Edit. It seems my brevity has caused some people to miss my point (or maybe not). I am lamenting the huge loss of life that flowed from the Great War that was fought trying to prevent the creation of the EU.
On a personal note my great uncle died in the Great War and the effect this had on my family is still with with us to this day.
Your comment is short and slightly offensive, but sure there's some truth to that the diplomatic/economic European Union could have happend faster if people just hadn't warmongered so much.
The people living there were, to put it midly worse off, but I'm sure the leaders thought it was a great idea to expand their culturaly influence just a little bit too far.
The history of Europe in the 20th C. is really the long march towards a EU with Germany at the heart. It is more than a shame that so many died to end up exactly where we would have been if the Schlieffen Plan had worked [1].
Not disagreeing... would the Peters principal also apply? Intentionally hired to be incompetent that would also imply malice? Those involved
may have the best intentions, so no malice, and we're back to incompetence. Either way, if I were in charge and I needed someone to fumble it I would have picked her. That mail campaign asking people to self identify for deportation was the most anti Brexit thing I could imagine her doing.
The Peter Principle would imply she was a good home secretary. She was actually kind of a disaster, but spent her days keeping out of the press. It's fairly clear her instincts remain to disclose as little information as possible to the press. It's less clear that's a good idea as PM.
Edit: She was, however, probably the best candidate the party had. Ironically, the Labour Party has at least five people in parliament right now who'd make a better Prime Minister, but a fair few of those aren't even in the shadow cabinet.
You're correct. I read the principal incorrectly. The Peter principal requires that a person is competent before being promoted. The Dilbert principle doesn't apply either as management has too much power. There must be a principle where politically the most incompetent person you promote owes you the biggest favors.
It became voluntary for the British only because our Prime Minister was weak and (foolishly?) gambled on a referendum in return for strengthening his personal support among some of his eurosceptic MPs.
Leaders of other EU countries are unlikely to make the same mistake of letting their populations vote on the issue.
Same way as the structure of the EU itself is decided. Governments fight to keep things away from a vote. Regularly a vote is called anyway because some politician uses the promise of a vote as a way to get elected. Then the EU loses the referendum, election, ... that is called, and then the result is ignored.
Direct quote from Wolfgang Schauble (according to Yanis Varoufakis) : "elections cannot be allowed to set economic policy for the EU".
That sums up the attitude of the EU, and is the attitude that permeates both the EU itself and the basis of it's support. This is a quote from a private conversation I had with a Dutch judge. "What would have happened if we had let elections decide ? Norway would be driving on the left and we wouldn't have the Euro anywhere". The EU is seen by the local elites (the non-businessmen. Lawyers, teachers, doctors, ...) as a way to impose what they consider good policy.
The EU institutions itself are importantly not the real basis of power in the EU. Politicians get sent off to the EU to have a cushy, but faraway, job. It's where political careers go to die (especially the parliament). EU politicians are perceived to have less power than the local ones, even though the opposite is true. And that's what's really happening in Europe : power is shifting more and more locally. Barcelona's increased independence is big. The real power base of the Belgian and Dutch governments is specific cities (Antwerp and the Hague). Outside of those cities, things are going very wrong and support for the government is nonexistent.
But that's after half of the persons lost every cent they had paid of their mortgages, and consequently their houses, in 2008-2010.
Congrats to you, I guess...
Greece could have exited the EU, but there really wasn't the public appetite for it and it wouldn't actually have solved any of their problems.
(Somewhat analogous to being trapped in a bad job by poverty; you could quit, but if you don't have savings then your immediate cashflow problems are going to cause you suffering unless you have a better option lined up immediately.)
>Greece could have exited the EU, but there really wasn't the public appetite for it.
"As a result of the referendum, the bailout conditions were rejected by a majority of over 61% to 39% approving, with the "No" vote winning in all of Greece's regions."[0]
"Further, the European Commission signaled that the referendum question, to which they would recommend a "Yes", from its viewpoint should be understood as whether or not Greece wanted to remain part of Europe and the Eurozone, which at the present state included acceptance of receiving conditional bailout help on a set of mutually negotiated and agreed terms."[0]
I think it would be more accurate to say that the political and economic leadership operating within greece didn't have an appetite for it.
That referendum was stupid. Once you have debt, you have to repay it. Had they asked people how they preferred to pay it back, that would have been smarter. But just asking whether they accept a particular plan, without committing at the same time to an alternative plan... I find it ridiculous.
Or default, wouldn't have been the first sovereign default on debt "obligations"…
>I find it ridiculous.
Be that as it may, kicking the can down the road and doing more of the same is often a great long term solution.
But its ok, they "accepted" larger haircuts than originally proposed:
"On Monday, 13 July, the Syriza-led government of Greece accepted a bailout package that contains larger pension cuts and tax increases than the one rejected by Greek voters in the referendum."
That's why voluntary is a dangerous word to use in this context and discussion benefits from a clear distinction between the two cases.
To cite GP
> The EU is a voluntary union
Well, it is more voluntary than a Forth Reich but much less so than say a federation of Swiss-like democracies.
Since the EU has democracy, freedom, transparency .. as its core values but doesn't follow them in important aspects, it's hypocritical and that very fact is part of why the people don't perceive it as "a good thing" anymore.
The EU is a voluntary union though, given a country can exit the union when it wants to (see also Brexit).
The EU is also as democratic as the state governments allow it to be - it has European Parliament, but many things are still decided between the national governments. That's not something the EU, as a set of institutions, can solve - only the national states can change that.
So my conclusion is, the EU is often accused as the perpetrator of things it cannot change. Luckily enough people still perceive it as a good thing, even though populist or evil (mostly nationalistic) politicians are trying destroy it for the wrong reasons.
If the EU is a voluntary union, then how come it's members are democracies, yet almost every vote about joining the EU went the same way. Some examples:
It's not that they never won any referenda, but if anything has been made blatantly clear it's that EU constituencies do not want most of the EU. They want the Euro, Free trade and ... that's it. The EU most certainly does not have the consent of the governed.
They do not want the EU controlling local economies. They do not want the ECB. They do not want the EC as a local regulator. They do not want the EU to control the borders. They do not ... etc.
Recently the EU declared that anyone who has the right to exercise any protected job anywhere in the EU, has that right everywhere in the EU. That means doctors, accountants, ... This has got to be the stupidest move yet. The upper middle class is the center of support for the EU and this decision might decimate their incomes. Whether it will or not is even not that relevant, merely the fear of it will massively erode whatever support is left after the monumental immigration fuckups, the (financial, and real) devastation of southern Europe (now Italy has > 25% youth unemployment too, hell it's approaching 50% in some parts of southern Italy)
Furthermore, your claims are inaccurate. The EU parliament has no power. Power exists within the European Commission, and the trade organisations. The EC has the power to unilaterally impose laws on the member countries (as was demonstrated with Greece and more generally southern Europe or the so-called PIGS). There are very few things that are beyond the reach of the EC.
The EU has been an unmitigated disaster for normal people in the EU. That is the perception, and, frankly, it's accurate. Looking at how the EC operates, that is neither an accident nor beyond their scope.
1) Is a vote about leaving the EU, not joining it
2) Is not a vote about about joining the EU. It was a vote about an association agreement, which is different, and also it was people in one country voting about a different country. Not a great idea really.
3) The Greek referendum is not a vote about joining the EU, and in any way the greek government, after it downed on them how disastrous would be to follow the vote, went the opposite way.
4) and 5) prove that it is a voluntary union, and are not about joining the EU - all the countries are already members. Not sure what your point is.
