Full Version: The state of the EU
EU in Crisis as Constitution Summit Collapses
1. With its latest attempt at comming together on a constitution do you believe the idea of a European Union id going to fade away?
2. Do the countries involved have such different views, ideas, etc that they can not overcome?
3. Will this benefit the United States or won't it have any effect either way
Maybe some of our European friends can give us more insight on the situation since we don't get all the news.
1. With its latest attempt at comming together on a constitution do you believe the idea of a European Union id going to fade away?
2. Do the countries involved have such different views, ideas, etc that they can not overcome?
3. Will this benefit the United States or won't it have any effect either way
Maybe some of our European friends can give us more insight on the situation since we don't get all the news.
1) So far the benefits of the EU vastly outweigh the drawbacks (IMO). I think too much time and money has been invested in the EU by everyone involved to simply let it fade away. The newer members (mostly ex-Iron Curtain countries) have had to revamp their economies to adopt more stringently free market policies. They have had to open up their farming industries to competition, reduce subsidies etc - which has had an extremely detrimental effect on segments of the population, but will be worth it in the long run. In the countries which have been in the EU for a long time, the idea of the EU has become quite accepted (and, for one, I personally like the fact that I can live and work in any EU country without needing a visa....)
2) Where to start! France & Germany would like a highly federated EU - with common laws, taxation,defence & foreign policy etc - in effect a superstate, similar to the US. A state like this could (in theory) be as powerful as the US on the world stage - hence why they want it. However, because this could potentially make the EU a rival to the US, Britain, Spain and Poland (amongst others) are strongly against it and want a far looser union, where defence, taxation and foreign policy are decided by individual nations. Countries near Russia worry about how the EU will deal with Russia - they would like the EU to keep Russia at arms length. Countries geographically far away from Russia would prefer to adopt good relations....some countries (Ireland, Sweden and Austria) are commited to neutrality - so want to be able to decide their own foreign policy etc....
Most countries have SOMETHING they will almost absolutely not back down on - so the EU has normally accepted a compromise - excluding that country from the relevant requirement. Right now there aren't any disagreements that will split the union - but there may well be in the future, especially over how 'strong' to make the union.
3) There are two views.....if you think that the EU could potentially become a threat to the US ( a bit of a stretch of the imagination right now - China is a more likely competitor to both) then anything that weakens it is good for the US.
On the other hand, it is in the interests of the US that Europe remains at peace, so that there isn't a repeat of WW2. This peace has so far been guaranteed by US troops in Europe. If the EU were to become a stronger, closer union, it could probably get together enough troops to defend itself (at the moment, only the UK and France have got any sort of serious army). Then the US troops in Europe could go home - (or go straight to the Middle East maybe!).
However, the US is committed to remaining the military super-power of the world and preventing other countries from challenging it, so any EU force would have to be too small to actually challenge US forces - whereas certain countries in the EU would like the EU to have an army big enough to challenge the US - not to fight a war, but to prevent perceived US interference in other countries.
The EU is one of those complex issues that takes up too much time and effort!
2) Where to start! France & Germany would like a highly federated EU - with common laws, taxation,defence & foreign policy etc - in effect a superstate, similar to the US. A state like this could (in theory) be as powerful as the US on the world stage - hence why they want it. However, because this could potentially make the EU a rival to the US, Britain, Spain and Poland (amongst others) are strongly against it and want a far looser union, where defence, taxation and foreign policy are decided by individual nations. Countries near Russia worry about how the EU will deal with Russia - they would like the EU to keep Russia at arms length. Countries geographically far away from Russia would prefer to adopt good relations....some countries (Ireland, Sweden and Austria) are commited to neutrality - so want to be able to decide their own foreign policy etc....
Most countries have SOMETHING they will almost absolutely not back down on - so the EU has normally accepted a compromise - excluding that country from the relevant requirement. Right now there aren't any disagreements that will split the union - but there may well be in the future, especially over how 'strong' to make the union.
3) There are two views.....if you think that the EU could potentially become a threat to the US ( a bit of a stretch of the imagination right now - China is a more likely competitor to both) then anything that weakens it is good for the US.
On the other hand, it is in the interests of the US that Europe remains at peace, so that there isn't a repeat of WW2. This peace has so far been guaranteed by US troops in Europe. If the EU were to become a stronger, closer union, it could probably get together enough troops to defend itself (at the moment, only the UK and France have got any sort of serious army). Then the US troops in Europe could go home - (or go straight to the Middle East maybe!).
However, the US is committed to remaining the military super-power of the world and preventing other countries from challenging it, so any EU force would have to be too small to actually challenge US forces - whereas certain countries in the EU would like the EU to have an army big enough to challenge the US - not to fight a war, but to prevent perceived US interference in other countries.
The EU is one of those complex issues that takes up too much time and effort!
I think that the biggest mistake the EU has made in the past few years was to sell the amalgamation of several prior treaties as a "Constitution" at all.
While it was a technically correct term - any club of any kind will have a constitution to describe how it will order it's affairs - giving it a capital "C" and doing so in a context where several commentators (and a few EU actors) were talking in terms of a potential United States of Europe drew uncomfortable and unnecessary parallels to the US Constitution, so suddenly everyone started thinking of it as that particular kind of constitution, and it should never have been thought of in those terms because it did not address itself to them. It was just a clarification document to make it easier to operate the EU with 25 members rather than 15.
Similarly, calling the leader of the EU Commission a "President" is a mistake for an entity with parallels to a state. Nobody gets shirty about a company whose most senior administrator is called a "President" because few people see enough parallels between a company and the state to believe that one wishes to usurps the other. "Chief Executive" or "Executive Chairman" would be a more accurate and less contentious description of the role of the head of the EU commission, which, after all, is simply the civil service apparatus of the EU.
IMO, Europe does need a proper US-style constitution that lays down the limitations of it's power, and defines the allocation of those powers to separate legislatures and executives, both of which should be elected, and all of which should be subservient to the wishes of member states except in the narrow areas determined for EU-level decision making in the constitution.
But the recent EU constitution proposals were nothing of the sort.
And besides, the collapse of the talks had little to do with the proposed constitution and everything to do with governmental stubbornness from Spain, Poland, and Germany, all of whom had reasonable case but none of whom wanted to compromise.
While it was a technically correct term - any club of any kind will have a constitution to describe how it will order it's affairs - giving it a capital "C" and doing so in a context where several commentators (and a few EU actors) were talking in terms of a potential United States of Europe drew uncomfortable and unnecessary parallels to the US Constitution, so suddenly everyone started thinking of it as that particular kind of constitution, and it should never have been thought of in those terms because it did not address itself to them. It was just a clarification document to make it easier to operate the EU with 25 members rather than 15.
Similarly, calling the leader of the EU Commission a "President" is a mistake for an entity with parallels to a state. Nobody gets shirty about a company whose most senior administrator is called a "President" because few people see enough parallels between a company and the state to believe that one wishes to usurps the other. "Chief Executive" or "Executive Chairman" would be a more accurate and less contentious description of the role of the head of the EU commission, which, after all, is simply the civil service apparatus of the EU.
IMO, Europe does need a proper US-style constitution that lays down the limitations of it's power, and defines the allocation of those powers to separate legislatures and executives, both of which should be elected, and all of which should be subservient to the wishes of member states except in the narrow areas determined for EU-level decision making in the constitution.
But the recent EU constitution proposals were nothing of the sort.
And besides, the collapse of the talks had little to do with the proposed constitution and everything to do with governmental stubbornness from Spain, Poland, and Germany, all of whom had reasonable case but none of whom wanted to compromise.
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