For any new-age-Europe of the future, it wouldn't operate in that manner for each and every nation that signs up to the 5 president proposals.

As per earlier posts, a single EU government would logically lead to a single standing Navy, Air Force and Army, perhaps by 2025 as per the "document of 5".
Such forces would recruit from across all of the previous nations but act on behalf of the new government as a single entity.
Hence NATO would have a few concerns, if it were to still exist by then.

Scots and English regiments must have felt something similar when their respective nations combined a few 100 years ago, albeit that was not the same cirmcumstance, exactly, because of the oath of allegiance to the Crown.

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Dave

Interesting discussion, which I presume is mainly of importance to the British. The „continentals“ are often much less inclined to linger on this subject. They usually dismiss this as dreams of imperial grandezza of past centuries Many people on the continent believe that the UK tries to exert pressure on the EU just to pick the rasins, i.e. to get a better deal at the expense of the other members.

The post of greenmanalishi is also worth reading, stating that it might be „an age thing with older people more likely to want to leave the EU than the younger ones.“ This probably applies to most discussions regarding the EU. In the beginning many Germans were strongly opposed to relinquish their Deutschmark, believing that the Euro would ruin economic stability. Even nowadays the older people (sic!) convert Euro prices to Deutschmark and grumble about inflation.... But most people forget that the EU has also increased inter-european trade significantly, not to speak of all the other improvements to make life easier.


Some of the posts IMHO don't belong into this thread. Like Tim Cullis' post „I also have an ill feeling about the power wielded by Angela Merkel who appears to be a rule unto herself. She unilaterally decides to throw open the borders of Germany to what we now realise are predominantly young male economic migrants, and then a couple of months later is trying to force other countries to shoulder the burden. WTF. „ for example.



First of all I believe that if someone is running for his life (Syrians), humanitarian actions are not to be discussed. I'm not speaking of economic refugees. Britain is in the comfortable position to be an island state with a useful neighbour (France), who blocks off any attempts of refugees to board any kind of transport to get into the UK.
Greece and Italy aren't in this comfortable position. Turkey and northern Africa care a damn whether anybody tries to get across the border to Europe. If anyone has a serious suggestion as how to stop the stampede, here's your chance. Gunboats are no arguments.


My two cents worth as a South African expat living in Munich – but not as an economic refugee
S.A. by the way accommodates many refugees facing famine and violence at home in Zimbabwe, but unfortunately it is also flooded by economic refugees from other African countries – all in all an estimated 5 million. I suspect the routes to SA are much easier than those to the EU.....

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Only when we pause to wonder
do we go beyond the limits of our little lives.
(Rod McKuen)

Why shouldn't we as we are in the top 5 of the highest payers to the EU rather than the top 5 of the highest takers
Yes I know it is based on GNI, a percentage of VAT and additional revenues

But in 2013 (according to the daily telegraph) we payed a total of 17 billion Euro whilst only getting 6.3 billion back so our Net contribution was 10 billion give or take, whilst another country paid 4.2 billion euros and took 16.1 billion,,,thats why we like raisins.
As I have said before that money may be better spent looking after our own people instead of propping up others. That is one of the things for me that should change if we stop in.

Added info
looking further we got a 4 billion rebate along with Germany, Austria, Holland and Sweden (don't know how much they got)...bonus

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The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

Your suggestion that Britain is focused purely on financial matters is way off target. For many British people the issue with the EU is not economic but loss of sovereignty which has everything to do with 'Der Frau', sorry, 'Mutti'.

So for me the most important of Cameron's four shopping list items is the request, "to end Britain's obligation to work towards an 'ever-closer union'... to make clear that this commitment will no longer apply to the United Kingdom." Everything else I could reluctantly live with, even if it means our country and our services are swamped by EU citizens attracted to the higher-performing British economy.

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

I can agree with you there Tim. I don't think any country in the EU should be ruled by anyone else, but I do think we could still be a strong working EU without it

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The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

As was written earlier, the clue lies in the U of the EU.
The U was not visible in the previous EEC but now it is exposed for all to see.

Just to throw in a wider set of factors, on a longer timescale:

Russia/Putin would be welcoming to a weaker Europe, in general, and a reduction of the "will" of the European continent in particular.

Longer term, if Putin (who is here to stay, unlike, say, Obama who disappears in 12 months) can detect a sufficiently disunited Europe he may see good sense in some form of bilateral alliance between Germany and Russia, for trade alone.

China has ideas about constructing a new "silk route" to increase trade.
Such a new land based route would probably
- avoid the sealanes altogether
- terminate in Europe, likely with Germany as a terminus
- pass via Moscow
- be a rail link rather than a highway

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Dave

Few interesting points here. The ECHR was created in the 50s by the council of Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Human_Rights

Way before the EU!

What changed in the UK was that Tony Blair made it law so that anyone separated from his cat can go to the ECHR to get “justice” and compensation.
As the legal system is vastly different in the UK compared with say, France, it causes a hell of a problem in the UK. For example the notion of compensation and shark Lawyers are still rare in France, and AFAIK once expelled from France, you can only appeal once you are back in your country (and I presume at your own cost instead of tax payer cost?). So for the Euro and Europe to work, we would not only need a fiscal a but also legal convergence across the board . It won’t happen.

Ted, I am foreigner too (been in the UK for 19 years!) but even if UK is out of the EU, I don’t expect that any (non-British) resident can be booted out. If they did, the education system , the NHS and any sort of knowledge based industry would collapse!