"The EU most certainly does not have the consent of the governed."
Yes it does, and its approval rating is still way over 50% in most countries.
"This has got to be the stupidest move yet."
Actually it sounds rather good to me, but I'd like to have a link to that decision please. Medical doctors are however free to work in any country for years already, they still make very good money and there are still shortages o medical personnel everywhere (source: friends among emigrated medical professionals).
Southern Europe was given enough rope to hang itself and it did, but again this all were decisions of (corrupt and irresponsible) national governments, not of the EU.
"The EU parliament has no power."
It does have some, what I am saying is it has too little power.
"Power exists within the European Commission"
and also within the European Council (the summits), where all major decisions are taken. And this body consists of heads od the states.
"The EC has the power to unilaterally impose laws on the member countries"
It does not.
"as was demonstrated with Greece"
It was not demonstrated - Greece has to do things because otherwise the money will stop flowing and it will go bankrupt, which is a decision the Greek government can take at any time.
"There are very few things that are beyond the reach of the EC."
There are quite a lot of such things, national governments are still the institutions where most of the power resides. See the dictatorial tendencies of Hungarian and Polish governments, where the EC does almost nothing.
"The EU has been an unmitigated disaster for normal people in the EU."
Most of which currently live in the most prosperous era ever.
> Southern Europe was given enough rope to hang itself and it did, but again this all were decisions of (corrupt and irresponsible) national governments, not of the EU.
I'm guessing you're reading the German or Dutch press ? I can only say, branch out a bit. A real analysis of what happened to Greece will yield that, when push comes to shove, it was in the same situation as 10 other EU countries, and the timing of a rate increase meant that Greece got into trouble, after which interventions happened to prevent the other countries from getting into trouble. Of the government support "given to Greece" between 80% and 90% ended up propping of foreign banks. The EU literally never deposited into an account controlled by the Greek state ... that's how bad it is. Just that fact by itself makes your calling this a decision by the Greek national government a gross misrepresentation.
Is this all Greece's fault ? Yes, viewing Greece in isolation you could reasonably arrive at that conclusion, but Greece was in the same spot as others ... why didn't it cascade ? But Greece took the same actions as other EU countries until what is effectively a coincidence got them into trouble, which lead to a massive rise in interest rates, which sent them into a spiral from which they couldn't (and can't) escape. But they don't deserve their fate, their 25%+ unemployment, and their crippling bank limitations any more than Belgium, Ireland, Spain or Italy. And it's not like the debt difference with Germany was huge before this happened.
Fact of the matter is that in 2012, Greece's finances were better than those of the US. So let's be clear : about 50% of the EU is in an unacceptable financial situation. Greece was picked out of the pack by random chance (effectively by the exact timing on bonds) and bludgeoned into submission, to serve as an example, a way to scare the rest into more and more concessions. Were these actions against Greece justified ? No they weren't. Greece is a sovereign state and should just have the choice not to repay it's debts.
What happened to Greece can happen, in a matter of weeks, to half the EU countries and to the EU as a whole. All it takes is a stalemate at the ECB.
Needless to say, depending on the newspaper/news organisation they either focus on public sector excesses in Greece, such as the early retirement age in some cases (ignoring, of course, how much of their pension they since lost). Either that or they focus on the social misery. A real analysis, from a financial perspective, of what happened can only really be found in economic papers and talks. Sucks.
Holding Greece as a whole responsible for these events is ridiculous. Holding the Greek youth responsible for it, which is what's happening in practice, is outright evil.
And frankly, the EU knows perfectly well what it's doing to these people and it deserves to die for what it's doing (it hasn't even stopped).
Why didn't the same happen to 9 other countries ? If you're an EU citizen you have been paying an extra tax of about 120 euros per month, which has been given to banks, if they promise not to get more governments into trouble. That's why nobody but Greece got into trouble. The ECB (ie. the EU comission's finance minister) has promised, on your behalf, to keep paying this until at least December 2017, and has promised to these banks receiving the money that they stand ready with more if their profits are threatened ... (originally it was until March 2017, but -completely coincidentally I'm sure- right after the Deutsche bank profit figures were announced -and denounced- it was extended. They had the temerity to say it's now less. But paying 100 euros/month for 12 months instead of 120 euros/month for 4 months is ... well ... is how my bank would put it)
> "The EC has the power to unilaterally impose laws on the member countries" It does not.
> "Greece ... was in the same situation as 10 other EU countries"
not really - Greece is especially troublesome, because it was not able to collect enough taxes from its own citizens and businesses, and also there was huge corruption.
> "Of the government support "given to Greece" between 80% and 90% ended up propping of foreign banks."
Yes - the alternative was to cut Greece out of the loop and only save the banks. Also, you have to consider the public sentiment of helping countries: in a lot of them, people made (and sometimes still make) much less money than the average Greek. So why should we send them money, people ask?
Now don't get me wrong, I think the EU help for Greece is a good thing, but also let's not kid ourselves - the country borrowed a lot of money and spent most of it very ineffectively.
>"Greece is a sovereign state and should just have the choice not to repay it's debts."
And it does. What it does not have is the choice to stay within the Eurozone and not repay its debts - such is the thing with international bodies, they have rules and you must adhere to them to stay in the club.
>"And frankly, the EU knows perfectly well what it's doing to these people"
Thing is, the peripheral countries were given a _lot_ of money during the last 30-40 years in cohesive funding etc; the wages and living standards climbed accordingly; people got used to it. Then the financial crisis came and coutries which invested wisely were able to withstand it, others less so. Without the EU, the Greeks would be poor (look at the Bulgarian or Macedonian GDP per capita); the EU gave them a chance to change that; it does not seem they used it well.
> "Any system in which a majority of the population does not have the option to block laws is not a democracy."
Never heard such a definition. Anyway you are saying that a majority of EU population does not have the option to block laws? I don't think that's true.
>"Start reading there, read at least the next 2 pages, then continue here"
Or maybe you could tell me what your point is.
>"The council stop is a joke"
No it's not, the Council is in fact the most powerful body of the EU, and decisions there are taken by heads of the countries. I don't like that, but it's the current state of affairs.
>"the legislative power is 100% in the hands of the EU commission"
Which, again, consists of people nominated by the member countries.
>claiming that this huge mass of people experiences this "era" as the "most prosperous ever"
Good thing then I don't claim that. ('most', as I said)
>"It is neither the fault of these states"
Oh but it absolutely is. Companies don't employ new (young) people, because it's way too expensive to do that if the national legislation makes it so. On the other hand, there is record low unemployment in some countries (at least czech republic, slovakia, possibly poland, and I think also Germany, possibly others). So evidently some countries are doing something good.
See also my point about some countries not investing effectively.
> "Of the government support "given to Greece" between 80% and 90% ended up propping of foreign banks." Yes - the alternative was to cut Greece
No of course not. The alternative was to let Greece go bankrupt, as it has done many times before and not repay the banks.
I can't believe you don't mention this option. You see, the whole point of loans is that they carry risk. On occasion they are not repaid. That's why they require interest.
The rest of your comment is similarly somewhere between unbelievably naive ("the thing with international bodies, they have rules and you must adhere to them to stay in the club." - There is no country in the EU, not a single one, that has followed the spending rules of the EU. Greece was nowhere near the worst until they got screwed, and yet, no action. Not against Spain. Not against Italy. Not against France. And yet, far worse spending than Greece. Rules don't work in the real world, and fact of the matter is that kicking France, Italy or Spain out would have been the end of the EU and it's rules. THAT and nothing else is why they were allowed to overspend and Greece got shit on. Goliath can beat David senseless for jaywalking, but David isn't even allowed to mention that Goliath openly defrauds it. Why ? "That wouldn't be credible" is the answer that keeps popping up, and indeed, it wouldn't be) and "is this guy for real" misrepresentations (like claiming the EC and the council aren't the same organisation, somehow outright missing the option and purpose of bankruptcy, ...)
