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Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

bbc.com

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Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#491

Post by somenameforme »

owebmaster wrote: post #339
somenameforme wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am referring to the past when there was less divisive leadership. I think the good things EU offers are generally a great idea - ease of transport, trade, common markets, common currency (* - not so certain on this one, but I'm tentatively positive), and so on. But when you do things like force countries to accept immigrants they may not want to accept, or demand cultural conformity on issues that are not well rece…

> Iam referring to the past when there was less divisive leadership. Are you referring to what period?

Certainly prior to immigration being an issue. Also probably prior to common currency - as I said I'm not yet entirely certain on my views of a common currency. So I suppose things have been getting exponentially worse, but perhaps a key inflection point would be the Maastricht Treaty, although the EU's economic peak predates even that by about a decade.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#492

Post by bluegatty »

simonra wrote: post #474
bluegatty wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'roaming fees' :) That's my point: that's the most marginal thing imaginable, it's borderline tabloid populism - even though yes, admittedly over a lot of issues, it' beneficial obviously. The 'common market' is pretty valuable and it's what the focus should be. Literally nobody is against that - it's what everyone agrees on. As far as travel and roaming fees - you don't need a centralized government for any of that.…

Using Denmark as an example of somewhere doing well because they didn't adapt the euro would be wrong though. They pegged the Danish krone to the euro decades ago, and have as far as I know had to follow the European central banks interest rates fairly closely as a consequence.

It's a fair point but it means they are not part of the Euro financial system and would not have the oversight, lending rates, financial integration etc. etc..

And they have the option to leave at any time.

Case and point: nobody is strongly complaining about getting Kroners for travel etc..

Imagine if every nation did with Denmark did - and made small adjustments - then you'd have 'currency harmonization'.

So I think you have a fair point but still, Denmark is not Euro.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#493

Post by somenameforme »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #327
somenameforme wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US situation is more nuanced than you're framing it as. Even in Mexico there's largely negative sentiment against illegal immigration, as they also suffer from it with the caravans composed primarily of large numbers of young unattached males from a mish mash of places in South America pass through Mexico. They don't tend to leave happiness in their wake. The majority of Mexicans (55%) want them forcibly deported…

So the question becomes, since Mexico is really really huge, why doesn’t the Mexican governemt do anything about these caravans? Not to mention that Mexico is pretty narrow at its southern end.

The border between Mexico and Guatemala is more than 500 miles long. Another issue is think about what's involved in stopping a thousand young males, plenty of them ready to fight. The reason these groups come in 'caravans' is because it makes it difficult to stop them without resorting to inhumane actions. And a thousand is fairly small relative to the size some of them reach. Another issue is money. Imagine you spend "only" $1000 per deported illegal immigrant, and in reality it's probably going to be substantially, if not magnitudes, more after all costs are accounted for. That'd already be tens of billions of dollars given that you're speaking of a problem on the scale of tens of millions.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#494

Post by broken-kebab »

snowpid wrote: post #472
broken-kebab wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally started the discussion from the point that "the mutual assistance clause doesn't oblige member states to support each other with military force" - quoting from the comment just 2 levels above. So which goalpost is being moved here?

I started the discussion with the EU is infact a military alliance. You shifted the goal post by your counter argument. Talking about EU politics you have to use non English sources sometimes. Why not auto translate them?

I shifted nothing, and as we are on the nets, everybody can verify it above. I said you can stretch the notion of military alliance to cover the EU, but because nobody's obliged to come to your rescue in force, in practical terms it is not.

Like if Russia lands on IS, there's no agreement to defend it even if it joined the union.

>Why not auto translate them?

I did, and I clearly mentioned it. And it supports what I said, isn't it? Can we please agree to read those letters in full, and not run to accuse me after finishing just the first sentence?

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#495

Post by mixdup »

1718627440 wrote: post #421
mixdup wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would hold the confirmatory vote before you do all of that. You'd go to the EU, agree what joining looks like, and before doing any of the actual implementation you hold the vote

Which is what would be right now? The final agreement is of course signed after all that restructuring took place.

No, you would sign the agreement before doing all the restructuring. Doing it first would be silly

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#496

Post by 1718627440 »

mixdup wrote: post #495
1718627440 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what would be right now? The final agreement is of course signed after all that restructuring took place.

