The European Union

[HoboFactory]

The European Union's an interesting thing. Some people have compared it to the Roman Empire, others to the early United States. Recently Romania and Bulgaria have been welcomed into the club, and a few other countries are considered to be candidates. Seems strange that so many nations that couldn't keep from trying to destroy one another for many than 50 years are now in many ways just parts of the same country. With so many members and people, it seems like there will have to come a point where interests would become too contrary for any unity to be maintained. Particularly when you start including Eastern Europe which is still very different, and probably always will be, when compared to the West. On top of that, there's the question of how the EU would or could handle a war should one arise with an outside nation. Could they maintain military unity? To me it would appear, that a lot of the challenges would be too much to allow the whole thing to function in the long-term.

 

Any thoughts?

[juanpe]

I'm from Europe and the impression -at least- that we have in Spain is that first it is a great union to keep peace and economical agreements in the "old continent" (as it is called most of the times), but secondly I agree with your view that it seems very unlikely that all countries can reach an agreement on everything, not only economics but specially social issues, taking into account that we are talking about lots of different (in some cases, very different) countries, with different ideas, points of views, traditions, interests...

 

an example is the European Constitution. My country and some others voted for a European Constitution with no problem but countries as important as France voted against it. If not even the big countries in Europe can agree on a common Constitution, how will the other small and less important countries agree on decisions which will affect the Union?

 

I dont know, i guess it is like a big "empire" with different cultures trying to reach an agreement on common problems, concerns and interests. Difficult but possible.

[HoboFactory]

What you said there could be another illustration of the problem. You said "less important" countries, which makes sense from an international perspective, for instance Germany is considered to be much more important than a country like Bulgaria, when it comes to international politics, or economics, or even its military influence. But why would those countries want to tolerate being lesser? Why would they want to be part of a system where their priorities are at the bottom of the list? Regardless of how poor and far-behind a country is (Romania for example), they consider themselves to the best nation on the planet, and they have a ton of national pride, would they be ok with being at the bottom of the ladder?

[juanpe]

yes, exactly, and it is not because I think there are "less important" countries than others... we all are humans and we all are Europeans, no matter you are living in Spain or in Germany or in Romania. The problem is that since the European Union is basically based on economics grounds, it is true that Romania cannot be at all compared to Germany (the "motor" of Europe, as this country is seen by the rest) or to France or Spain. And this point is why most of the left-wing parties in Europe are against (or partly against, i would say) this kinda European Union, just because it is based on economics and not so much on social issues.

 

The requirements to enter the EU for this new countries or countries which are not as powerful as others are too high for them and in my opinion it is one way to keep them always at a lower level with respect to the powerful countries in Europe.

 

It may work with respect to economics (the Euro is much stronger than the American dollar, for example)... but what about social issues? I'm not so sure about that, actually.

[Matt]

As a Canadian, I think I have something to say on the subject. The EU is basically set up like the Dominion of Canada. In the early days, the federal government had almost no power except over national projects (like the intercontiental railway and trade). Even today, the provinces have a huge amounts of autonomy compared to the States. Generally our legislatures (national assembly in Quebec) can pass whatever the please of a local interest, so health care and most social programs fall under a provincial scope, while the government can help out and even take those projects national. So, I doubt the E.U. will fail, but the times will be turbulent, however, there will be prosperity too. It just might not seem as stable as in many other countries.

[HoboFactory]

I don't think that's all that good of a parallel. First off, Canada's population is a fraction of that of the EU. On top of that, there are more EU member nations than provinces in Canada. It's easier to build some degree of consensus among 13 (or however many) provinces/territories than 27 very different countries. With the EU members, there's more different sets of interests, different degrees of stability within the member nations. Also, Canada's government has a much more unified foreign policy and a more unified military.

 

I think the thing that'll probably bring them down is a war.

[Matt]

Canada is a collection of provinces who didn't want to be together in the first place. The only reason Nova Scotia joined was for the railway. PEI was in debt and Canada bailed them out, before that they were resisting confederation. New Found Land held out until 1949 because they feared confederation too, but they ended up having too much debt. British Columbia didn't particularly want to join either, they felt more of a kinship with the U.S. than Canada. However, the people at the time were first and formost loyal to the Crown. The Brits managed to convince B.C.'s government at the time the smart plan was to confederate rather than join the States or stay an isolated colony. Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan didn't have a choice, that land was settled by Ottawa and before that it was bought from the Hudson's Bay Company.

 

Also, it is a good parallel because it's the model the E.U. has used, a loose collection of societys tied together. Quebec isn't the only province who has threatened to seperate recently. During the Nineties, there was talk of B.C. seperating, nothing ever came of that. Now there's talk in Alberta too. Also, like I said earlier the federal government, in the beginning only had matters of a national concern to deal with. It's only evolved for them to take on more of a intertwined role. But that took till the Charter was passed and that was after the Constitution failed to be adopted by all the provinces. And with the Charter there's still the "Not With Standing" Clause which allows provinces to ignore the Charter, for example the Supreme Court ruled that Quebec's language laws are not valid, but they continue to exist because of the Not With Standing Clause. It takes time for a Union to form, most of the countries in the world didn't form over night but over time. Germany wasn't even a nation until the 1860s... It was just a bunch of scattered German speaking nations in the same area before. The E.U. has a long way to go itself. I don't think it will be brought down because of the fact that they work better together than against each other. Canada was formed from fear of American invasion that was the catalyst, the E.U. was formed from a shattered continent, they learned to work together, Canada the same, so the E.U. can be like us and work out issues over time. We didn't come to a charter over night neither will they. They haven't come to a national pride overnight, neither has our country, we still struggle with that. So, it's not like there isn't hope for the Union.

[Studs Terkel]

Read the book, The United States of Europe, it seems to give a rather good discussion of what a united Europe would look like. Although I am just taking the author's word for it, not having been their myself. I'd how he wouldn't be lying to me.