Can we please assume that this is not a class on "what is right and wrong" for 5 year olds and establish basic principles:
In the real world there are no rules. Anything that is in the rulebook but you can't enforce does not count.
If A hires B and completely controls him, you cannot expect B to act separately from A.
> The alternative was to let Greece go bankrupt, as it has done many times before and not repay the banks.
Yes, but this is the very systemic contagion of the Eurozone financial sector they (the architects of the rescue) were trying to prevent, in the turbulent crisis of that time. Because that would cause much bigger problems. We don't really know whether it really would, and now we will never know, but it is possible.
Also a bankrupt Greece in the Eurozone is very different to a bankrupt Greece with its own currency, which it can devalue, limit capital outflows etc.
And when you let a country go bankrupt, you have to somehow still pay for the medicine food energy etc., and nobody has a plan how Greece would do that - the Greek governement didn't have primary surplus (without debt repayment) for years, so it needed outside money just to (somehow) properly function. What would be the source of this money - or should people just die because of lack of essentials?
> There is no country in the EU, not a single one, that has followed the spending rules of the EU.
Probably no country follows them all the time (with the possible exception of Estonia, with a government debt of 10% GDP and usually an yearly surplus), but most of the countries at least aim to do that. The ones you mention are the worst offenders and as a result, their financial possibilities are severely constrained. And it shows - they are stagnating.
> And yet, far worse spending than Greece.
And yet they didn't have to be rescued on such a scale.
> like claiming the EC and the council aren't the same organisation
They are not though. They are two different organisations.
Ah the old specter of "everyone dies when debts aren't paid". Needless to say ... no that doesn't happen. First of all quite a bit of revenue becomes available to the state if debt repayment is suspended. That can cover at least some stuff for some time. Second money markets will immediately be prepared to re-loan to said country.
The only thing in danger from Greece's bankruptcy was Deutsche Bank shares and executive bonuses. Ditto for a number of other European banks. And of course ECB credibility (it had, after all, used it's legal power to force banks to buy Greek shares. If they were bad ... well)
By the way, you do realize that part of the rescue of the Eurozone that happened was letting European banks leverage up ? Right now they're allowed to be levered up 40:1, and that's ignoring the result of the enforcement organizations looking the other way. In practice therefore it would be fair to say that Euro banks are more levered than that. That means that if the Eurozone economy goes down by 1%, and bad loans go up by 1% as a result (history teaches that it will in fact be more than that if a recession happens), that every European bank as a result will lose 40% of it's value ... Does that sound like reasonable and safe financial management ? 8 years since the last recession (historically they happen about every 8 years). And yet, no complaints from you. The EU is even fighting (and fighting VERY dirty I might add) in organizations like the WTO against people insisting on more safety. And yet, you don't seem to care, or even know, that this has happened.
> Probably no country follows them all the time
First of all, most countries never follow them. It is literally exceptional for any country in the EU to make it's agreed to spending goals. Second this is NOT the point. The point is that the rules are selectively enforced (or should I say, they have been enforced once, on Greece, and never again), and therefore aren't the real rules.
The only countries that have not built up extra debt every single year in the past decade are Germany, Estonia and Denmark. None of them have 5 years of surplus. Only one has 3. Summing all the numbers up comes to 3 digits negative, and a massive amount of extra debt (and each of those countries agreed not to increase it's debt load)
Your conclusion is VERY invalid "And it shows - they are stagnating". If that's true, why isn't every rule violator stagnating ?
Allow me to give you an alternative explanation: because they lack the political power to force the ECB to inject billions into their economy. THAT is their failure, and not their spending habits.
> And yet they didn't have to be rescued on such a scale.
WTF ? EVERY EU country got more bailout from the ECB than Greece. And if you count the money they saved because of the interest rate interventions by the ECB, oh my God did they get more money than Greece. Again you keep blaming this on the victims. The difference is so great that if you count the interest cost, one can comfortably assert that Luxembourg got more bailout than Greece.
So what have we established :
Greece was not a bad spender, compared to other EU countries
Greece was not an inefficient spender, and in fact could serve as an example for at least France, Italy and Spain
Greece did not make financially unsound decisions, it just had it's interest rate hiked on it and no support from anyone, creating a debt spiral it is still in. Mind you the same happened to a lot of other countries, and the ECB immediately intervened to force interest rates back down to prevent it. The ECB is still at it, and at this point has transferred more than 2 TRILLION euros to banks.
> First of all quite a bit of revenue becomes available to the state if debt repayment is suspended.
Good to know you completely disregarded what I wrote about Greece's primary deficit - their government could not pay for itself even before debt repayments. There would have to be very deep cuts, deeper than now.
> Second money markets will immediately be prepared to re-loan to said country.
No. When you look at Argentine's debt default in 2001, in 2013 their foreign currency debt was still only 8.3%, which means that money markets still don't believe them.
> Does that sound like reasonable and safe financial management?
I am not saying EU is in a good financial health - it obviously is not. But letting Greece go bankrupt could very well be a start to a European economic suicide chain-reaction.
> 8 years since the last recession
It's not 'since' - the stagnation still has not ended.
> The EU is even fighting (and fighting VERY dirty I might add) in organizations like the WTO against people insisting on more safety.
More safety of what? There are several currents of activities going on and yes, some are less than ideal, but on the other hand the EU regulations on e.g. food safety are among the best in the world.
> First of all, most countries never follow them.
No.
> The point is that the rules are selectively enforced
Yes
> The only countries that have not built up extra debt
That is not the point of the rules. The point of the rules is that public debt should be manageable (total debt less than 60% of GDP, less than 3% yearly deficit, ideally hovering around 0%).
> If that's true, why isn't every rule violator stagnating?
See above.
> because they lack the political power to force the ECB to inject billions into their economy.
France lacks political power? Please :)
Anyway ECB cannot do it directly, but through QE and other instruments it does exactly that, for years. Without that, Italy and France would be in a much worse state, probably bankrupt.
Another way of putting it: German history since 1870 is series of attempts to recreate the Holy Roman Empire. Bismarck & the Kaiser's Second Reich, Hitler's Third Reich, and now the Merkel led EU imposing the ECB facilitated Eurozone diktat. To paraphrase von Clausewitz: finance is the continuation of politics by other means. Hence Merkel's ability to remove uncooperative heads of govt in Italy & Greece in recent years.
If the Schlieffen Plan had worked, the Germany that emerged victorious would be unrecognizable — an authoritarian monarchy with a rubber-stamp house of representatives that had demonstrated decisively that militaristic aggression got results.
There would still — probably — have been a round two in the 1930s or 1940s; WW1 was in some respects a revenge fight for the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. But without the gridlock of the western front to force the hothouse development of new weapons and tactics, the military tools of that second conflict would be much closer to those of our actually-existing WW1; that is, I don't believe we'd have ultimately avoided the bloodbathe of trench warfare — we'd just have postponed it (and retarded the development of civil aviation as an accidental side-effect).
