You had fairly strong political support for a political federation ("united state of Europe") from day one. In some ways, it seems those ideas were more poular then than now, a Federal Europe was very much in the post-war Zeitgeist. I mean, even during the War there was an official proposal to merge France and the UK into a single country.
And you talk of historical revisionism. The proposed Franco-British Union was proposed under the auspices of France entering the Commonwealth, not a European Union, and needless to say the French would have put their Prime Minister under the chopping block if they knew what their PM was proposing ;]
In addition, the "ever closer union" has been a thing since the 1983 Solemn Declaration of the European Union, 10 years even before the Single Market. Pretending the political union was snuck in is historical revisionism.
Because having one narrative for the elites and one for the people is a clear display of honest intent.
inb4 holding repeated referendums until the people stop voting against integration is fake history because EU says soNow, to make things clearer to our Americans reader, we actually have something approaching a "Upper House" in the European Council (not to be mixed with the Council of the European Union, or worse, the Council of Europe. Isn't Europe fun? :p ).
I once tried explaining to someone the differences between the counties, boroughs, cities within cities and countries within countries within the UK, and they said such a system sounded like it was designed deliberately to confuse anyone so only dickhead politicians knew how things operated. I agreed in so far as that was probably how things were done, but it was more a result of a long continuous history, rather than intelligent design over the milennia. The EU is young though, it is obtuse by design
The European Council is made of the relevant minister from each of the government (so if it's an agricultural rule, it'll be the agriculture ministers and so on) and they also vote on EU law. In addition, for a lot of matter (migration, EU taxation, new country joining the EU, EU citizenship and some others) the council vote need to be unanimous, so every country got a veto.
Nah qualified majority is all that is needed, they changed it to stop the eastern europeans and britons vetoing anything
In addition to that, seats in the European Parliament are also skewed so that smaller states get a higher share than their population alone would warrant, with a mimum of 6 seats each (out of 750). So Malta acount for 0.8% of seats but 0.08% of the population, while Germany account for 15.97 percent of the population but 12.8% of seats. (The cutting point is between Poland (38 millions inhabitants) and Romania (19 millions inhabitant): the bigger six countries are underrepresented, the bottom 22 are overrepresented). Now, here I disagree with Helgoland in that I think that when looking at the raw "number of votes per seat", he ignores other aspect of the power dynamic. Basically, no one is going to ignore the Germans, even if their vote is individually worth less than that of the Maltese. In that sense, the German electorate is more powerful than the number alone suggest. On the other hand, if seat were attributed proportionally, would EU party even bother to campaign in Malta?
Here I disagree with both of you because the European Parliament is entirely meaningless except for funding MEPs with recieptless expenses and dank holidays at European expense; it proposes fuck all laws and cannot propose laws, that being done by the Commissioners who are sworn to represent the EU and not the nation states they belong to. Hence why the EU's real power does not lie in Malta, but in the big 5 of France, Germany, Italy, UK & Spain who
together contributed over half of the EU budget and so subsequently were far more influential than any other European nation within the EU.
I find it funny that Scriver keeps complaining about the discrimination of Sweden when northern and centroEuropean countries consistently act in block in their own interest, regardless of size.
And they never gib eurovision votes
As a south European I very much feel like a second class citizen, and that's without even getting into the Greek mess and the attitude from people (even here!) In the north. I've often seen posts here in which people express the feeling that 'suits them right'. Even though in no small measure this mess was cooked by the same supranational actors that are imposing austerity across Europe. Even though austerity measures are clearly not working (did you know that they needed another bailout recently? Turns out shaking them down for cash is not ideal for economic growth). Nevermind that Greek citizens are actually dying because the cuts are crushing the Greek healthcare system. And you talk to me about sheeps and wolves?
I loved it when people were saying the Greeks deserved it because they were lazy, it really showed the true colours of those speaking it. European solidarity in the Union at its finest
Seriously, Sweeden doesn't have the short end of the stick by any measure.
Ignoring the material collapse of its state, rule of law, defence via leaks and so on, Sweden is kill. Once your people are fucked in the head and demographics that hard, you can't really unfuck that lol. And in terms of numbers sure Sweden doesn't have it worse, but in terms of relative proportion - oh boy, they dug that grave deep
Had a transparent and dynamic public discussion been taking place in Sweden during the past months — a discussion that acknowledged both the need for human solidarity and the limitations of the country’s infrastructure — a more sustainable immigration policy might have emerged. Instead, it seems ill-fated policies will not be altered until the country brings itself to the brink of collapse.
Peak leftismI thought the UK was bad with our leftists still covering up the whole rape gangs but imagine a whole nation of those, not just one party. The mind recoils at the reality Sweden forged
You don't have the short end of the stick with immigration, either. Mass waves of immigrants from Africa have been arriving at Southern European countries for decades, now all of a sudden everyone are losing their minds about this, one way or the other. It seems to me that it's just that up there you didn't care as long as it was someone else's problem.
Sweden does not have the Navy needed to actually curtail any such migration and the Swedish mindset was that Southern Europe was not dealing with a problem; but were in fact dealing with a positive force of cultural enrichment and thus migration should've been encouraged more. So it's an unfair criticism to say Sweden was uncaring, their actions were motivated by altruism
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Topic: The friendly and polite Europe related terrible jokes thread (Read 1006733 times)