Will the European Union Survive?

The major problem is that we got from one day to the other 17 million new citizen who paid nothing, not a pfennig or a cent in our system, but got out of it the very same as if they had paid

The French threw us out because of national conceit

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According to the European Commission, by 2050 the percentage of Europeans older than 65 will nearly double. In the 1950s there were seven workers for every retiree in advanced economies. By 2050, the ratio in the European Union will drop to 1.3 to 1.

“The easy days are over for countries like Greece, Portugal and Spain, but for us, too,” said Laurent Cohen-Tanugi, a French lawyer who did a study of Europe in the global economy for the French government. “A lot of Europeans would not like the issue cast in these terms, but that is the storm we’re facing. We can no longer afford the old social model, and there is a real need for structural reform.”

Now, at the worst possible moment, Germany is turning to nationalist illusions. Europe’s past economic successes are now viewed as German successes. Europe’s current deep problems are everyone else’s except Germany’s. That is neither realistic nor sustainable. But German politicians and commentators are callously and self-destructively feeding these ideas.

Earlier this year, when Germany was still refusing to participate in a bailout, the country’s largest newspaper by circulation, Bild, suggested Greece should sell the Acropolis to pay off its bond market creditors. (It estimated the monument could bring in $140 billion.) A senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party suggested auctioning off some of Greece’s Aegean islands. Meanwhile, a Bild poll showed a majority of Germans in favor of expelling Greece from the euro.
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Instead of committing to more spending, Germany is now preparing a multiyear program of deep spending cuts. Given its troubled history, we can understand its fear of deficit spending and inflation. But right now more German austerity will likely cripple Europe’s nascent recovery and Germany’s own prosperity. That is another hard truth that Mrs. Merkel needs to tell her party and her country.

As usual there is a lot of truth to what I say..

A social/economic system that worked wonderfully well during the economic boom of 1950 - 1990, propelled in part by the large generation born after WWII and the early benefits of European economic union, no longer functions as it once did, now with sclerotic, over-regulated labor markets, chronic high unemployment among the young, accumulating public debt, and the shrinking and ageing populations resulting from profoundly changed demographics, particularly among the central and southern European nations.

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The European Union reminds me the United States before 1787, when it was a clumsy, limping, ineffectively governed "nation" of bickering states

the flaw in your thinking is

1) we did not have states that had a long history of being successful states on there own

who also

2) know that they are big enough and strong enough that they don't need the US to continue to exist in order for their state to survive

I am concerned that objectively the European nations will be unable to both preserve their social welfare systems

But what happens to two digit unemployment when more people retire than newly enter the work force? Would Europe not rather have Eastern European migrants filling jobs the local population finds less attractive than to have them filled by economic refugees from Africa or from the Muslim world? Is it not reasonable to assume that the retirement of, and eventual die-off of the baby boom generation will solve more problems than it creates?

You really are profoundly ignorant of history, even of the history of the United States. What do you think was going on during the English civil wars? Do you even know anything about the civil wars in England? Do you know when they took place? Do you know how many there were, and why they were fought? Do you know what their immediate effect on the North American colonies was? Do you know what profound influence their origin had on the American polity? Do you know, especially, how those civil wars affected the amendment to the constitution undertaken by the First Congress?

Are you aware of King William's War, Queen Anne's War and King George's War, and how the North American colonists responded to them?

I doubt that you have a cogent answer to any of these questions. I suspect that you don't know a goddamned thing about the history of the North American colonies prior to our revolution. Otherwise, you wouldn't have made such stupid remarks.

I cannot see why you are wasting your typing skills in a so little rewarding task..

I doubt that you have a cogent answer to any of these questions. I suspect that you don't know a goddamned thing about the history of the North American colonies prior to our revolution. Otherwise, you wouldn't have made such stupid remarks.

Published: May 21 2010 02:54 | Last updated: May 21 2010 02:54

European Union member states must come to grips with a more assertive Germany, the country’s interior minister said, serving notice that the hard stance displayed by Berlin in the Greek debt crisis was likely to remain a lasting feature of its European relations.

Thomas De Maizière acknowledged a new mentality in Germany, and said the country would increasingly seek to defend its own interest in the EU while shedding its long-time role as a passive paymaster for the European project.

"For our European friends, they need to come to terms with the fact that Germany is going to act just as other European countries do in Brussels and this will not make it automatically anti-European,” said Mr De Maizière, acknowledging that Germany was now defending “its national interest with a lot of vigour” " just as France, the UK, Italy and other member states had done.

Mr De Maizière, who enjoys close ties to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was seeking to explain a fundamental shift in Germany’s approach to Europe that has burst into view in the messy wrangling over the Greek rescue package.

Berlin’s reluctance to open its cheque book and quickly come to the rescue has frustrated and surprised many of its European partners, who blame Ms Merkel for allowing the crisis to spread and ultimately driving up the price of a €750bn ($940bn) rescue package.

Many were fuming again on Wednesday, after Germany imposed a ban on naked short selling without consulting other member states.

Mr De Maizière emphasised that Germany was still committed to Europe, but pointed to a “change in mentality” in national politics that was only just taking root 20 years after the country’s reunification. Specifically, he envisioned Germany playing a more influential political role in Europe and the world to match its economic dynamism.

“We can’t continue to do business as usual. We have to assume international responsibility,” he said, adding: “The biggest net-payer in Europe has to formulate its interests in Europe.”

The difference is that I don't take myself seriously..

Instead, I am concerned that objectively the European nations will be unable to both preserve their social welfare systems (the European model they tout so much) ...

Article 20 [Basic institutional principles; defense of the constitutional order]

(1) The Federal Republic of Germany is a democratic and social federal state.

Article 28 [Federal guarantee of state constitutions and of local self-government]

(1) The constitutional order in the states must conform to the principles of a republican, democratic, and social state governed by the rule of law, within the meaning of this Basic Law.