EU politics

[thedarkproject]

I'll be quite glad if the whole European Union project goes belly-up as a result of all the recent wrangling. We have the current EU president saying that the constitution will not be renegotiated - despite France and Holland, quite important countries, voting against it - and in fact claiming that "I really believe neither the French nor the Dutch rejected the constitutional treaty".

Now, as I understand it, the wording of the French referendum was "Approuvez-vous le projet de loi qui autorise la ratification du traité établissant une Constitution pour l'Europe? " which is essentially, 'do you approve of the bill authorising the ratification of the European constitution?' The Dutch version was "Bent U voor of tegen instemming door Nederland met het verdrag tot vaststelling van een grondwet voor Europa?" which Wikipedia tells me means "Are you for or against approval by the Netherlands of the treaty establishing a constitution for Europe?" (Is that right, spillher?)

Both seem pretty clear to me, but no, Mr Juncker - current president of the EU and Prime Minister of Luxembourg, a country right next to France and not far from Holland - is claiming the people didn't vote the way that they did. Whether you are for the European Union or against it, is that the sort of politician you want in power - one who refuses to take not one but two national referendums seriously?

And on top of that we have the French saying that they want the EU to stop paying Britain's rebate, which was created to offset the fact that we get very little back in terms of agricultural subsidy, yet are utterly unwilling to make any concessions with regards to the disproportionate amount of such subsidies that go to their farmers. France isn't a poor Eastern European country, it's just one that refuses to reform its industry and is happier for others to subsidise it.

Why do we do all this? It seems like a tremendous waste of cash and a source of limitless antagonism, over someone's impractical utopian dream.

Comments

Re: midnight rant

[thedarkproject]

I think there's a significant difference though. If you go from Texas to Michigan or from Kentucky to Rhode Island then at least you know that people speak the same language (pretty much), vote for roughly the same political parties, have similar attitudes towards social security and taxation, etc. The cultural differences across national borders in the EU are larger than those across state borders in the US. For instance, British working hours would not be acceptable in France, and France's tax levels wouldn't be acceptable here. That sort of pattern is repeated across Europe for different factors.

It's quite possible that, in the event of some form of union, that 200 years down the line it would be much as the USA is today, and we'd be as happy with it as most US citizens are. But it's equally possible that we'd go through a civil war in the process too. Closer union will mean several entire countries with distinct cultural and ethnic backgrounds have to make significant changes to their way of life in order for there to be some semblance of 'fairness' to Europe as a whole, and generally speaking people do not want to do that.