The real question is whether the ancien regime would have survived (no collapse of the monarchies; the Hapsburg, Wilhelmine and Romanov dynasties survive into the second half of the 20th century, and those guys called Lenin and Trotsky and Hitler are just fringe radicals) and if so, what the consequences would have been further down the line. One thing's for sure: no European Convention on Human Rights!
(Source: lots of speculation here, but I'm an SF author with a track record in alternate history and this stuff is meat and drink ...)
While I agree with you that that this is a really interesting topic to think about, I don't agree that Germany (Prussia really) would have remained an authoritarian monarchy with a rubber-stamp democracy. There was already a cultural shift before the Great War towards greater democracy and human rights - the war can be seen as the last gasp of the dying monarchies to hold onto power in the face of this movement. We also would not have had the singular individual who was Hitler and all the damage he did.
I think we would have ended up with something very close to a full intergrated EU economically dominated by Germany with a few internal borders shifted around and a declining U.K. outside the EU.
I suspect a declining UK facing a continental hegemonic superpower — anathema to British foreign policy going back half a millennium or more — would not have gone down quietly. And with an overseas empire behind it, the result could well have been an even more ruinous escalation of the Dreadnought Race of the 1900s, possibly leading to a full-blown naval war and/or British attempts to overturn the post-Schlieffen War settlement.
Whatever, it would have been messy — very messy.
(However, the move towards social democracy in Germany was a thing pre-war, and if anything it was the capitulation to nationalism of the moderate left that opened the door to the radical left and communist fringe across Europe; it's interesting to speculate where things might have ended up if the standard bearer for hardline socialism had been someone like Rosa Luxemburg rather than Vladimir Lenin.)
Yes the Great War was a continuation of British foreign policy of the last 500 years. I think the Germans would have had their hands full intergrating their EU that the UK would have been allowed its slow decline in peace.
I really do think the Great War broke the long slow march towards democracy and moderation that had started in the 19th C. Germany in the early 20th C was the centre of modernisation and Liberalism and if it wasn't for the war there is nothing to suspect that this wouldn't have continued.
Warfare is much more economic in nature these days. One of the reasons we don't go to war as much is because if you have the economic clout it's much easier to dominate nations and less destructive to boot.
The EU is a remarkable construct, and obviously in its roots has the desire to prevent conflict. At the same time, there's plenty of parties that can use that same construct (and have) to dominate in other ways. If you are an unscrupulous German leader of industry, the ability and desire to gain more power is not so different from Krupp or other German businesses serving the Nazis. They are different in kind and end results, yes, and this economic warfare is kinder and more acceptable to peace. At the core, though is domination.
The OP's comment is offensive because it is so short, but he's right in that Germany dominates the EU, for good and bad.
Warefare has always been largely economic. It's what you are fighting for, it's how you win. See Sun Tzus Art of War for an early example of military focus.
Because of the well known destructive nature of war; more wars have been fought to prevent future wars than have not. E.g. The war to end all wars (WWI)
The EU was intended to cause the economic and political crisis we are seeing. A shared currency among such different exonomies is fatally flawed and requires a superstate solution - which was actual goal. Citizens would not knowingly vote for this, but as democracy in Europe is seen as a war risk, it is considered proper to suppress it. Of course this effort to prevent future wars will inevitably lead to a future war. Thus, I consider the break up of the EU as the only path to preventing war. Either way we're entering interesting times.
The parent comment does not make an argument. It makes a set of unsupported statements about the intent of the EU.
"Democracy in Europe is seen as a war risk" is not an argument. By whom is it seen as a war risk? What are your sources for this? Are you going to attribute this to generic "elites" without being specific?
I think you have your parents mixed up. Assuming this was for me; I walked you through the logic and am in total agreement that a large part of the rational for the EU was to prevent war in Europe.
My case is that the EU is undemocratic. Therefore when the these two are conflated the resulting inverse is democracy is a war risk. I gave the case of my pro EU German friends but I know many others.
A counter argument would be that the EU is democratic but no one is making that.
Of course America with its democracy exporting foreign policy gives the rational that democracies don't go to war. I understand why the idea that democracy is a war risk is so foreign. (Assuming you're also American)
I'm pro democracy and anti-war and I believe the EU, despite its intentions, is the cause of circumstances that will lead to war. The definition of irony. Already we can see the rise of openly fascist parties, it won't be long until they start winning elections.
No, you've not laid out the logic by which that statement follows from the others.
> America with its democracy exporting foreign policy gives the rational that democracies don't go to war.
I'd actually argue quite a lot with this: the US does not export democracy, it exports capitalism and calls it democracy. It's quite happy to overthrow democratic socialist governments.
Really the key factor is that trading partners don't go to war, because then it's unprofitable and/or they don't have enough independent infrastructure to survive. You can't go to war with your nose to spite your face. This is partly why, despite the bad relations between the EU and Russia and the small war in Ukraine, the gas pipeline remains untouched. They need the money and we need the gas.
And your inference that I'm American is also wrong. I'm an Englishman living in Scotland supporting Scottish independence within the EU. In fact, I spent a lot of time trying to be a "reasonable" Euroskeptic for years, but this year of the referendum I gave up because the unreasonable side has taken over. Yes, the EU is not very democratic and parts of the EU get economically steamrollered. Guess what - this happens within countries too. Greece is to the EU as 80s Liverpool and the "north" was to the Thatcher government: abandoned.
Leaving the EU does not make Europe go away, it doesn't solve any of the economic or social problems, but it does remove a mechanism for resolving them peacefully.
The UK is not very democratic on close inspection either, and all these threats to remove one of the few bits of black-letter constitutional law we do have - ECHR - are really not encouraging.
Once again we are in violent agreement. Trade is the strongest defense against war.
In the same vain, economic sanctions are a prelude to war and in many cases considered an act of war. Which is why the EUs economic sanctions against Russia are troubling. Such sanctions would not be possible without the EU.
I too have many problems with hypocritical US foreign policy.
I did not infer you were American, I assumed for sake of argument in an effort to tailor my response. I then let you know about my assumption so I could be corrected. Which you did, and thank you.
I don't understand what you're trying to refute. I agree with all of your points; EU was started to stop wars, trade and not democracy prevents wars, and the EU is undemocratic. All of these points are inline with the statement that "many people believe that a democratic Europe is a war risk" which is what I thought you were refuting?
I think economic sanctions is a bigger war risk than democracy, but I'm not "many people"
In what way to you think the EU is not democratic? All member states are required to be stable democracies. The governments of members guide policy and the institutions. It has an elected parliament. Most members joined after holding referendums. The only country that has decided to leave did so in a referendum. It's hard to see how it could be very much more democratic.
Mainly the EU is a bureaucracy, so many of it's heads are appointed just like any bureaucracy, but they answer to democratically elected leaders.
I'll defer to the wealth of online information on this topic.
That said even my pro EU friends don't make the claim that the EU is democratic. Usually pointing out that the U.K. and the US are not that democratic either. The U.K. being a monarch with a hereditary House of Lords and the US being a federation (see previous election).
I also hold the view that democracy does not scale well beyond city states and that a federation is preferable so long as the federation has constitutionally limited powers. This way demicracy still dominates the affairs of the citizenry. Unfortunately federations have a habit of extending their powers which is where the political system becomes less democratic. I would argue that the EU has increased their powers over time and the system has become less democratic. I would argue the same rule applies to the US.
It's a detail. They are effectively an advisory body. They can recommend changes to legislation but the Commons can always overrule them.
If you're talking about the Crown estate, it is outside their control and the revenue has been at the disposal of Parliament since the reign of George III. Estimates of the private wealth of the Queen put her at about number 302 in the UK rich list. Hardly a gatekeeper of national wealth. Do you actually know anything at all about the UK's constitutional arrangements?
