The European Project: the future of the EU.

[EnglishEdward]

Historically yes; but the game is changing.

A lot of those London office jobs are now becoming working from home jobs.

London house prices and rents are starting to fall while
coastal and rural house prices and rents are rising.

 

[Gorbles]

That is definitely one shakeup that isn't going away - the rise in remote working (for the sectors where it's appropriate and even applicable). It has been a welcome change, although way overdue, for companies to be forced to recognise that it's an entirely workable and situationally-beneficial agreement to have with their workers.

The main challenge going forwards will be maintaining working demographics like hospitality, considering the massive hit Covid has brought to that sector(s), as well as righting the historic abuse of workers' rights in that regard (zero-hour contracts, for example).

 

[innonimatu]

For example Syrian refugees get much too much newsmedia attention to be used in for example Portugal for the abusive work in the agricultural sector that Portugal "needs" for export.
IDK reliable figures of undocumented migrant workers, but it is huge, and growing with the growing agricultural export, and anyway "needed" for the Portugese economy as it is handled now.
The gig workers needed in the tourism sector can be added (another migrant profile AFAIK, and the "domestic help" workers (undocumented elderly care and household) another profile).
I guess when all undocumented migrants would leave Portugal, the economy will collapse (at least for a while). Other South European countries in a similar situation depending on region.
This is a totally other situation than East-Europe (stone-walled) or the North-West of Europe.

The agricultural sector is diverse here and the use of migrant workers is very much a new thing. It started with the romanians and bulgarians some 10 years ago and is now based on importing people from the indian subcontinent. Always on a temporary basis, with the full connivance and indeed guiding of the government.
As (most of) eastern Europe progresses and we keep sinking those eastern europeans were starting to get expensive! Portuguese are already emigrating away into Hungary, for one example. And it's for low-paying jobs, not the tech professionals who think they have no country.
This import of migrants scheme is nor really necessary, and is mostly tied into some sectors where the business is mostly foreign-owned: irrigation in Alentejo for crops such as olives or certain vegetables for export northwards in Europe. Starting to get into wine also. The portuguese profiting from it are actually the landowners who rent the land to foreigners (mostly but not only spanish) doing these operations, and the local farmers complain that the intensive use made of it leaves the land barren and abandoned after a few years. Easier to rent another plot than to pay for lost of fertilizer. This kind of agriculture is not really a sane economic bet. As for tax receipts and employment: if the products are exported and the corporations are foreign-registered, what taxes are paid here? If the migrants workers are exploited and not even declared? Only the tax on land rents I guess. It's not even useful for the commercial balance because locked into the euro as we are that's not an issue - at present. And this agriculture is completely short-termist, it's not creating a local infrastructure/knowlege base that could be useful in the future. We're a country run by corrupt idiots.

The (mostly imported also) gig workers for tourism and now things such as food delivery are other things that build no foundation for anything, no structure for progress.

No the economy would not collapse if all this ended overnight, if all undocumented migrants left (or just ceased coming - and the documented ones for seasonal labour also). The local people benefiting from this are very few indeed, the wealth spent and remaining here likewise. And in any case tourism has been killed by the idiots who run my country thinking they were "saving tourism" by refusing to handle this pandemic properly. Even now they pretend to control the borders while refusing to actually control them. Border crossings have been reduced because the rest of the world is treating us as if we have the plague (we do!), but no strict and enforced quarantine and test scheme was put in place. It's all theatrics, to avoid spending more from the state budget and to "reopen" as soon as the government can get away with it. Because they're very concerned with not writing off a few billion that the local air company is supposedly still worth. In their imagination, because of course air travel companies are bankrupt and will have to downsize enormously and continue to exist based on state support for years to come. There is no strategy, there is only denialism of the problems, and therefore inability to produce solutions.

What is collapsing is the ability to produce capital intensive anything because investment is pushed into get-rich-quick schemes based on exploitation of cheap labour. Both state investment (austerity good!) and private investment for anything hard and productive has been cut over the last decade.

