Is Europe Disintegrating?

Interesting article. I do believe that the EU will collapse, and that it is only a matter of time. First of all, there is not a single instance in History where a common currency, such as the Euro, succeeded. It always has collapsed. Different people in France have developed about this exact subject.

I believe that more and more people are in favor of existing the EU. In the case of France, the first thing that people need to understand, is that a referendum was held in 2005 in France, and that the people have been asked if they wanted to integrate the EU. The No won by over 55%. Even though, Sarkozy signed the treaty and put France into the EU.

EDIT: People also realize that people who run for presidency, only present a program that is actually the program of the EU... In the case of France, there are some specific laws and orientations that the EU is trying to push on the country, on different areas, such a Work law, or GMO. Those laws goes against what generations and generations of people fought for. Other people who run for president also put in their program stuff that would go against the EU program, and that is NOT APPLICABLE. If those were applied, the country would be fined heavily by the EU. Which I think, makes those politics either liers, or incompetents.

The second thing is that more and more people realize that the way it works isn't sustainable, and this for a simple reason; having 28 countries together, who have to obey to the same set of rules (EU treaties), in different area such as Education, Immigration, Finance, Farming, etc... is not possible. Why? Because the interest of Estonia in Immigration are totally different than France's interests in that same area. Italy interests in finance are different than UK, etc... You cannot apply the same rules to everybody.

A simple metaphor to understand the problem is this: - If you own your own house, you can do whatever you want and paint your outside walls as you like. - If you own an apartment in a 6 stories building, you probably wont have the freedom to put whatever window you want on it, and there will be a few rules that every story of the building will have to follow. - Now take a building with 28 stories, is it now harder to make everyone happy? or easier?

If there is a leak under the roof, the owner of the last story will be mad and will want to do something about it. However, it won't be the others owners' priority to fix that. If the first floor has an issue of recurrent flooding, the people for the above stories won't have that as a priority either...

Now, if you want to modify the European treaty, you must have the unanimity of all its members. How is that possible, knowing that each country does not have the same interests/concerns, in any area? It's not. And this is probably why UK tried to negotiate with the EU on a different set of topics, before actually holding the referendum.

Not to mention that countries who are not in the EU, but are in Europe, are doing way better on a lot of aspects, than countries who are part of the EU. A lot of novel prices of economy also stood up and explained that the EU will collapse, and one of them even resigned from the BCE (Banque Centrale Europeenne), and joined a French political party who wants France to get out of the EU, using the Article 50 of the treaty.

The article defines the acronym:

He points to the acronym PIGS, coined for four crisis-torn, Southern European debtor countries of the eurozone: Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain.

> How much truth is there, to this statement i.e. "young Spaniards with PHDs are serving as Waiters in London or Berlin." Anyone?

Plausible. Wage is higher in London and Berlin. As others put, unemployment among youth is very high in Spain. Finally, Europeans grow up speaking English as secondary language thanks to computers/IT. (For Civ players among us: smell the cultural victory?)

Also, if you apply for social benefits in NL you need to apply for one job a week and give proof about this to the government. You need to accept any 'socially acceptable work' regardless of your education (no, won't involve prostitution, but it can surely involve low wage jobs such as garbageman, waiter, or clerk in a store). If you went for a PhD in philosophy (not much money in that field), that is entirely your choice. Its also entirely possible you're unable to find a job right after you completed your education if that education isn't in high demand (if your PhD is tech-related you have nothing to worry). Except when job recruiters demand you have certain 'experience in the field'. Then you're screwed regardless.

My own country, Canada, seems to be doing a good job, and I'm not sure but I think we have even higher immigration rates than Europe or the United States and we're still a fairly liberal, progressive and integrated society. I think our secret is selective immigration, we are much more selective than Europe in regards to who we let into the country and we don't have the illegal immigration issue on the scale that America does.

I think the trick to dealing with immigration is controlling for "which immigrants" which might be easier said than done if you are place like America or Europe with a bunch of people stampeding at your boarders wanting in.

I really hope this rise of Nationalism is just a phase. If not it won't end well for Europe and the world.