I was told this by EU loving Germans with the explanation that the Germans, and Europeans, can't be trusted and need a superstate to prevent war. "Never again." Obviously forgetting the US civil war.
It's a natural position that logically falls out when you combine the anti-war rational behind the EU with the undemocracy nature of the EU.
That the EU is undemocratic is in general agreement. If you have evidence to the contrary I'd love to see it.
Clearly, you mean the various internal wars of (among other European superstates) the Holy Roman Empire, which are far more relevant to a European superstate than the US Civil War is.
I second your statement. The EU is another attempt at a global power structure that has been going on since people were people. It's most recognizably German, and once the realities of governing a superstate are take into account, this was how I imagine a post WWI German victory to look.
This is highly offensive and will no doubt be flagged off HN soon. The EU as it presently stands is extremely different to the empires of the early 20th century.
Declaring that people who fought in the Great War were fighting to "prevent" something completely different that came 50 years later is highly offensive to their memory.
Rather than being offended about a historical statement, what were the German war aims in 1914? Why did the British Empire enter the war? The British didn't die in their millions to defend the neutrality of the Belgians.
Interesting article, though the answer in the title seems pretty obvious: Germany was offering a previously hostile neighbor of the US land as long as they'd enter the war. No matter whether that was transmitted in secret, in the open, or through diplomatic channels, that's virtually a declaration of war.
Even without unrestrained submarine warfare, that alone might have been enough to bring the US into the war in 1915. It took some restraint from Wilson to prevent an earlier entry, anyway.
Silly Germans. Don't go to war with opponents you can't beat without closing down all international trade. Because you can't actually close down all international trade.
USA's external actions in that time frame were much more defensible than they have been since then.
Because they were already in a stalemate with France, the UK, and Russia. And their allies the Austro-Hungarian Empire were more concerned with Serbia and Italy than France, etc. So this was a move intended to counter the US should we enter the war ("give them something besides Germany to worry about" was likely the thinking)
The US had long supported the Allied side sub-rosa, e.g. the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. At least on some interpretations that support amounted to an act of war. Imagine, to put this into perspective, that you had been caught in 2002 to ship weapons to Al-Qaeda.
It somehow shows that what we see at the moment isn't new at all. Yes, there is a different scale of information gathering, but that's just because there's more information flowing. 100 years ago it was very hard to communicate over a distance without traffic being intercepted, and the same is true today.
That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to make communication more secure, but it indicates that we are not heading towards an ever worse surveillance state.
The benefit of experience and tech is diluted among the public, but concentrated in corporations and govs. The will and ability to use and understand them even more.
I agree with all of that, apart from your last conclusion.
The British intelligence service was, it appears, acting logically given its motivations and capabilities. It achieved the outcome it wanted.
Note that the motivations do not always align with what is good for Britain (nor, rather obviously, other countries) - see e.g. Iraq intelligence.
From what is visible (e.g. Snowden data), GCHQ continues to do the same thing. But it has vastly greater capabilities, both in collection and analysis. This means we have been heading towards an ever more capable/powerful surveillance state.
Thanks for posting this! That knowledge is power is not in doubt. We in the West would be fools to hamstring our own intelligence services in their mission to defend national security.
Is privacy important - absolutely - but the correct mechanism to protect not just privacy but against abuse is not to reduce the agencies intel capabilities but strengthen our democratic means of oversight.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] thread1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septemberprogramm
Edit. It seems my brevity has caused some people to miss my point (or maybe not). I am lamenting the huge loss of life that flowed from the Great War that was fought trying to prevent the creation of the EU.
On a personal note my great uncle died in the Great War and the effect this had on my family is still with with us to this day.
The people living there were, to put it midly worse off, but I'm sure the leaders thought it was a great idea to expand their culturaly influence just a little bit too far.
But is unification really always the answer?
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan
I am actually not opposed to the EU, I am just making the point of how little wars or personalities matter in the end.
Edit: She was, however, probably the best candidate the party had. Ironically, the Labour Party has at least five people in parliament right now who'd make a better Prime Minister, but a fair few of those aren't even in the shadow cabinet.
Leaders of other EU countries are unlikely to make the same mistake of letting their populations vote on the issue.
Hint: it's by a similar mechanism to referendums
Same way as the structure of the EU itself is decided. Governments fight to keep things away from a vote. Regularly a vote is called anyway because some politician uses the promise of a vote as a way to get elected. Then the EU loses the referendum, election, ... that is called, and then the result is ignored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_related_to_the_Eur...
Direct quote from Wolfgang Schauble (according to Yanis Varoufakis) : "elections cannot be allowed to set economic policy for the EU".
That sums up the attitude of the EU, and is the attitude that permeates both the EU itself and the basis of it's support. This is a quote from a private conversation I had with a Dutch judge. "What would have happened if we had let elections decide ? Norway would be driving on the left and we wouldn't have the Euro anywhere". The EU is seen by the local elites (the non-businessmen. Lawyers, teachers, doctors, ...) as a way to impose what they consider good policy.
The EU institutions itself are importantly not the real basis of power in the EU. Politicians get sent off to the EU to have a cushy, but faraway, job. It's where political careers go to die (especially the parliament). EU politicians are perceived to have less power than the local ones, even though the opposite is true. And that's what's really happening in Europe : power is shifting more and more locally. Barcelona's increased independence is big. The real power base of the Belgian and Dutch governments is specific cities (Antwerp and the Hague). Outside of those cities, things are going very wrong and support for the government is nonexistent.
(Somewhat analogous to being trapped in a bad job by poverty; you could quit, but if you don't have savings then your immediate cashflow problems are going to cause you suffering unless you have a better option lined up immediately.)
"As a result of the referendum, the bailout conditions were rejected by a majority of over 61% to 39% approving, with the "No" vote winning in all of Greece's regions."[0]
"Further, the European Commission signaled that the referendum question, to which they would recommend a "Yes", from its viewpoint should be understood as whether or not Greece wanted to remain part of Europe and the Eurozone, which at the present state included acceptance of receiving conditional bailout help on a set of mutually negotiated and agreed terms."[0]
I think it would be more accurate to say that the political and economic leadership operating within greece didn't have an appetite for it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_bailout_referendum,_2015
Or default, wouldn't have been the first sovereign default on debt "obligations"…
>I find it ridiculous.
Be that as it may, kicking the can down the road and doing more of the same is often a great long term solution.
But its ok, they "accepted" larger haircuts than originally proposed:
"On Monday, 13 July, the Syriza-led government of Greece accepted a bailout package that contains larger pension cuts and tax increases than the one rejected by Greek voters in the referendum."
Oh, the Greek only elected the coalition that had the main goal of leaving the EU. Twice. Then voted for leaving in a referendum.
I guess they really wanted to stay.
(To be honest, I don't think leaving would gain them anything either. But it's their call to make, and their choice was very clear.)
Your statement is 100% true for the former and only ~50% true (i.e., 50% false) for the latter.
To cite GP > The EU is a voluntary union
Well, it is more voluntary than a Forth Reich but much less so than say a federation of Swiss-like democracies.
Since the EU has democracy, freedom, transparency .. as its core values but doesn't follow them in important aspects, it's hypocritical and that very fact is part of why the people don't perceive it as "a good thing" anymore.
1) Brexit (obviously)
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Ukraine%E2%80%93European...
3) OXI - Greek referendum on whether to accept EU authority over their financial system
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_European_Constitution_r...