 

[Hrothbern]

The agricultural sector is diverse here and the use of migrant workers is very much a new thing. It started with the romanians and bulgarians some 10 years ago and is now based on importing people from the indian subcontinent. Always on a temporary basis, with the full connivance and indeed guiding of the government.
As (most of) eastern Europe progresses and we keep sinking those eastern europeans were starting to get expensive! Portuguese are already emigrating away into Hungary, for one example. And it's for low-paying jobs, not the tech professionals who think they have no country.
This import of migrants scheme is nor really necessary, and is mostly tied into some sectors where the business is mostly foreign-owned: irrigation in Alentejo for crops such as olives or certain vegetables for export northwards in Europe. Starting to get into wine also. The portuguese profiting from it are actually the landowners who rent the land to foreigners (mostly but not only spanish) doing these operations, and the local farmers complain that the intensive use made of it leaves the land barren and abandoned after a few years. Easier to rent another plot than to pay for lost of fertilizer. This kind of agriculture is not really a sane economic bet. As for tax receipts and employment: if the products are exported and the corporations are foreign-registered, what taxes are paid here? If the migrants workers are exploited and not even declared? Only the tax on land rents I guess. It's not even useful for the commercial balance because locked into the euro as we are that's not an issue - at present. And this agriculture is completely short-termist, it's not creating a local infrastructure/knowlege base that could be useful in the future. We're a country run by corrupt idiots.

Yes
Short term thinking of the government on increasing money from export, whether crops or sunny beaches. And there are always vultures, big and small. The small ones "legitimising" the big ones.
And with failing proper taxing on companies, you need at least the income tax on workers. Getting paid low resulting for legal workers with progressive income tax systems in low tax and zero tax for illegal workers and workers paid with dirty money (whole or partially).
A creeping problem also in NL. With Covid much too much came in daylight on working conditions and forced payments of housing and food... and inspectors (and also trade unions) suddenly overwhelmed by facts nobody wants to know or remember.
Our ministry of agriculture too much turning a blind eye because of the farmers lobby and the same for provincial and municipality political responsible people.
We need more undercover journalism there... and shame involved people turning a blind eye.

What is collapsing is the ability to produce capital intensive anything because investment is pushed into get-rish-quick schemes based on exploitation of cheap labour. Both state investment (austerity good!) and private investment for anything hard and productive has been cut over the last decade.

Yes... I think this is the real issue.... many lost years and deeper in the pitfall.

No the economy would not collapse if all this ended overnight, if all undocumented migrants left (or just ceased coming - and the documented ones for seasonal labour also). The local people benefiting from this are very few indeed, the wealth spent and remaining here likewise. And in any case tourism has been killed by the idiots who run my country thinking they were "saving tourism" by refusing to handle this pandemic properly. Even now they pretend to control the borders while refusing to actually control them. Border crossings have been reduced because the rest of the world is treating us as if we have the plague (we do!), but no strict and enforced quarantine and test scheme was put in place. It's all theatrics, to avoid spending more from the state budget and to "reopen" as soon as the government can get away with it. Because they're very concerned with not writing off a few billion that the local air company is supposedly still worth. In their imagination, because of course air travel companies are bankrupt and will have to downsize enormously and continue to exist based on state support for years to come. There is no strategy, there is only denialism of the problems, and therefore inability to produce solutions.

I said collapsing (for at least a while).
You start missing a lot of export revenues, although only part comes in the public treasury, still more does end up in the Portuguese economy.
That starting dip is a hurdle, or should I say the depth of the pitfall.
I believe that you only can get decent systems in place when you eliminate the dirty money circuit (with adequate minimum wage)
And to be clear: I do not mind the dirty money (no VAT) at the level of pocket money, although I would solve that with a high enough level of income at zero income tax and then eliminate it.

 

[innonimatu]

You start missing a lot of export revenues, although only part comes in the public treasury, still more does end up in the Portuguese economy.
That starting dip is a hurdle, or should I say the depth of the pitfall.
I believe that you only can get decent systems in place when you eliminate the dirty money circuit (with adequate minimum wage)
And to be clear: I do not mind the dirty money (no VAT) at the level of pocket money, although I would solve that with a high enough level of income at zero income tax and then eliminate it.

