The European Project: the future of the EU.

Coming back to the origins of this thread (since I‘ve been away, but I really like this topic and I too find that wealth map intriguing, but really can‘t say anything of substance towards it).

But I do feel that the success of Europe depends not on the big macro-economical indicators, but on the feelings of the average European. That‘s why stuff like „abolishing the roaming“ or the „free“ train passes for 18-year olds are so important. Now of course, all that fluff does is keeping the single market open which of course is hurting the poorer parts of society. The EU has always been a project of the economy, of the rich and of academia. It does need to catch up on social security, but that requires a strong parliament which in turn requires higher participation which in turn makes all that fluff so necessary. It‘s the little things people care about.

(And we maybe need a „european republic“, just google Ulrike Guerot and her ideas for more. I‘m not the biggest fan, but what she gets right is that the EU needs an offensive in the culture, not the politics: more essays, more songs, more theater plays, more competitions, more games, and not more political treatises et al.).

Btw. What do you guys think of www.volteuropa.org ?

Good points in going to roots of what people can envision as being European and building together the European project.

The current shared identity has very much to do with our shared cultures as root, and our shared (pragmatical or convictional) tolerance on our diversity.
Compared to many countries, many older EU countries have a remarkable high level of social welfare and security. That is very much a shared identity.
(that wealth analysis is making that part of our shared identity (with differences and all) visible in comparasion to non-EU countries, whether western OECD or emerging)
Converting all those cultures into state laws, budget, policies is however the task of politics, whether at national level or cooperating, sharing EU level..
Moving from a mere economical union to a shared identity reflecting our shared cultural elements needs more than merchants and their technical assistants.

That Volt program the kind of catch all that gathers positives (for especially younger people).
And yes, that being able to move freely (not only as tourist), to socialise freely across Europe, educations, jobs, etc is one of the most attractive consequences and characteristics of the EU according to polls.
If I just sit on a terrace outside a pub for a smoke (a bit cold) in the centre of Amsterdam, chat a bit with someone (also the smoke) on moviemaking (what he did), his Serbian girlfriend joining a bit later with family, a Croation guy joining as well, me talking with that girlfriend why have you a Dutch friend all the way here ? She: "here I have the dignity (like in my job) and freedom a woman will not have in my home country" Her mother a bit complaining about all the changes in her country and the old scars (more the ideological type as well).
And all sitting happily together IN that new future with past quarrels the past and past differences the non-dividing colors of today.
It is a vibrant period in Europe for the ones not behind their walls of the past or/and in rural places.
The young people socialising and merging... Theresa May had the nerve to marginalise them as "citizens of nowhere"
I call it progress in the most ordinary sense of the word. And Theresa May a conservative fossil, appealing to the darker sentiments of fear and control. The protective walls belong to the ones not moving on. Times are a changing. As always.
Newsmedia mostly reporting for the ones behind their TV's... the ones not participating in what happens... not sharing the vibes of the emerging society. As always. And always limping behind.
 
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An "european citizen" was sentenced to 6 months in prison for attempting to organize a political protest. Waiting for the EU institutions to contemn this attack on democracy and citizen's rights.

But wait, it's not a pole or a hungarian. It was in France. And France c'est la France...

The EU: defending democracy when it is not our good boys doing the oppressing.
I'm not sure what you'd like the EU to do about this. It's the French authorities that are doing this to him. The EU has little to no power over that. I mean of course, he can take the French state to court, and eventually, he can appeal to the EU court of human rights. I mean what would you have the EU do? This is a French domestic matter, and it's a no win case for the EU. If they interfere, some people will blame the EU for violating French sovereignty. And if they don't, EU is "anti-freedom"
 
[...] As always.
Newsmedia mostly reporting for the ones behind their TV's... the ones not participating in what happens... not sharing the vibes of the emerging society. As always. And always limping behind.

very nicely put, simply wanted to state that :)

Seems legit enough on the surface but why should we have to "gofundme". Should this kind of efforts not be funded via the EU?

What do you mean, legit? They ARE a newly founded party participating in the European elections this spring. Financing of political parties, by the way, would be one of those big differences between the various European states. There are some nations that pay more, but - without knowledge of all systems - there are some countries as well that pay their parties nada. I'm not sure we need to level the playing field (here and in general), but it would probably make sense as the parties in the EU parliament should be europe-wide parties. But then again, that could be seen as the EU interfering in national politics depending on the funding criteria. You see, quite a big challenge out of nothing, so let's leave it like it is for the moment, no? :)

And besides, probably every party existing ask for donations, no? Because you can always use that money (unless donations are forbidden... :)).
 