5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_euro_referendum,_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_euro_referendum,_2003
It's not that they never won any referenda, but if anything has been made blatantly clear it's that EU constituencies do not want most of the EU. They want the Euro, Free trade and ... that's it. The EU most certainly does not have the consent of the governed.
They do not want the EU controlling local economies. They do not want the ECB. They do not want the EC as a local regulator. They do not want the EU to control the borders. They do not ... etc.
Recently the EU declared that anyone who has the right to exercise any protected job anywhere in the EU, has that right everywhere in the EU. That means doctors, accountants, ... This has got to be the stupidest move yet. The upper middle class is the center of support for the EU and this decision might decimate their incomes. Whether it will or not is even not that relevant, merely the fear of it will massively erode whatever support is left after the monumental immigration fuckups, the (financial, and real) devastation of southern Europe (now Italy has > 25% youth unemployment too, hell it's approaching 50% in some parts of southern Italy)
Furthermore, your claims are inaccurate. The EU parliament has no power. Power exists within the European Commission, and the trade organisations. The EC has the power to unilaterally impose laws on the member countries (as was demonstrated with Greece and more generally southern Europe or the so-called PIGS). There are very few things that are beyond the reach of the EC.
The EU has been an unmitigated disaster for normal people in the EU. That is the perception, and, frankly, it's accurate. Looking at how the EC operates, that is neither an accident nor beyond their scope.
"The EU most certainly does not have the consent of the governed." Yes it does, and its approval rating is still way over 50% in most countries.
"This has got to be the stupidest move yet." Actually it sounds rather good to me, but I'd like to have a link to that decision please. Medical doctors are however free to work in any country for years already, they still make very good money and there are still shortages o medical personnel everywhere (source: friends among emigrated medical professionals).
Southern Europe was given enough rope to hang itself and it did, but again this all were decisions of (corrupt and irresponsible) national governments, not of the EU.
"The EU parliament has no power." It does have some, what I am saying is it has too little power.
"Power exists within the European Commission" and also within the European Council (the summits), where all major decisions are taken. And this body consists of heads od the states.
"The EC has the power to unilaterally impose laws on the member countries" It does not.
"as was demonstrated with Greece" It was not demonstrated - Greece has to do things because otherwise the money will stop flowing and it will go bankrupt, which is a decision the Greek government can take at any time.
"There are very few things that are beyond the reach of the EC." There are quite a lot of such things, national governments are still the institutions where most of the power resides. See the dictatorial tendencies of Hungarian and Polish governments, where the EC does almost nothing.
"The EU has been an unmitigated disaster for normal people in the EU." Most of which currently live in the most prosperous era ever.
I'm guessing you're reading the German or Dutch press ? I can only say, branch out a bit. A real analysis of what happened to Greece will yield that, when push comes to shove, it was in the same situation as 10 other EU countries, and the timing of a rate increase meant that Greece got into trouble, after which interventions happened to prevent the other countries from getting into trouble. Of the government support "given to Greece" between 80% and 90% ended up propping of foreign banks. The EU literally never deposited into an account controlled by the Greek state ... that's how bad it is. Just that fact by itself makes your calling this a decision by the Greek national government a gross misrepresentation.
Is this all Greece's fault ? Yes, viewing Greece in isolation you could reasonably arrive at that conclusion, but Greece was in the same spot as others ... why didn't it cascade ? But Greece took the same actions as other EU countries until what is effectively a coincidence got them into trouble, which lead to a massive rise in interest rates, which sent them into a spiral from which they couldn't (and can't) escape. But they don't deserve their fate, their 25%+ unemployment, and their crippling bank limitations any more than Belgium, Ireland, Spain or Italy. And it's not like the debt difference with Germany was huge before this happened.
Fact of the matter is that in 2012, Greece's finances were better than those of the US. So let's be clear : about 50% of the EU is in an unacceptable financial situation. Greece was picked out of the pack by random chance (effectively by the exact timing on bonds) and bludgeoned into submission, to serve as an example, a way to scare the rest into more and more concessions. Were these actions against Greece justified ? No they weren't. Greece is a sovereign state and should just have the choice not to repay it's debts.
What happened to Greece can happen, in a matter of weeks, to half the EU countries and to the EU as a whole. All it takes is a stalemate at the ECB.
Needless to say, depending on the newspaper/news organisation they either focus on public sector excesses in Greece, such as the early retirement age in some cases (ignoring, of course, how much of their pension they since lost). Either that or they focus on the social misery. A real analysis, from a financial perspective, of what happened can only really be found in economic papers and talks. Sucks.
Holding Greece as a whole responsible for these events is ridiculous. Holding the Greek youth responsible for it, which is what's happening in practice, is outright evil.
And frankly, the EU knows perfectly well what it's doing to these people and it deserves to die for what it's doing (it hasn't even stopped).
Why didn't the same happen to 9 other countries ? If you're an EU citizen you have been paying an extra tax of about 120 euros per month, which has been given to banks, if they promise not to get more governments into trouble. That's why nobody but Greece got into trouble. The ECB (ie. the EU comission's finance minister) has promised, on your behalf, to keep paying this until at least December 2017, and has promised to these banks receiving the money that they stand ready with more if their profits are threatened ... (originally it was until March 2017, but -completely coincidentally I'm sure- right after the Deutsche bank profit figures were announced -and denounced- it was extended. They had the temerity to say it's now less. But paying 100 euros/month for 12 months instead of 120 euros/month for 4 months is ... well ... is how my bank would put it)
> "The EC has the power to unilaterally impose laws on the member countries" It does not.
Any system in which a majority of t...
> "Of the government support "given to Greece" between 80% and 90% ended up propping of foreign banks." Yes - the alternative was to cut Greece out of the loop and only save the banks. Also, you have to consider the public sentiment of helping countries: in a lot of them, people made (and sometimes still make) much less money than the average Greek. So why should we send them money, people ask?
Now don't get me wrong, I think the EU help for Greece is a good thing, but also let's not kid ourselves - the country borrowed a lot of money and spent most of it very ineffectively.
>"Greece is a sovereign state and should just have the choice not to repay it's debts." And it does. What it does not have is the choice to stay within the Eurozone and not repay its debts - such is the thing with international bodies, they have rules and you must adhere to them to stay in the club.
>"And frankly, the EU knows perfectly well what it's doing to these people" Thing is, the peripheral countries were given a _lot_ of money during the last 30-40 years in cohesive funding etc; the wages and living standards climbed accordingly; people got used to it. Then the financial crisis came and coutries which invested wisely were able to withstand it, others less so. Without the EU, the Greeks would be poor (look at the Bulgarian or Macedonian GDP per capita); the EU gave them a chance to change that; it does not seem they used it well.
> "Any system in which a majority of the population does not have the option to block laws is not a democracy." Never heard such a definition. Anyway you are saying that a majority of EU population does not have the option to block laws? I don't think that's true.
>"Start reading there, read at least the next 2 pages, then continue here" Or maybe you could tell me what your point is.
>"The council stop is a joke" No it's not, the Council is in fact the most powerful body of the EU, and decisions there are taken by heads of the countries. I don't like that, but it's the current state of affairs.
>"the legislative power is 100% in the hands of the EU commission" Which, again, consists of people nominated by the member countries.
>claiming that this huge mass of people experiences this "era" as the "most prosperous ever" Good thing then I don't claim that. ('most', as I said)
>"It is neither the fault of these states" Oh but it absolutely is. Companies don't employ new (young) people, because it's way too expensive to do that if the national legislation makes it so. On the other hand, there is record low unemployment in some countries (at least czech republic, slovakia, possibly poland, and I think also Germany, possibly others). So evidently some countries are doing something good. See also my point about some countries not investing effectively.
