The European Project: the future of the EU.
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That must be the reason why so many people complaining about that "foreign" supra-national vermin do not want to be vaccinated anymore
That must be the reason why so many people complaining about that "foreign" supra-national vermin do not want to be vaccinated anymore
I am sure many are downplaying the threat of the Eubola virus
I am sure many are downplaying the threat of the Eubola virus
Many Capitals of larger, and/or former empire, countries are downplaying the negatives of their intervening in regions and downplaying the (growing) prosperity gaps between them and rural regions.
The bulk of the EU contribution is a forced treatment to redistribute money from Capitals to regions, from rich Capitals to poor regions. NOT from rich Capitals to poor Capitals.
It has about the same "capital strength" per year as the well-known Marshall Plan after WW2, with as difference that the Marshall Plan lasted much shorter.
If the UK is "able" to exit, we will all read the coming years the articles on the regions in the UK that are going to miss their money.
So yes, the EU project is like a virus for the Capital City elites. And yes... the EU has downplayed that region strategy. National politicians happy to "claim" those projects, including in some countries their "share".
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innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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Yes it would. As things stand testing is not done. Regulations are written by the corporations. Eevery country can cut investment on doing that and say it must be done centrally, and no one among the public is actually watching and holding accountable those who are supposed to be doing it - it is "too far away".
Proximity in decision making may not be efficient, but I care more about accountability and public choice than about technocratic efficiency.
That committees are centralised in the EU does not mean at all the the scientific research is done centrally. This is allocated to universities, institutions, etc in EU countries. And every country tries to get its share ofc.
This method does prevent that everything is done in 28-fold.
And it is not forbidden for EU countries to be more strict in implementing the insights, like for example France with "Roundup" glycophosphates, Denmark with zero transfats in food, etc.
In nation-states this control is mostly much more centralised (committees AND research), and provinces have seldom the freedom to deviate for their own area.
yes, Corporate is always there trying to bend everything to their interests. And governments are always busy with imposing regulations on Corporate. An endless struggle.
There are in the EU clear differences between countries how well a government performs there in that bargaining process.
Apparently you think that more local accountability is a better defense than a smaller difference in knowledge, resources and in raw power the EU is anyway stronger. We disagree there.
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innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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One example: the testing of emissions from automobiles. Who actually tested how they behaved? How much easier it will be to fool one lad instead of a dozen or two dozen, even if each is less funded? And how effective will industry be in corrupting or fooling many people instead of only one group?
Bad example for technical reasons.
Everybody (inside technical, the engineers incrowd) knew that the emission reduction demands for cars by the EU were impossible.
Even I knew it well in advance of the whole mess.
edited
added "for cars"
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EnglishEdward
Deity
Ah, so you admit that EU demands are impossible.
And yet the EU took the UK to court because the UK did not meet those impossible EU demands.
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...n-to-europes-highest-court-over-air-pollution
The demands to car manufacturers for cars were technically impossible.
That was the context of my answer to the post of Innonimatu.
(I have added "for cars" in my post).
It was like the Star Wars system. Politics wanted it to be true, needed it to be true, and told the car manufacturers it had to be true. The car manufacturers were stupid in accepting it. And the politicians involved have amnesia.
Reducing air pollution levels in cities can be done in many many ways.
When the EU (those 28 countries incl the UK) decides a certain level, and there is no veto, then countries have to find a way to handle it.
EnglishEdward
Deity
Yes, but it is not really possible to plan to reduce air pollution to any particular level in any place when there is no control permitted
(FOM) on the number of people there and the EU regulators were letting car manufacturers put out false information on emission levels.
I agree that those higher car emissions added to the mess.
The EU could have increased the acceptable level based on that "progressive insight".
But the politics involved generates always irrational factors. On the level of 28 PM's, or at national level.
Mostly coming from politicians who think that makeability (their basic trade) is higher than restrictions from reality like technical possibilities or related costs.
I have 30 years experience behind me with chemicals and health, safety and environmental regulations. The general direction and even time pressure was quite ok for me. The practical implementation by my national government, provincial and local bodies, mostly littered with incompetence and "impossibilities" from politics. Everybody, companies, consultants and civil servants, are masters in workarounds until it is solved. The newsmedia have no clue what happens.
innonimatu
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Regardless of the sanity of the decision makers in the EU who set those emission goals, my point stands: the centralized system of testing and regulation either lied to cover it up, or failed abjectly.
The lies would have been impossible to coordinate if testing was done in many countries independently. And the failures would not have been replicated in all.