I read a bit of the “The Amsterdam Declaration”. There is enough federalisation there to make Inno blow every fuse in his body. It’s too much for me as well. Too much too fast and too little in the details.
 
Yeah, they are idealists and to be clear, I'm not sure I'd support them if I could vote.

But maybe such grassroots idealism is what is needed in this time dominated by the reductive nationalistic populism of the far right so dominating the airwaves in many European countries. Even if things like Pulse of Europe seem silly, it is a positive message that is needed to counter them. Engaging them leads nowhere, and I as a Swiss have long experience in that. Don't feed the trolls, as they say. So yes, let volt be idealistic, they can't change / do 90 % of what is on that Amsterdam declaration anyways. Now to the question whether one agrees with their goals at all, the other option I see is a reduction on the free market. We can debate that for sure, but what the big mainstream parties seem to be doing is to "muddle through" further, and that's just not exciting I think :)
 
That Amsterdam declaration is the typical pitfall.

With such a fresh movement or better think group...
You get mostly "catch alls" to attract everybody and "hows" to make it better understandable (not too abstract)
It's like designing a modern car from scratch, not inhibited by experience.
And that is truly great for a blank template start, as engineers can tell.
But only for that... for being "free" to be open for the new set of possibilities of today.
A kind of stripping the actual design that you have... back to the bare essentials of that design.

Back to Volt
you have to distinguish the "whats" from the "hows".
"what" you want, from "how" you want it.
If you would you go for example to some more backward neighborhood with all kinds of issues with a big sack of money... and you ask them "what" would you want, you get answers "how" to spend the money.
And then you need a lot of time to filter out "what" they really want, and how those "whats" rate in importance.
You have to reformulate those "hows" into "whats" that have several ways to be achieved, have several ways to be combined with other "whats"

And find out together which "whats" are shared by many or minorities, and at which weight.
And you have to find a common acceptance and handling approach on that plurality

And that were the positive "whats" and "hows"
Mostly behind many "hows" is something, a "what" that people do not want, or want to decrease.

And using the word decrease... fundamentally when wanting changes... it is about a "process"
Meaning you have your positive and negative "whats" as a kind of principles and you have to orden the timing and rate of achievement of your "whats" respecting all the time that it reflects well enough all involved in terms of plurality.

So it is all lovely idealistic and in that Amsterdam declaration they move head over shoulders to a "how" without really indicating on which "whats" (values, objectives, synergies, etc, etc, etc) it was really based.
The catch all principle.
After you get a lot of people who join, you get the (often disappointing) process for many people to discard the "whats" that they thought were behind it, because other people had other "whats" to join.
And you need endless discussions on that in-group, which is imo the very base of the strenght and the pleasure of such a young movement. Only using the "hows" to get your "whats" sharp, and shared, and a consensus on their weight, value and timing.
To get a nuanced principles declaration.
 
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Hopefully some of our French posters can shed some light on this. @AdrienIer, @Marla_Singer ?

A general answer from me would be a long post, which I have no time to make unfortunately. I could also delve into the specifics of this case but unfortunately I don't have time to do the research. If I have more time in the next few days and remember this I'll try to look it up
 
Looking from a country where court decisions have been both public and online for years, it's just sad how opaque to casual research french justice seems to be. A feature not a bug?

Not related to the topic, but can you get court records for free in Portugal? Here in the US most records are online and fairly easily accessible, but you do have to pay for them. It is often set up in such a way that you have to pay merely to search, and finding exactly what you want is very difficult to do if you only have enough money to download a few filings for example.
 
And yes, that being able to move freely (not only as tourist), to socialise freely across Europe, educations, jobs, etc is one of the most attractive consequences and characteristics of the EU according to polls.
If I just sit on a terrace outside a pub for a smoke (a bit cold) in the centre of Amsterdam, chat a bit with someone (also the smoke) on moviemaking (what he did), his Serbian girlfriend joining a bit later with family, a Croation guy joining as well, me talking with that girlfriend why have you a Dutch friend all the way here ? She: "here I have the dignity (like in my job) and freedom a woman will not have in my home country" Her mother a bit complaining about all the changes in her country and the old scars (more the ideological type as well).
And all sitting happily together IN that new future with past quarrels the past and past differences the non-dividing colors of today.

I concur, but I also wonder how big the fraction of people is, who cannot participate in that. Maybe because they cannot afford roaming around in Europe, maybe because they lack the language skills for casual chatting or maybe because they prefer to stay at home. The feeling you describe is certainly shared by many of the young and well-educated, but I fear that there probably is majority, which doesn't share that. It is shrinking, for sure, but is it shrinking fast enough?
 