But for that to happen a whole lot of laws would have to change. Because this stuff is mostly legal. The "gig economy" has broken laws and gotten them changed for its benefit. Temporary work firms are owned by "socialist" MPs whose lawyer firms write the labour "reforms" that get passed in Parliament. The EU provided both the modus operandi to learn this legalized corruption from, and the political cover to do it without fear of consequences, for There IS No Choice. Or so we're told.
The tax evasion of small single-owner businesses pales in comparison with the income that evades taxes simply be relocating the formal head office to some other country. The ones who have been squeezed are indeed the small businesses, they don't have lawyers writing the laws for their benefit.

We got very modern indeed over the past 30 years, were dedicated students!
It's not a malaise of my country only, as you observed. This model of exploiting labour more and more, of evading taxes and preaching "austerity", has managed to avoid a democratic backlash and be ended immediately because it plays on being widespread. On the idea of TINA to preempt the reaction to it.

 

[Zardnaar]

But for that to happen a whole lot of laws would have to change. Because this stuff is mostly legal. The "gig economy" has broken laws and gotten them changed for its benefit. Temporary work firms are owned by "socialist" MPs whose lawyer firms write the labour "reforms" that get passed in Parliament. The EU provided both the modus operandi to learn this legalized corruption from, and the political cover to do it without fear of consequences, for There IS No Choice. Or so we're told.
The tax evasion of small single-owner businesses pales in comparison with the income that evades taxes simply be relocating the formal head office to some other country. The ones who have been squeezed are indeed the small businesses, they don't have lawyers writing the laws for their benefit.

We got very modern indeed over the past 30 years, were dedicated students!
It's not a malaise of my country only, as you observed. This model of exploiting labour more and more, of evading taxes and preaching "austerity", has managed to avoid a democratic backlash and be ended immediately because it plays on being widespread. On the idea of TINA to preempt the reaction to it.

I think the concept is running out of gas.

 

[Kyriakos]

In case you were wondering what the greek prime minister looks like topless.

Not sure how the country went from a serious person, like Eleutherios Venizelos, to an endless procession of utter clowns

https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/...VZRXTFmdS83txZw51RN1Mm5E4pRDuL_DfpFmp05pYbZJ4

 

[innonimatu]

They all seem to think they should be strippers... that's not the first PM or president to do it!
But I thing I get it. From the current professional politics to prostitution the distance is small isn't it?

 

[innonimatu]

This interview with Wolfgang Streeck is worth reading. He's been one rare honest commentator on the german situation within the EU. And has a gift to put succinctly what the supranational projects are about, and the main problem with it.

"The main enemy of neoliberalism is the sovereignty of the people”, as Chantal Mouffe puts it. Today’s globalism, which declares national sovereignty outdated, even dangerous and immoral, is essentially an attempt to exclude democratic politics from the governance of the economy, turning the economy over to a “free market” on a global scale. That market is in fact not free, but an empire of huge firms operating globally but based nationally, almost all in the United States. Moreover, there is no lack of national sovereignty in that empire, only that it is the sovereignty of the hegemonic states, above all the United States, that lord over the non-hegemonic, peripheral states. Anti-sovereign rhetoric is the rhetoric of the powerful afraid of the less powerful insisting on their independence and on the democratic will of their citizens. What the strong want to eliminate is the sovereignty of the weak, not their own sovereignty.
[...]
As to the European Union, yes, I am a “critic” of it, as you say, but not because I am against peace and cooperation among European countries, to the contrary. As a devoted European I insist that Europe is not the same as the European Union, as much as EU functionaries and beneficiaries may try to make us believe this. I am a nationalist only in the sense that I am against imperialist anti-nationalism, which I identify with hierarchical, techno-bureaucratic centralized rule by nations over nations with different historical settlements between capitalism and their societies’ ways of life. I am all in favor of a European Union or however it may be called, but it should be a cooperative of democratic nation-states, a confederation if you will, of states which in order to be democratic must be sovereign since without sovereignty democracy runs dry.
[...]
In fact, one reason why I am against the kind of European Union that has been shaping up for the past two decades is that Germany would inevitably be its hegemon, more or less hidden behind a deeply asymmetrical alliance with France. A German European empire lacks both historical legitimacy and the resources needed to compensate dependent peripheral countries for accepting German rule. The result would be perennial tensions between Germany and the rest of Europe, as well as inside Germany over the price to pay for empire.