As things stand now there is no real testing on many products: they are just taken "in good faith" according to what the manufacturers or a single agency certifies. This may be "more efficient" (cheaper!), but imo it is not better. And, mind you, I have very good reasons to be pissed off with this specifically, having witnessed the voiding of the state laboratories in my country where only paperwork is done now.
Out of this the local europhiles argue that we must remain in the EU because we depend on it. Why of course, after decades of them deliberately sabotaging the ability of the country to to basic tasks required of any sovereign state! But as everything has an end, everything requires a beginning also: those capabilities must be rebuilt.
The lies would have been impossible to coordinate if testing was done in many countries independently. And the failures would not have been replicated in all.
As things stand now there is no real testing on many products: they are just taken "in good faith" according to what the manufacturers or a single agency certifies. This may be "more efficient" (cheaper!), but imo it is not better. And, mind you, I have very good reasons to be pissed off with this specifically, having witnessed the voiding of the state laboratories in my country where only paperwork is done now.
Out of this the local europhiles argue that we must remain in the EU because we depend on it. Why of course, after decades of them deliberately sabotaging the ability of the country to to basic tasks required of any sovereign state! But as everything has an end, everything requires a beginning also: those capabilities must be rebuilt.
Because it is more efficient, cheaper, you can "spend" part of those freed resources as a saving, and "spend" part of those freed resources to check, control, second opinions, do more.
But this does not mean for me a strong centralised top-down handling, excluding national, regional, sectoral inputs.
If you do business economics it is textbook stuff: how to allocate how much non-OPS overhead at how many layers/levels in your organisation. Optimising cost-benefits.
Lower levels can always tell you what centralised levels "do wrong" and have the backing (as supportive vote) for that from lower level employees.
Central levels can always tell you what lower levels "do wrong" and can "prove" with organised feedbacks that they have the backing from everyone. (or prove that municipalities are more corrupt).
The most important problematic factor I recognise is a cultural factor.
And with an international organisation, whether supra-national like the UN, Amnesty, EU, etc, etc or Big Corporate... it depends very much on the country culture gaps (trust system gaps) and how a HQ chooses to draw lines there (degree centralisation versus delegation).
Bringing those "controls" we speak of now to the lowest feasible level is indeed a major general discussion in Europe. The general discussion of for example representative or (more) direct democracy.
Brexit is for example about "taking back control" (the question is only imo to whome ? To the (benefit of the) local people or to the (benefit of the) local politicians).
I think much of that is driven by the feeling of citizens that they lost control on what they have-deserve, that they lost control on their future.
But projecting that personal feeling to top layers of representative systems, understandable as it is, is imo not good and not something to amplify, to feed.
I see much more healthy perspectives in organising participation channels. (and voting as spectator is NOT participating).
And on topic of for example food, medicins, standards... most countries have their movements, associations, etc that do participate into the civil society echelons that deliver expert reports to politicians.
And they do channel into MEP's (also importantly opposition MEP's, like the Greens), that do share between each other on such knowledge, experience and stakeholder-interests field.
Civil Society exchanges within Europe are mighty important.
It is a balance
And there are big cultural differences, big trust system gaps, between countries in the EU.
You look with Portuguese eyes ?
Here a simple Civic Honesty benchmark:
How big is the chance that a wallet found is brought back to the owner ?
A wallet with creditcards, etc but no money, the same with little money (10 Euro)
And do note that being money in the wallet increased the likeyhood it being brought back to the owner.
And yes... it correlates (from the top of my head) pretty well with corruption indexes (the not perfect ones, but we have no other, and still the ones that Finance Controller use for yearly updating their annual Risk reports).
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/06/19/science.aau8712
EDIT
And on the difference between participating and being a spectator.
Below a graph showing the actual behaviour as participant as function of money in the wallet (0, 10, 85 euro).
The spectator opinion.
The "expert" opinion.
And how bad did the spectators and experts predicted the actual behaviour !
To get better democracy you need enough citizens participating !
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That stat looks bizarre. Why would people report finding a wallet more when it has some non trivial amount of money?
I think anyone who isn't a douche would return it based on information (eg if has info like an ID, you can establish if the owner is a pensioner).
Surely the useful criterion would be the economic state of the founder. If you have money then you don't even have to think about it. But if one is starving, they should be excused for just taking some of the money and leaving the wallet somewhere to be found. Not that it is common to find wallets in the first place!