Not related to the topic, but can you get court records for free in Portugal? Here in the US most records are online and fairly easily accessible, but you do have to pay for them. It is often set up in such a way that you have to pay merely to search, and finding exactly what you want is very difficult to do if you only have enough money to download a few filings for example.

I must correct myself, here currently only the decisions likely to contribute to jurisprudence (the higher tribunals) are all published in an easy to search way, in this site. The others, whils public by nature, must be asked for. I had not yet needed to search for first instance decisions.
 
I concur, but I also wonder how big the fraction of people is, who cannot participate in that. Maybe because they cannot afford roaming around in Europe, maybe because they lack the language skills for casual chatting or maybe because they prefer to stay at home. The feeling you describe is certainly shared by many of the young and well-educated, but I fear that there probably is majority, which doesn't share that. It is shrinking, for sure, but is it shrinking fast enough?

Fully agree with what you say with a caveat for "is it shrinking fast enough ?"
This cross-sharing, cross-socialising, "cross-breeding" will take generations.

The window of time for conceptual cultural change is relatively short in a human life (except for the exceptions). It is not an intellectual process but a feel process.
Young, socially still hungry, people are the ones causing most change at no-nonsense level. Socialising and working on the job together at human-human level powerfull.
It ofc starts in general in bigger and more international cities and takes time to spread out. And ofc it will stress somewhat the urban-rural divide. As always with change.

Compare it for example with the "recent" secularisation of society of the last 50+ years or so. Much of that happened also because people started dating and marrying with people of other religions, with non-religious people.
Much of the conceptual cultural changes of the past were along trading routes. If you were travelling, many chieftains, noble courts were happy to host you and expected stories back for the meal and hospitality. Traditional hospitality was not only a form of altruism, it was effective in getting intelligence, knowledge, best practice, eyeopeners, and ofc some distraction from the daily boredom as such and of the domestic soaps. An old Arab saying is that most wisdom is from scholars, philosophers and travellers.

So yes... I believe it will take time to get that EU salat bowl to a kind of shared identity, with as formal motto "United in Diversity", and not the blendered smoothy of "Out of many, one" , A shared identity, not by having an EU flag at every corner of the street, but by content, by a natural social process enjoying different colors that match together.
"Out of many, one", "E pluribus Unum", feels anyway too fascistoide to me.

Time it will take.
Why force it in a hurry ?
 
The young rarely vote as much as the old. The far right has absolute control over Hungary and Poland, a lot of power in Romania, is strong in France, Italy, and Britain, and is gaining ground in Germany.
He said, while Trump.
Unlike China or the US, there's no real shared identity, which throws out the possibility of that kind of unity further.
He said, while US culture war.
Germany started to give gas on export around 2000.
The Federal Republic ran substantial surpluses basically from about the late sixties going forward. This was interupted by about three years worth of oil crisis and about a decade worth of reunification related domestic spending.
Other than that you can pretty much run a line throught the whole thing.
We do have a shared European identity. Our common history, and our common European culture. We share the values of liberalism, of socialdemocracy, of support for the welfare state, of rejection of torture and the death penalty, of support for the rule of law, and of secularism.

[...]

We are Europeans. No matter how much the nay-sayers deny our existence.
Qft.
 
He said, while Trump.

He said, while US culture war.
:rolleyes:

Seriously? Come on. We've been in enough arguments for you to know better. You *know* I'm keenly aware of America's far-right, and of the splits in American society. The whole forum knows I've warned about each enough. Guess the allure of snark was too much to resist.

My point is that Europeans still tend to think of themselves by national identity over shared European identity, much like America before the Civil War and the railroads. Just look at all the movements to exit or break up the EU and not replace it with anything other than trade agreements. A lot of Europeans would rather have their states exist entirely independently. You don't see secession movements of any real strength in the US or China; there's much shared identity, and threat of force, for any secession movement there to have any chance. The EU, however, can crumble with a few referenda--and probably will.
 
The Federal Republic ran substantial surpluses basically from about the late sixties going forward. This was interupted by about three years worth of oil crisis and about a decade worth of reunification related domestic spending.
Other than that you can pretty much run a line throught the whole thing.

Here the net trade balance of goods and services of Germany and the EU as % of GDP (no currency effects) since 1970.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.RSB.GNFS.ZS?locations=DE-EU
It really starts in 2000 to go up (as everyone driving a lot on the German motorways noticed. Soooo many trucks clogging everything. The 2008-2009 crisis solved that traffic congestion for a while)

Schermopname (2331).png
 
:rolleyes:

[...] The EU, however, can crumble with a few referenda--and probably will.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It might.

But... Americans always believe the EU is like 3 years from total collapse. So that's not a relevant indicator.