No of course not. The alternative was to let Greece go bankrupt, as it has done many times before and not repay the banks.
I can't believe you don't mention this option. You see, the whole point of loans is that they carry risk. On occasion they are not repaid. That's why they require interest.
The rest of your comment is similarly somewhere between unbelievably naive ("the thing with international bodies, they have rules and you must adhere to them to stay in the club." - There is no country in the EU, not a single one, that has followed the spending rules of the EU. Greece was nowhere near the worst until they got screwed, and yet, no action. Not against Spain. Not against Italy. Not against France. And yet, far worse spending than Greece. Rules don't work in the real world, and fact of the matter is that kicking France, Italy or Spain out would have been the end of the EU and it's rules. THAT and nothing else is why they were allowed to overspend and Greece got shit on. Goliath can beat David senseless for jaywalking, but David isn't even allowed to mention that Goliath openly defrauds it. Why ? "That wouldn't be credible" is the answer that keeps popping up, and indeed, it wouldn't be) and "is this guy for real" misrepresentations (like claiming the EC and the council aren't the same organisation, somehow outright missing the option and purpose of bankruptcy, ...)
Can we please assume that this is not a class on "what is right and wrong" for 5 year olds and establish basic principles:
In the real world there are no rules. Anything that is in the rulebook but you can't enforce does not count.
If A hires B and completely controls him, you cannot expect B to act separately from A.
Yes, but this is the very systemic contagion of the Eurozone financial sector they (the architects of the rescue) were trying to prevent, in the turbulent crisis of that time. Because that would cause much bigger problems. We don't really know whether it really would, and now we will never know, but it is possible. Also a bankrupt Greece in the Eurozone is very different to a bankrupt Greece with its own currency, which it can devalue, limit capital outflows etc. And when you let a country go bankrupt, you have to somehow still pay for the medicine food energy etc., and nobody has a plan how Greece would do that - the Greek governement didn't have primary surplus (without debt repayment) for years, so it needed outside money just to (somehow) properly function. What would be the source of this money - or should people just die because of lack of essentials?
> There is no country in the EU, not a single one, that has followed the spending rules of the EU.
Probably no country follows them all the time (with the possible exception of Estonia, with a government debt of 10% GDP and usually an yearly surplus), but most of the countries at least aim to do that. The ones you mention are the worst offenders and as a result, their financial possibilities are severely constrained. And it shows - they are stagnating.
> And yet, far worse spending than Greece.
And yet they didn't have to be rescued on such a scale.
> like claiming the EC and the council aren't the same organisation
They are not though. They are two different organisations.
The only thing in danger from Greece's bankruptcy was Deutsche Bank shares and executive bonuses. Ditto for a number of other European banks. And of course ECB credibility (it had, after all, used it's legal power to force banks to buy Greek shares. If they were bad ... well)
By the way, you do realize that part of the rescue of the Eurozone that happened was letting European banks leverage up ? Right now they're allowed to be levered up 40:1, and that's ignoring the result of the enforcement organizations looking the other way. In practice therefore it would be fair to say that Euro banks are more levered than that. That means that if the Eurozone economy goes down by 1%, and bad loans go up by 1% as a result (history teaches that it will in fact be more than that if a recession happens), that every European bank as a result will lose 40% of it's value ... Does that sound like reasonable and safe financial management ? 8 years since the last recession (historically they happen about every 8 years). And yet, no complaints from you. The EU is even fighting (and fighting VERY dirty I might add) in organizations like the WTO against people insisting on more safety. And yet, you don't seem to care, or even know, that this has happened.
> Probably no country follows them all the time
First of all, most countries never follow them. It is literally exceptional for any country in the EU to make it's agreed to spending goals. Second this is NOT the point. The point is that the rules are selectively enforced (or should I say, they have been enforced once, on Greece, and never again), and therefore aren't the real rules.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1...
The only countries that have not built up extra debt every single year in the past decade are Germany, Estonia and Denmark. None of them have 5 years of surplus. Only one has 3. Summing all the numbers up comes to 3 digits negative, and a massive amount of extra debt (and each of those countries agreed not to increase it's debt load)
Your conclusion is VERY invalid "And it shows - they are stagnating". If that's true, why isn't every rule violator stagnating ?
Allow me to give you an alternative explanation: because they lack the political power to force the ECB to inject billions into their economy. THAT is their failure, and not their spending habits.
> And yet they didn't have to be rescued on such a scale.
WTF ? EVERY EU country got more bailout from the ECB than Greece. And if you count the money they saved because of the interest rate interventions by the ECB, oh my God did they get more money than Greece. Again you keep blaming this on the victims. The difference is so great that if you count the interest cost, one can comfortably assert that Luxembourg got more bailout than Greece.
So what have we established :
Greece was not a bad spender, compared to other EU countries
Greece was not an inefficient spender, and in fact could serve as an example for at least France, Italy and Spain
Greece did not make financially unsound decisions, it just had it's interest rate hiked on it and no support from anyone, creating a debt spiral it is still in. Mind you the same happened to a lot of other countries, and the ECB immediately intervened to force interest rates back down to prevent it. The ECB is still at it, and at this point has transferred more than 2 TRILLION euros to banks.
In other words, the big difference b...
Good to know you completely disregarded what I wrote about Greece's primary deficit - their government could not pay for itself even before debt repayments. There would have to be very deep cuts, deeper than now.
> Second money markets will immediately be prepared to re-loan to said country.
No. When you look at Argentine's debt default in 2001, in 2013 their foreign currency debt was still only 8.3%, which means that money markets still don't believe them.
> Does that sound like reasonable and safe financial management?
I am not saying EU is in a good financial health - it obviously is not. But letting Greece go bankrupt could very well be a start to a European economic suicide chain-reaction.
> 8 years since the last recession
It's not 'since' - the stagnation still has not ended.
> The EU is even fighting (and fighting VERY dirty I might add) in organizations like the WTO against people insisting on more safety.
More safety of what? There are several currents of activities going on and yes, some are less than ideal, but on the other hand the EU regulations on e.g. food safety are among the best in the world.
> First of all, most countries never follow them.
No.
> The point is that the rules are selectively enforced
Yes
> The only countries that have not built up extra debt
That is not the point of the rules. The point of the rules is that public debt should be manageable (total debt less than 60% of GDP, less than 3% yearly deficit, ideally hovering around 0%).
> If that's true, why isn't every rule violator stagnating?
See above.
> because they lack the political power to force the ECB to inject billions into their economy.
France lacks political power? Please :) Anyway ECB cannot do it directly, but through QE and other instruments it does exactly that, for years. Without that, Italy and France would be in a much worse state, probably bankrupt.
There would still — probably — have been a round two in the 1930s or 1940s; WW1 was in some respects a revenge fight for the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. But without the gridlock of the western front to force the hothouse development of new weapons and tactics, the military tools of that second conflict would be much closer to those of our actually-existing WW1; that is, I don't believe we'd have ultimately avoided the bloodbathe of trench warfare — we'd just have postponed it (and retarded the development of civil aviation as an accidental side-effect).
The real question is whether the ancien regime would have survived (no collapse of the monarchies; the Hapsburg, Wilhelmine and Romanov dynasties survive into the second half of the 20th century, and those guys called Lenin and Trotsky and Hitler are just fringe radicals) and if so, what the consequences would have been further down the line. One thing's for sure: no European Convention on Human Rights!