And do see what he has to say about the invocation of "solidarity" made by these neolinberal projects:

Concerning “traditional left-wing international solidarity”, as you put it, what it meant was above all cross-national solidarity among classes, not classless solidarity among states. Organized workers in one country were to support organized workers in other countries in their struggle against capitalist exploitation, for example through solidarity strikes or by refusing to engage in wage competition with the workers in other countries. Why this should require abolishing national sovereignty at the state level escapes me. Countries should to the contrary be helped to exercise their sovereignty, for example in taxing their very rich – there are lots of very rich precisely in so-called poor countries, which is in part why these countries are poor. Such help would include the Left in rich countries fighting unlimited mobility of capital. Poor countries should not have to depend on paternalistic handouts from rich countries or international organizations. International solidarity can support but cannot replace national struggles for worker rights and democracy, nor will “global governance” deliver economic and democratic convergence between rich and poor nations or regions. Democracy and equality cannot be decreed from above by a benevolent international bureaucracy, be it located in Brussels or in New York; it has to be fought for from below and on the ground, which can only be a national ground. “Workers of all countries unite” means fighting for democracy in your own country while helping as best as possible others doing the same in their country. Solidarity and internationalism are important, but if they are vested in international markets and imperial organizations all you get is neoliberalism and imperial rule; they must be rooted in national politics and fought for from there, or they won’t get very far.

 

[innonimatu]

How to do the rule of law thing the EU way...

As recently as 2018, the ECJ ruled that an EU-Morocco fishing agreement was only valid “in so far as it is not applicable to Western Sahara and to its adjacent waters.”
The EU response was to dispatch a European Parliament fact-finding mission to “consult” with some Saharawi groups approved by Morocco, and claim that their consent was sufficient to satisfy the standard set by the court. This sleight of hand let the EU claim that the agreements with Morocco allow it to exploit Western Sahara’s resources without implying “any form of recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara.”

 

[Kyriakos]

Turkish defense minister provided a nice quote yesterday: "The army of Turkey is the army of the Prophet"

This lead (among other things, like a will to cancel the treaty of free passage etc from Hellespont and Bosporus) to a few ex naval commanders in Turkey to argue that there is extreme islamification of the armed forces, which in turn led to some of them arrested.

Meanwhile, the pitiful amalgam that is the Eu tries to pretend it is normal to help Turkey.

 

[r16]

"peygamber ocağı" , something like the household of the Prophet though New Turkey misses the meaning entirely by Sümeyye , the first female martyr of lslam -perhaps- originating from Central Asia . Meaning godless Kemalists have waken up to the thing that soon even the "Eurasians" will be given the boot from Army of Petrol , which will still keep its recently acquired almost racist character only for a little more - to be converted into one of lhvan at an incredibly rapid pace when Qatar tells them . With the background thing of an end of times Mehdi affair , which would be central to the final conversion .

are your people evacuating Averoff ? lts sinking in harbour will be the opening shot .

 

[Kyriakos]

Averof is just a floating museum; as you know ^_^

 

[r16]

exactly why your people should start moving stuff out ; considering my past as a museum guide . ı have no need to be extra hated for that .
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[r16]

there is a gap of two days between the posts and nobody might ever make a note of it , but let's say ı still act as some time capsule and Ursula von der Leyen has been made to stand while her male colleague settled easily in a throne . Where this "disrespect" of women arise from , you CFC people are not allowed to state your opinion (and don't ask why) but this make believe game to be put aside , because he would have given up the throne , before she could have walked out , but it serves when the goal really happens to be the establishment of an Arab state that will follow anyone's commands in the destruction of the Turkish Nation as a first target .