No, you would sign the agreement before doing all the restructuring. Doing it first would be silly

Except that the EU wouldn't let that happen. You need to do the restructuring before you become an EU member, the other way around would be rather silly for the EU.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#497

Post by dragonwriter »

anal_reactor wrote: post #394
beloch wrote: post #375

The EU needs to develop an associate option for close allies unwilling to become full members. Canada, Iceland, and others are very closely aligned with the EU in many respects and all could benefit from closer relationships. Ask a Canadian if they'd favour joining the EU and they'd probably be all for it, until you start talking about what that means. Fully joining the EU involves giving up a lot of sovereignty to a…

We already have associate options - not joining Schengen, not adopting Euro. Anything more than that results in a horrible mess of legal agreements. Imagine that suddenly each US state gets more sovereignty and they just... make different decisions. California adopts Spanish as second official language, New York adopts metric system, Alabama permits sister/brother marriages, Utah declares Mormonism as official religi…

> Imagine that suddenly each US state gets more sovereignty and they just... make different decisions. California adopts Spanish as second official language, New York adopts metric system, Alabama permits sister/brother marriages, Utah declares Mormonism as official religion, and Wyoming stops contributing to US army.

Only the last two would be noteworthy and currently not allowed. The US adopted the metric as an official system alongside the US Customary system in 1866, and as the preferred system in 1975 (and, in between, redefined the entire US Customary system from an independent system to a system of metric-derived units.)

The US has no official language in law (Trump issued an executive order purporting to establish one in 2025), but numerous states and territories have adopted official languages in law (mostly long before Trump's federal gesture) — mostly English, but several territories also designate one additional language (differing by territory) and the State of Alaska has 21 indigenous languages given status as official languages alongside English.

And while no state allows sibling marriages, US states do differ in degree of consanguinity allowed for marriage, with about a 50/50 split on whether first cousins can marry, and a handful of states having restrictions on second cousins as well.

Love when people do "imagine if" and its mostly stuff that is indistinguishable from the status quo.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#498

Post by inglor_cz »

runarberg wrote: post #489
inglor_cz wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it really amusing just how different our perspectives on the EU are. You accuse the EU of being neo-liberal, I accuse it of being a micromanaging bureaucratic behemoth heaping endless new regulations on everything including wrapping paper (this is our current outrage of the day), endlessly distrustful towards people who what just to take care of themselves and be left alone. It is hard to believe that we are b…

I think this speaks volumes about how far right the Overton window has shifted in Europe, if my run-of-the-mill leftist critique of the EU sounds so novel. I actually blame Brexit for this. Before Brexit being anti-EU for anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist reason was kind of a litmus test for a left wing political candidate. Note this is also true of Iceland. The debate was mostly about nationalism and economy, and th…

I'd say that your critique of the EU would have been quite run-of-the-mill in the early 2000s, but nowadays, this corner of the left has mostly shrunk away and became somewhat marginal.

As for the voters and their questioning: yeah, people will give inconsistent answers quite often, especially when you pry into the details. But the majority sentiment has been against more immigration for some time now, and that majority tends to become a supermajority when immigration specifically from the Islamic world and Subsaharan Africa is discussed. I don't think there is any way back from that, not in our lifetimes.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#499

Post by phatfish »

bArray wrote: post #444
phatfish wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't binding so the normal procedure and checks around a referendum could be ignored. Like disenfranchising the British citizens living in the EU. Democratic indeed...

It was just an exercise in testing the mood of the nation, don't you see? Just like a general election, if the electorate vote the wrong party, it is perfectly fine to just ignore the result. The vote was non-binding due to the sovereignty of parliament [1]. It means that if a war broke out or the economy crashed, they would not be forced to continue at great detriment to the UK. But it doesn't mean that the vote was…

Fair enough, the "advisory" nature of referendum in the UK does have clear reasoning that i wasn't fully aware of. However the idea of it being "advisory" was itself exploited, and used to make people think that Brexit would't happen anyway, even if the vote was to leave.

My suggestion was not that the referendum shouldn't stand because it was "advisory", but that there should have been rules applied around a referendum that could affect peoples lives so much. But, there are no such rules it seems, the majority in the Commons gets to decide that.

Which is why (almost a million?) British citizens in the EU were not allowed to vote, which doesn't seem very democratic.

And Europeans who were born in the UK and lived their entire life here.

It was a referendum of the the right sort of British citizen.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#500

Post by pas »

muyuu wrote: post #475
pas wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are already de facto inside. Hence the argument to have a vote at least. They are already paying the price for not being de jure members. (Currency exchange costs, rate hedging is also costly, and they don't benefit from EU unified foreign policy - the current Trump scare for Greenland could come for them too - hence the argument to join.)

their voting power would be essentially zero and the policy opt-ins very significant no doubt in my mind I'd vote no in their place

there are members with veto power (for things that require unanimity)

https://michalovadek.github.io/eu-veto-tracker/

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