(Source: lots of speculation here, but I'm an SF author with a track record in alternate history and this stuff is meat and drink ...)
I think we would have ended up with something very close to a full intergrated EU economically dominated by Germany with a few internal borders shifted around and a declining U.K. outside the EU.
Whatever, it would have been messy — very messy.
(However, the move towards social democracy in Germany was a thing pre-war, and if anything it was the capitulation to nationalism of the moderate left that opened the door to the radical left and communist fringe across Europe; it's interesting to speculate where things might have ended up if the standard bearer for hardline socialism had been someone like Rosa Luxemburg rather than Vladimir Lenin.)
I really do think the Great War broke the long slow march towards democracy and moderation that had started in the 19th C. Germany in the early 20th C was the centre of modernisation and Liberalism and if it wasn't for the war there is nothing to suspect that this wouldn't have continued.
The EU is a remarkable construct, and obviously in its roots has the desire to prevent conflict. At the same time, there's plenty of parties that can use that same construct (and have) to dominate in other ways. If you are an unscrupulous German leader of industry, the ability and desire to gain more power is not so different from Krupp or other German businesses serving the Nazis. They are different in kind and end results, yes, and this economic warfare is kinder and more acceptable to peace. At the core, though is domination.
The OP's comment is offensive because it is so short, but he's right in that Germany dominates the EU, for good and bad.
Because of the well known destructive nature of war; more wars have been fought to prevent future wars than have not. E.g. The war to end all wars (WWI)
The EU was intended to cause the economic and political crisis we are seeing. A shared currency among such different exonomies is fatally flawed and requires a superstate solution - which was actual goal. Citizens would not knowingly vote for this, but as democracy in Europe is seen as a war risk, it is considered proper to suppress it. Of course this effort to prevent future wars will inevitably lead to a future war. Thus, I consider the break up of the EU as the only path to preventing war. Either way we're entering interesting times.
This is conspiracy-theory garbage.
"Democracy in Europe is seen as a war risk" is not an argument. By whom is it seen as a war risk? What are your sources for this? Are you going to attribute this to generic "elites" without being specific?
Rather a lot of people have argued over the years that the purpose of the EU is to prevent war, going all the way back to the Schuman declaration: http://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-day/...
There's a source for you. Now, how about unpacking that "democracy is seen [by whom] as a war risk [why? how?]"
My case is that the EU is undemocratic. Therefore when the these two are conflated the resulting inverse is democracy is a war risk. I gave the case of my pro EU German friends but I know many others.
A counter argument would be that the EU is democratic but no one is making that.
Of course America with its democracy exporting foreign policy gives the rational that democracies don't go to war. I understand why the idea that democracy is a war risk is so foreign. (Assuming you're also American)
I'm pro democracy and anti-war and I believe the EU, despite its intentions, is the cause of circumstances that will lead to war. The definition of irony. Already we can see the rise of openly fascist parties, it won't be long until they start winning elections.
> America with its democracy exporting foreign policy gives the rational that democracies don't go to war.
I'd actually argue quite a lot with this: the US does not export democracy, it exports capitalism and calls it democracy. It's quite happy to overthrow democratic socialist governments.
Really the key factor is that trading partners don't go to war, because then it's unprofitable and/or they don't have enough independent infrastructure to survive. You can't go to war with your nose to spite your face. This is partly why, despite the bad relations between the EU and Russia and the small war in Ukraine, the gas pipeline remains untouched. They need the money and we need the gas.
And your inference that I'm American is also wrong. I'm an Englishman living in Scotland supporting Scottish independence within the EU. In fact, I spent a lot of time trying to be a "reasonable" Euroskeptic for years, but this year of the referendum I gave up because the unreasonable side has taken over. Yes, the EU is not very democratic and parts of the EU get economically steamrollered. Guess what - this happens within countries too. Greece is to the EU as 80s Liverpool and the "north" was to the Thatcher government: abandoned.
Leaving the EU does not make Europe go away, it doesn't solve any of the economic or social problems, but it does remove a mechanism for resolving them peacefully.
The UK is not very democratic on close inspection either, and all these threats to remove one of the few bits of black-letter constitutional law we do have - ECHR - are really not encouraging.
In the same vain, economic sanctions are a prelude to war and in many cases considered an act of war. Which is why the EUs economic sanctions against Russia are troubling. Such sanctions would not be possible without the EU.
I too have many problems with hypocritical US foreign policy.
I did not infer you were American, I assumed for sake of argument in an effort to tailor my response. I then let you know about my assumption so I could be corrected. Which you did, and thank you.
I don't understand what you're trying to refute. I agree with all of your points; EU was started to stop wars, trade and not democracy prevents wars, and the EU is undemocratic. All of these points are inline with the statement that "many people believe that a democratic Europe is a war risk" which is what I thought you were refuting?
I think economic sanctions is a bigger war risk than democracy, but I'm not "many people"
Mainly the EU is a bureaucracy, so many of it's heads are appointed just like any bureaucracy, but they answer to democratically elected leaders.
That said even my pro EU friends don't make the claim that the EU is democratic. Usually pointing out that the U.K. and the US are not that democratic either. The U.K. being a monarch with a hereditary House of Lords and the US being a federation (see previous election).
I also hold the view that democracy does not scale well beyond city states and that a federation is preferable so long as the federation has constitutionally limited powers. This way demicracy still dominates the affairs of the citizenry. Unfortunately federations have a habit of extending their powers which is where the political system becomes less democratic. I would argue that the EU has increased their powers over time and the system has become less democratic. I would argue the same rule applies to the US.
The crown may not be part of our democracy, but that is the problem considering how much of our land they own.
If you're talking about the Crown estate, it is outside their control and the revenue has been at the disposal of Parliament since the reign of George III. Estimates of the private wealth of the Queen put her at about number 302 in the UK rich list. Hardly a gatekeeper of national wealth. Do you actually know anything at all about the UK's constitutional arrangements?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_...
It's all ideological conjecture.
It's a natural position that logically falls out when you combine the anti-war rational behind the EU with the undemocracy nature of the EU.
That the EU is undemocratic is in general agreement. If you have evidence to the contrary I'd love to see it.
Clearly, you mean the various internal wars of (among other European superstates) the Holy Roman Empire, which are far more relevant to a European superstate than the US Civil War is.
Declaring that people who fought in the Great War were fighting to "prevent" something completely different that came 50 years later is highly offensive to their memory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE
To divide and disunite Europe and make a complete pig's breakfast of the continent.
Even without unrestrained submarine warfare, that alone might have been enough to bring the US into the war in 1915. It took some restraint from Wilson to prevent an earlier entry, anyway.
USA's external actions in that time frame were much more defensible than they have been since then.
It's nice to have an inside view on an intelligence coup - albeit from 100 years ago.
That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to make communication more secure, but it indicates that we are not heading towards an ever worse surveillance state.
The British intelligence service was, it appears, acting logically given its motivations and capabilities. It achieved the outcome it wanted.
Note that the motivations do not always align with what is good for Britain (nor, rather obviously, other countries) - see e.g. Iraq intelligence.
From what is visible (e.g. Snowden data), GCHQ continues to do the same thing. But it has vastly greater capabilities, both in collection and analysis. This means we have been heading towards an ever more capable/powerful surveillance state.
Is privacy important - absolutely - but the correct mechanism to protect not just privacy but against abuse is not to reduce the agencies intel capabilities but strengthen our democratic means of oversight.