Not really sure what would be best. I don’t think it would be financial Armageddon. We import a hell a lot of goods (and talent!) from Europe. They need us as much as we need Europe. Remember that many years ago, we were told we would face cataclysm if we did not join the Euro. IF we had, we would be Greece or worse by now.

To be fair I think the debate of Brexit may become irrelevant by the time the referendum comes. The refugee crisis may push the EU apart, and like all previous Europeans “Empires” from the Holy Roman Empire of the middle ages to most recent ones, it just may fall into irrelevance.

And then, as has been discussed by some, a much bigger storm may be in the horizon. The financial world situation is incredibly complex and fragile. The problems that caused the crisis in 2008 (huge global debt) that was judged to be a liquidity problem (Keynesian approach) but I believe is a solvency problem (I am more of the Von Mises school of thoughts) will eventually blow up again. Except this time central bankers won’t have any more tools to deal with it. Only in the UK private debt is through the roof. Mortgage debt is near 1.25 trillion.

And let’s not talk about Government debt at over 1.5 trillion and counting, not including Off the balance sheet liabilities, so that would probably least to 3 trillion? …

Imagine what would happen if the housing market crashed by even 10%? That would be a lots of write off for the banks.


They would go bust. Now there would be no more Bail Out. After the Cyprus experiment, US, EU and the UK, among others, quietly made sure that Bail Ins can be done. And if you expect that your 100,000 Euro government guarantee will work for your savings/pension fund etc… think again. http://www.globalresearch.ca/financial-meltdown-and-the-confiscation-of-bank-savings-the-uk-eu-bank-depositor-bail-in-scheme/5475934

Sadly for the last 35 years, Governments around the world have been kicking the can down the road hoping problems would go away and artificial low rates combined with an exponential explosion on debt have led to this situation. They have probably based their premises on “Ivory tower” Economists testing their theories. Economy is not called the “abysmal science” for nothing! There are no easy answers to all those problems. Soon or later we will have to take the Pain.

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Maria

www.franglais-riders.com

True, within the UK, one is innocent until proven guilty, although even this principle has been whittled away in some respects.

Under the Napoleonic code of justice it is necessary to prove your innocence, which is a reason why the continental decrees do not always fit well with UK law.

We live in interesting times.

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Dave

The thread has been running for only about 6 weeks and it has drawn upon some excellent input to the debate, in many cases well ahead of the MSM.

As for the Lord King article, following the links in the website bring out more abstracts from his book, such as
Lord Mervyn King: why throwing money at financial panic will lead us into a new crisis

That particular link reminds me immediately of a post from January in here which remains the best single contribution to this thread to date IMO, in that it summarises so many of the issues that are facing us (all we need now are some feasible solutions):-

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Dave

Good to hear of a SA taking an interest.

The issue of a UK Brexit is very much on the agenda here in the UK; if the nationals of the other European countries are not hearing about this in the news coverage, it is because it is coming up on the inside rail of the "migrant crisis".
My own acquaintances living on the mainland tell me this is how it is at present regarding the lack of discussion about what the UK is doing right now.

Throwing the door open to 1m new inhabitants made little sense but it is a German problem for their own solution; IMO there is no chance of other countries, especially those in eastern Europe, shouldering that burden which is why the fall of Merkel may be a good bet.

Inter-European trade has been unbalanced, at best; Greece and Germany are at opposite ends of the scales.
There is much to this one-line-view of mine and it has been discussed in the other thread in this HUBB pub about the economic crisis - that is the real event that will dominate everything else during 2016, IMO.
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...crisis-59853-8

You will know that the South African economy is more or less tanking at present; that is the way forward for many more nations during this year; there's my view again.

All of this is going to concentrate a few minds; for some, the easy life has been over for a while (again Greece is the prime example) and for others ............. well, let's see how the year goes.

ps "Currency wars" is the name of the game for this year at least and China has not taken a seat at that gaming table to date.

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Dave

I am a "continental" and the subject of the referendum in the UK interests me very much. It will have an impact on the EU as a whole. I, for one, truly hope that Brexit happens so that this thing called EU can end once and for all.

Of course I can not discuss (it isn't really my place) the effects on the UK and for UK citizens. But I can present the point of view of a continental.


That post by Tim was very interesting along with many others. Those posts show aspects of the EU and how it works nowadays. As a matter of fact the preponderance of Germany is one of the reasons why I doubt that the EU still exists. And, please, don't confuse things. I am not a germanophobe, far, very far from it. And as a matter of fact I fully understand why Germany is the country who bosses the rest around. After all, they are the ones who pay, specially on what concerns the Eurozone. But, of course, this state of affairs led to the erosion of EU institutions to the point that I often question if the EU still exists other than on paper.


Fair enough, there exists the duty to protect those running from wars. It's true, that duty exists and good that it does. But this is not synonimous with accepting everybody and allowing everybody to mingle in our societies regardless of each country's capabilities to absorb the influx. Her Majesty's government approached the question the right way and exactly the same way as Australia, Canada or the US approach it: ok, Britain will accept some refugess... but we will go and pick them from refugee camps. This is the right way to do things for several reasons. Ok, Greece, Italy and other states can not do it this way as easily as the UK. But there is a very simple way to solve the problem. The creation of refugee camps in Greece or Italy or Serbia or Croatia or something of the sort where those who arrive in Europe are placed, even those who manage to reach Germany or France or whichever country. They arrive there, they are sent back to the refugee camps. Then, once in the camps, they may apply for asylum in a certain country but the granting of asylum is at the discretion of each individual country. Not granted under pressure of a gigantic exodus. As a matter of fact this is a no-brainer. It is what has been done all over the world for the last several decades. No need to invent the wheel again.