 

[r16]

only because the majority off topic people are from the US and might not follow it and it is such a cool example of the r16 thesis , the reportedly top executive person of the EU and the top legistative person of the EU visit New Turkey . ln previous visits they were equals and were seated on exactly same chairs or whatever with the PM , one each to the PM's side . Had not seen pictures yesterday , but they are quite delightful chairs instead of the bloatedly gold covered affairs but there are only two , and von der Leyen suddenly gets left behind and the EU guy happily sits in his chair . A grunt and only because EU loves New Turkey so much , unlike a certain poster still fails to accept , von der Leyen grunts and takes her sofa , leading to the Sofagate ... On a similar thing on the other side of the hall is the foreign affairs secretary of the palace cabinet . He says the EU people wanted two seats ... Junker or some guy named so says it is correct according to the EU protocol , though am pretty sure there are pictures that show him to one side and Tusk to the other ... As it is getting incredible , then we hear von der Leyen's protocol person got coronavirus and was left behind , while the guy's protocol person was there ... so , not New Turkey's fault . Not at all ... Because the Belgian guy did not walk out , out of a meeting where they were supposed to call foul and pressure New Turkey to return to the lstanbul Convention , and this is like kinda meek , because New Turkey is the 6th member of the UN Securoty Council with the veto power , and this statement will be taken as the truth with a day's effort by the 1984 of New Turkey , the ltalian PM has saved the EU's honour by using some bad word about the PM ...

when ı say the world doesn't like the Turk and will do everything to load the dice , because the world might be made to swallow the dice , effortlessly , anything goes ? lt is exactly so .

 

[Samson]

only because the majority off topic people are from the US and might not follow it and it is such a cool example of the r16 thesis , the reportedly top executive person of the EU and the top legistative person of the EU visit New Turkey . ln previous visits they were equals and were seated on exactly same chairs or whatever with the PM , one each to the PM's side . Had not seen pictures yesterday , but they are quite delightful chairs instead of the bloatedly gold covered affairs but there are only two , and von der Leyen suddenly gets left behind and the EU guy happily sits in his chair . A grunt and only because EU loves New Turkey so much , unlike a certain poster still fails to accept , von der Leyen grunts and takes her sofa , leading to the Sofagate ... On a similar thing on the other side of the hall is the foreign affairs secretary of the palace cabinet . He says the EU people wanted two seats ... Junker or some guy named so says it is correct according to the EU protocol , though am pretty sure there are pictures that show him to one side and Tusk to the other ... As it is getting incredible , then we hear von der Leyen's protocol person got coronavirus and was left behind , while the guy's protocol person was there ... so , not New Turkey's fault . Not at all ... Because the Belgian guy did not walk out , out of a meeting where they were supposed to call foul and pressure New Turkey to return to the lstanbul Convention , and this is like kinda meek , because New Turkey is the 6th member of the UN Securoty Council with the veto power , and this statement will be taken as the truth with a day's effort by the 1984 of New Turkey , the ltalian PM has saved the EU's honour by using some bad word about the PM ...

when ı say the world doesn't like the Turk and will do everything to load the dice , because the world might be made to swallow the dice , effortlessly , anything goes ? lt is exactly so .

It is so comically against the current zeitgeist, and it makes everyone look bad, with the possible exception of von der Leyen.

 

[innonimatu]

Actually it also makes her look bad. She can't even plan to get a chair.

 

[Kyriakos]

(edit, now bothered to read what this is about)
Don't worry, Germany will order her to make some reconciliatory statement. They don't care about female rights in Turkey or anything else; only money for Germany and pals.

I wonder how Draghi said this, however. They usually say clowny-funny stuff, ala Borel.

 

[Sofista]

To recap:

Erdogan receives EU dignitaries Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen. He sits with him on the honor seats, she is invited to sit on a sofa.

En passant: boo Michel for not taking the chance to sit with her or standing by the sofa.

Draghi merely said that the king is naked. He said (my translation): "I was very sorry for the humiliation von der Leyen had to endure. We have to consider that with these dictators, with whom we have to work together, one has to be honest about expressing the difference in views, behavior, vision, while ready to cooperate for the good of one's country".