211–220 of 396 posts
As a brit, it's strange to see how it's being spun here. The majority of people voted to leave the EU and to regain independence. There will be a little volatility until some facts about how that divorce happens, emerge. Long term, we now have control of our future. In terms of startups though, the EU is there to serve big businesses and powerful establishment. It's there to hinder startups and small businesses. If y…
As a brit, it's strange to see how it's being spun here. The majority of people voted to leave the EU and to regain independence. There will be a little volatility until some facts about how that divorce happens, emerge. Long term, we now have control of our future. In terms of startups though, the EU is there to serve big businesses and powerful establishment. It's there to hinder startups and small businesses. If y…
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I have the impression that I elected the MPEs, and that I have chosen my ministers and my head of state, and as such, the councils of ministers and heads of state that are the real rulers of Europe, yes, the nations! As the European commission, it's a civil service as there is in all the European countries.
> "As the European commission, it's a civil service as there is in all the European countries." That's a common misconception. Why? In other countries, the civil service aren't the only ones that can propose legislation. In the EU, the European Parliament can't propose legislation, the European Council can't propose legislation, only the European Commission can propose legislation. You may be electing people to repre…
Also, it's not a simple "yes/no" ability for the parliament. They certainly can (and do) modify proposed legislation.
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We buy more from the EU than we sell. We are the EUs biggest market. We buy 1,000,000 cars from Germany. It is massively in the EU's interests to do a deal with us quickly.
Politics is not always rational. It is also in the interest of the survival of the EU to deal with the UK in a heavy-handed manner. If a precedent is set that shows leaving the union is all upsides with no downsides, why would other countries remain? IMO, France has the greatest risk of leaving next, and without France, the whole EU might collapse. The kid gloves are definitely going to come off in the negotiations:…
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> "As the European commission, it's a civil service as there is in all the European countries." That's a common misconception. Why? In other countries, the civil service aren't the only ones that can propose legislation. In the EU, the European Parliament can't propose legislation, the European Council can't propose legislation, only the European Commission can propose legislation. You may be electing people to repre…
It should be noted that the president of the European Commission is proposed by the [democratically elected] heads of state of the member states, and that their proposed candidate has to be accepted by the [democratically elected] members of the European Parliament, and that each member state nominates a commissioner, and that this group of people as a whole have to be accepted, again, by the the European Parliament.…
A nitpick: The European Council, which appoints the President of the Commission, is composed of the heads of state or heads of government, which depends on the individual member state. E.g., for Britain, the PM (head of government) is a member of the Commission, not the Queen (head of state).
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Independence is a mirage, as is control. No individual nor country in the world is independent. We are all interdependent on one another, and ever more so as the movement of data, goods and people accelerates. The EU is a framework is facilitate that interdependence, and while it has many faults, it was created to prevent another world war and in that it has succeeded. Great Britain's future is very dependent on the…
> The EU will make the UK pay a price for Brexit, and rightly so, otherwise all member states would leave and still enjoy the free movement of goods and people. I really hate this sentiment. This is just about the worst EU can do, it would damage its legitimacy in the eyes of us, EU citizens, even more than the handling of the Greek crisis already did. I don't see any reason to punish a country for voting to leave th…
In the end I doubt the UK will get as nice a deal as Swiss or Norway nor at such a fast rate. The main deal of the EU is free movement, that is not on the table due to the UK. Without free movement of people, free movement of goods and money are going to be difficult.
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Ok. I'll bite on this one. Why are you opposed to mass immigration?
Now to the specific. The country in question is Russia and mass immigrants mostly come from Ukraine, Caucasus and Central Asia. People from Ukraine, and fellow Russians coming home, I have no reservations against. They're as good cultural fit as anybody already in the country. I'll make the process smoother if I could. People from Caucasus, they're often poor cultural fit. They're first to bend laws, they're sometime…
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> for the differing peoples of Britain and the Continent So you on the islands are special but we monkeys on the continent are all the same? The UK has been half-in/half-out of the EU for the last 40 years, always wanting extra on all the benefits and never taking a downside in return. I'm glad you've finally made up your mind, as one way or the other this shitshow will finally end.
> > for the differing peoples of Britain and the Continent So you on the islands are special but we monkeys on the continent are all the same? No — a Brit and a Frenchman almost certainly have more in common than a Frenchman and a Czech. This is part of why the EU process should have taken centuries instead of being accelerated. Trying to fake one artificial common culture across an entire continent was a mistake: it…
This process would have been reset between each war for those many centuries. After all, the reason the EU was founded was to prevent yet another European war. What could possibly go wrong if you replaced the EU with nationalist independent states with a web of treaties between them?
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> Clearly, free trade can and did exist before 1992, 1957, and 1942. Trade did exist. Free trade less so, and a durable expectation of free trade on predictable terms (free or otherwise) even less so.
Not sure how I'm failing to make my point. I said post WW Europe had regressive protectionism. The initial unions did alleviate some of that. However, over time it turned into a larger version of the initial problem.
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> The EU has been extremely ineffective at negotiating trade deals between the 28 EU countries, and non EU countries. Exactly, which casts strong doubts on the this claim from your earlier post: "We will negotiate a trade deal with the EU as a whole." Because, you know, that is a trade deal between the 27 remaining EU countries and a non-(or soon to be non-)EU country, the exact thing you say that the EU isn't succes…
We buy more from the EU than we sell. We are the EUs biggest market. We buy 1,000,000 cars from Germany. It is massively in the EU's interests to do a deal with us quickly.