And the inconvenience remains that this ugly business of that you guys characterised as "making the EU more like Germany" proved itself remarkably sustainable while the biggest crisis in the EU right now is the fact that the Texas of Europe threw a complete fit over the evil Germany inviting a moderate number of brown people in.
To Germany. Not to the Texas of Europe, which remained largely unaffected yet wholly triggered.

And there's the inconvenience that you have that orangutan next to Pelosi and Schumer posing for the American Gothic.
And no budget. Or functional government.

*weighingmotionwithmuhhands*

Just saying. :)
Here the net trade balance of goods and services of Germany and the EU as % of GDP
You refered to "exports".

So:
Try current account.
Or net exports.

Or post some unrelated graph that fits your narrative and the presumption that metatron doesn't know what he's saying.
That works, too. :p
 
You refered to "exports".

So:
Try current account.
Or net exports.

Or post some unrelated graph that fits your narrative and the presumption that metatron doesn't know what he's saying.
That works, too.

I worded my original post there not precise enough.
I did mean growth of the net trade balance driven by export
German industry went through a real transformation of its industry from migration, productivity and the easy access to East Europe after the fall of the wall.

Here below that Current Account as % of GDP with the big dip directly after the expensive unification and accelerating in 2000
Also the export as % of GDP showing that from 1995-2000 onward the trend breaks from the trend before.

Schermopname (2336).png
Schermopname (2337).png
 
And the inconvenience remains that this ugly business of that you guys characterised as "making the EU more like Germany" proved itself remarkably sustainable while the biggest crisis in the EU right now is the fact that the Texas of Europe threw a complete fit over the evil Germany inviting a moderate number of brown people in.
To Germany. Not to the Texas of Europe, which remained largely unaffected yet wholly triggered.

I presume you mean the UK by Texas of Europe (which is a pretty good line).
Have to say German immigration policies have hardly figured in UK politics.
Polish plumbers, swarming Turks and all sorts of other ridiculous stereotypes have but the UK is far too insular to really care about German internal affairs.
 
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It might.

But... Americans always believe the EU is like 3 years from total collapse. So that's not a relevant indicator.

And the inconvenience remains that this ugly business of that you guys characterised as "making the EU more like Germany" proved itself remarkably sustainable while the biggest crisis in the EU right now is the fact that the Texas of Europe threw a complete fit over the evil Germany inviting a moderate number of brown people in.
To Germany. Not to the Texas of Europe, which remained largely unaffected yet wholly triggered.

And there's the inconvenience that you have that orangutan next to Pelosi and Schumer posing for the American Gothic.
And no budget. Or functional government.

*weighingmotionwithmuhhands*

Just saying. :)
I have to admit, this is kinda cryptic. I'm not sure what you mean by the bolded. What process was said to be "making the EU more like Germany," and who said that? Americans? What's this about "American Gothic"? Just that we have Trump and two Democrats at once?

I know Bavaria is the Texas of Germany, but what's the Texas of Europe? Seems Poland or Hungary could fit for their contempt for Germany and refugees, or Britain, for being generally proud and threatening secession, but I'm not sure what you meant.

As for the EU's perceived fragility, it's because the EU *is* fragile. Poland and Hungary are straining it. Very large numbers of anti-EU voters in France and Italy are straining it. And the strongest proponents of the EU, like Macron, are having a hard time explaining its benefits. We saw this with the Brexit vote: Leave could promise the sky and worry about keeping promises later, while Remain had to explain the negatives of Leave and defend the status quo.

And yes, I'm well aware the US government is shut down. Everyone is. I'm not sure how that's relevant, though.
 
I have to admit, this is kinda cryptic. I'm not sure what you mean by the bolded. What process was said to be "making the EU more like Germany," and who said that? Americans?
That's a common trope among people who like Krugman and whatnot:
Germany is making all the Eurozone like itself - wage depression, balanced budgets, unseemly current account surplus.
That's arguably somewhat true. However it was supposed to cause the end of Europe like five years ago.
What's this about "American Gothic"? Just that we have Trump and two Democrats at once?
It's a meme. Pelosi and Schumer doing the the thing. Because... the Grant Wood painting.
It's not smart or anything. Just funny and you can't unsee it.
Just google it.
Poland and Hungary are straining it.
In contrast to the subsequent arguments that's true. Yes.

What's your expectation here exactly? Compare US and European history. Oh that we have not swung some magic wand to turn Europe into some candy land paradise federation clearly shows that we don't know what we're doing...
And yes, I'm well aware the US government is shut down. Everyone is. I'm not sure how that's relevant, though.
The shutdown is more the cherry on top.
It's really about the institutional dysfunction and the breakdown of the political process more generally.
 
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