Not sure if people would return it if they are poor and it had 2000 euros in, unless the owner was called Vlad the Impaler.
I am quite sure that the people asked what they would expect what the behaviour would be had similar considerations as you list up.
But the bloody fact of a test with 17,000 wallets is that "bizarre" result !!!
I lost BTW my wallet a couple of months ago. No money in it, only plastic pay card, credit card, etc... but including my public transport chip card with still 50 Euro on it (that everybody could use without pincodes), and my driver license card (also ID for many purposes and black market value)
Two weeks later I got a phone call from the local police office and after that check they even brought it the same evening.
And yes the nuisance of new cards is there and a good reason for someone finding it to get it returned. That 10 euro seems trivial compared to that.
The explanation in that article is that that little bit of real tangible money made it for the finder more a matter of a conscientious decision than abstract plastics. And the more money of 85 Euro increased that conscentious aspect.
And yes... the homo economicus would say, the finder can keep that 10 euro, I am most happy to get my plastic cards back. That and the "economical state" of the founder is for sure part of the reality of our world.
But we are more, we are also social beings with empathy. We are able to reverse the situation and imagine ourselves the one having lost a wallet.
And do mind... if you have little.... why damage your selfrespect instead of boosting it ?
I believe the explanation has most of all to do with "distance", skin in the game, real, tangible.... being a close reality participant instead of a far away abstract anonymous spectator.
And this is part of the problem of a civil servant handling you as a number.
And this is part of the problem of voting as spectator.
Like "migrants as a abstract concept are wrong" (spectator), but the guy nextdoor (who is for example Turkish) is quite ok (participant).
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EnglishEdward
Deity
It takes time, and often money, to walk a found wallet into a police station.
If there is not much money in it, people may think it not worth the bother.
There are 167 non-EU countries in the world.
Out of those, what do you think how many:
a) even have any regulations concerning motor vehicle emissions?
b) have independent regulatory testing agencies/facilities, approving or disapproving produced/imported models?
I don't know, but you can try to find out and report back. At least regarding b).
Government spending in Portugal was last recorded at 44.0 percent of GDP in 2018.
I have no idea how high it would have to be to "rebuild" (and adequately perform) all those capabilities we depend on the EU on for now, but I'm guessing well above 100 percent.
And no, "but we could do it all by ourselves in the golden days of old!", is not an adequate answer.
Vehicle emissions testing is but one out of hundreds of concerns (or "basic tasks required of any sovereign state") that states in those days did not have to bother themselves with.
mitsho
Deity
The increasing complexity of the world requires cooperation, you showed that eloquently. And it's these challenges we need the EU for, Climate Change, Competition Regulation (Data Protection, Digital Multinational Companies), World Peace (i.e. foreign policy). The EU we have now has taken a few distinctive decisions on regulation over the last 50 years that could have been done differently. Some of these, i.e. freedom of movement without social security or a redistributive system have lead to the problems it is facing now. But there are also examples from the other side of the political spectrum.
At an event a few days ago, a Brussels Correspondent said that the biggest fear of the EU after the Brexit vote was, that this could be a start of an alternative version of the EU. Thank god the British were too incompetent to achieve this*, but it seems to be the reason the EU bureaucracy is so harsh in their discussions with the UK. *It would have taken too much time to achieve this rebuild even if it could be done better. So that is my hope that the new more diverse parliament manages to do some reform so that after the next elections, there isn't such a long and kinda embarrasing process to select the new President of the EU Commission - even if it is very democratic.
It seems silly to think that all the stuff the EU does now could be done at a national level. In any case it would be terribly inefficient. But that doesn't mean that we may need to have more control, more transparency or a totally alternative system to achieve the main goals.
At an event a few days ago, a Brussels Correspondent said that the biggest fear of the EU after the Brexit vote was, that this could be a start of an alternative version of the EU. Thank god the British were too incompetent to achieve this*, but it seems to be the reason the EU bureaucracy is so harsh in their discussions with the UK. *It would have taken too much time to achieve this rebuild even if it could be done better. So that is my hope that the new more diverse parliament manages to do some reform so that after the next elections, there isn't such a long and kinda embarrasing process to select the new President of the EU Commission - even if it is very democratic.
It seems silly to think that all the stuff the EU does now could be done at a national level. In any case it would be terribly inefficient. But that doesn't mean that we may need to have more control, more transparency or a totally alternative system to achieve the main goals.
EnglishEdward
Deity
The EU is not the only form of cooperation, although the
Brussels elite would like its denizens to think that.
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