in languages which were not restricted this way.

During our own boom of 19th century nationalism, which we call the "national revival" (and which I utterly hate because I had to learn all that crap at high school), a handful of educated bilingual Czech-Germans simply took the existing language, codified it and enriched it with modern terms thus making it possible for it to be used as a language of sciences and high literature. As a result, we have our own complex terminology in physics, chemistry, literature, etc., which is totally different from the more international one used in other countries. Woohoo

Language, literature, folklore, institutions... all these were invented, and the process continued well into the 20th century. It even continues today, as croats and serbs split into two a language originally created by a 19th century Slavic nationalist against the Austrian-hungarian/german influence in the Balkans. Ironically one who received help, in that nationalistic endeavor... from like-minded nationalist germans! In central/eastern Europe all nationalisms go back to Johann Gottfried Herder. Ironic also that it was a german philosopher who supplied the inspiration for a movement which would break the primacy of german culture in Mitteleuropa.

Personally, I find the tendencies of every minor group to re-invent its local dialect as "language" pretty amusing, especially in the Balkans. Montenegro is now pushing for international recognition of its "Montenegrin" language, which is probably more similar to Serbian than my Brno 'dialect' is to Prague 'dialect'.

And the EU has been busy of late, setting up its propaganda machine with the purpose of creating "EU national feelings". The "reforms" in higher education in Europe, for example, fit into that.

EU is not doing enough. The process should start with the primary education - I propose including subjects such as "European history&culture" or "European Identity" to be included in the curriculum. This should be expanded and intensified as the students advance. And it shouldn't stop when the students graduate. Public service media and even the commercial media should be encouraged to include more educative programmes concerning Europe, the EU, how it works, what it does, how does it benefit us, etc.

This must go hand in hand with intensive language teaching - we need EU citizens to be able to communicate with each other in at least one widely spoken language. Also, more info about the rest of the world - especially accentuating the differences - could be useful to forge a European cultural/national identity into something solid.

 

[Winner]

I like being eurobrothers with Victor/Winner, Shekwan and the rest

In all seriousness though... Who wants to be a member of a globally insignificant country? Or, if not insignificant, at least somewhat "mediocre"? I sure as hell don't. And the European Union currently seems to be the only way for Sweden to get a chance at that.

Yup, this is a perfectly rational argument that should appeal to everyone, including those who're not really fond of the EU. We have two choices here - stick to our pathetic little national identities and watch how we fall into obscurity and irrelevance in the world dominated by superstates like USA or China, or relegate these identities to the level of regional identities and embrace a wider European identity in addition to them, and build a strong federal Europe which will be able to look after its interests in the world.

Europe, when it acts in a coordinated manner, is a force to be reckoned with and will remain such a force for at least another century. If we act like a bunch of little morons, we'll end up like the ancient Greek city-states, gobbled up by more powerful neighbours. Perhaps not in the literal sense, but it won't be pleasant.

The English say billion, the rest of the world say milliard. There was a discussion about this on the forum a few years back.

You better read this sooner than later:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

It's amazing how often you find wrong translations of the English terms "billion" and "trillion" in books and articles published in the Czech Rep. I don't understand how these people can call themselves "translators", I'd fire every single one of them

Which is why I am going to do this for a living, to show those pathetic losers that literal translation of English is a crime, a rape of the Czech language

Hopefully you and I can become part of the first generation that fully identifies with the ideals of European unity over stupid nation state allegiances.

In the former Eastern Bloc, it will definitely take a generation or two. My parents, for example, still find it weird and difficult to believe that they can travel all over EUrope without passports and without running into barbed wire fences and armed border guards

However, the EU will ultimately be proven as the organisation that ensured long term peace in Europe. The Cold War was a passing crisis that NATO was cobbled together to deal with. The EU creates the economic interdependece and common democractic ideals that ensure that for the foreseeable future war among European will not happen. Military alliances can only ensure a temporary status quo, the EU ensures a peaceful future as well as a peaceful present.

This. NATO was an alliance against a common enemy. EU is a lot more, it's an embryonic federation designed to make war between its members not just unlikely, but utterly impossible.

<snip>

So it's about the money.

Don't be so Marxist It's actually about everything. Yes, the EU must be frustrating to certain American 'experts' who predict the collapse of it EVERY time some sort of crisis appears at the horizon. In reality, the EU usually ends up being even stronger and more deeply integrated.

If one desperately want Europe to be about "higher" values, then it's perhaps not so good news. The one nice thing about pragmatic solutions however, is that they have a tendency of working out.

Higher values always follow. Super-structure?

Seriously, if it wasn't for the European cultural identity and the sense of common destiny, it would never work. We can see that in other parts of the world, where deeper integration would make a lot of sense, but it simply doesn't happen because the countries there don't feel 'related' to each other.

 

[philippe]

haha greece gets iced by the eu and greeks go eu is a mistake!!!!

 

[RedRalph]

I don't like the details, but the basic overarching principals are sound.

So I don't like what it is, but I like the poptential of what it could be.

 

[Benefactor]

What in particular do you not like RRW?