FOLLOWING THE EUROPEAN UNION

A good articel with lots of information about the planed European Constitution:

A Readers Guide to the Draft European Constitution

I remembered this thread when the question of a union between France and Germany came up in the Replacing George Bush thread. I see that nobody has defended my own position here so far, so I thought I'd state it here.

Personally, I like the fact that I can travel and work wherever I want in the EU without ever showing a passport. I like the fact that i can buy whatever I want from abroad without having to pay a tariff. The EU, considered as a free-trade and a free-migration union, is clearly a good thing.

But what's good about the EU doesn't merit a European super-state in Brussels, and the emerging European super-state in Brussels doesn't add much value for the trouble it's causing. Standardization of national laws can emerge just as well through inter-national competition, combined with informal non-government standardization gremiums in the spirit of the Internet Engineering Task Force. Coordination of police forces requires telephone conferences and meetings, but not a European government. I could do without the Euro because I think it is a net drag on the welfare of Europeans. And don't get me started on Europe's shameful protectionist policies that impoverish the third world and help drive the Middle East into the hands of Islamic fundamentalism.

A European Union of some sorts is clearly a good idea, but I don't see how a European government would do Europe's citizens any good. No matter how that government is organized.

Thomas
I predict that the French the Germans and nationalism will make short work of the EU's togetherness. Only a prediction.

One of the reasons I'm strongly pro-EU, au, is that it's against nationalism (and so-called patriotism as well).

I agree it probably reduces French nationalism, German nationalism, and so forth. But the first signs of a European nationalism are already emerging, and this is just as bad as the old kind. Consider the widespread hostility against non-EU immigrants. Consider the arrogant cultural prejudice -- especially among European intellectuals -- that American culture is all about lowest common denominator mediocricity à la McDonalds. Consider the EU's economic protectionism against imports of food, textile and steel from the third world. Europe is already behaving like a nation with most of the bad sides of patriotism, and few of the good ones.

Well, Thomas, we are Americanised. :wink:

Walter
Does that mean you are beginning to believe in fair play. If history is any judge I doubt it.

I don't understand the first sentence in this context.

I do believ -since I've studied history- that history is no judge, but just gives facts. Interpretation of these facts - that's not history.
And although their arre historians specialized on "latest new history" - there's no history of future events.

Walter
Just asking what you had in mind with this. Or possibly a little tit for tat.

I know you're at least half-joking, but even so I don't follow you. My impression is that America needs an accident as bad as George Bush to sink as low as the Europeans are by the design of their institutions. That doesn't strike me as a good case for a tighter European Union.

Thomas,

I read your views concerning the 'drag' the euro imposes on European economic development with interest. As I recall the basic point was that language and cultural differences limit the mobility of people in the currency area, thereby creating constraints on the ability of individual governments to optimize economic policy to local conditions. An interesting point which I had not previously considered.

My experience in life tells me that real problems require real solutions, and that reorganization is only rarely a real solution. The problems associated with European nationalism and the different ambitions of political leaders are not likely to be eliminated by the creation of an EU superstate, unless it truly becomes a government in the fullest sense. I find the success Europe has so far achieved in economic union and in 'harmonizing' so many aspects of policy quite remarkable and admirable. However, I also find it hard to believe that they can go much farther without seriously engaging basic political questions in a way that hasn't yet occurred. Will the rights and political power of an individual citizen of (say) Latvia be the same as those of (say) a German or Frenchman in electing the political leaders of the new EU? Can a union able to subsume French and German nationalism be achieved without domination of Europe by a new combined Franco-German nationalism? We in the United States had our own set of perhaps analogous contradictions at the formation of our union. They erupted later in a very bloody civil war.

Yes.



I doubt that.

But
a) how what you define a "Franco-German nationalism"?
b) if - IF- really an EU-super-state would/could be 'created', how would you define "nationalism" of its citizens?
c) why does everyone seem to fear a German/French/Franco-German nationlism ... and no-one talks about the more terrific (= 'terroristic') nationalism still existing today in various other parts of Europe?

Walter,

I'm not making any value judgements about Franco-German nationalism or (say) Polish nationalism either. The forthcoming addition of new members to the EU will extend its reach from Britain to Bulgaria. This encompasses a very wide range of economic, political and cultural differences. It is not clear (to me at least) that the new central European states in the union will have the same view of a dominant French-German axis as do perhaps the Dutch and Belgians. If so that could prevent a solution on terms that perhaps you would accept.

I'm not sure even this will do, because we don't have any such thing as a European public opinion. As a result, election campaigns for the European Parliament are more often faught with slogans like "Our party is going to defend German (French, Italian, ...) interests in Brussels" rather than "Our party, together with our sister parties throughout Europe, is going to make Europe a better place for all Europeans". With this kind of attitude, even a unified European state won't help.


I think you overestimate the dangers of nationalism, and underestimate the dangers of rich country ideology. I'm more afraid that by imposing rich-country standards for labor and pollution on eastern Europe, western Europe will price eastern Europe out of many important markets, thus causing more damage than any likely amount of nationalism would.

Bulgaria, George, has the same staus -namely
"Applicant Country"- as Romania and Turkey.
And Ireland is a bit further west to the UK.

Thus, the EU will (or is) extend further than you noted :wink:

I'm not THAT convinced about what Thomas just wrote.
But I admit to have similar fears/ideas/views/observations ...

Thanks, but I just noticed that both you and Cicerone Imposter misunderstood my point, so evidently I didn't put it very well. Let me try again: Language barriers make it possible that individual European countries have decorrelated business cycles. America doesn't have this problem because any decorrelation would quickly invoke offsetting movements of migration. But that's not the constraint on European country's economic policy.
The constraint is that each country cannot set its own interest rate because it doesn't have its own interest rate to set -- only the Euro's interest rate, which is the same for all countries. The ECB is still able to respond to symmetric swings in Europe's business cycle, but not to asymmetric shocks where individual countries move in opposite directions.

That by it self wouldn't be too bad, because fiscal stimulus provides a second layer of economic policy adjustment. Alas, the contract mis-labled "Stability and growth pact" constrains that too. Under this contract, it is illegal for European countries to run budget deficits above 3% of GDP. This is why France and Germany are currently facing the choice of invoking a serious recession with spending cuts, or breaking the contract upon which the European monetary union is built.

I hope that made my point clearer.

Though I failed to make it clear, I used the term 'nationalism' to refer to local political, economic, and cultural interests in the (perhaps) modern sense, as opposed to the historical view of European nationalism. With that in mind I would consider the local Eastern European frustrations with suboptimal (for them) EU economic policies as fostering a divisive nationalism. Think of the American experiment. We formed a union with a common language and roughly similar local cultural features, but with fundamental economic differences in the South and North. The result sixty years later was a distinct sense of nationalism in the South and a bloody civil war.

Even here elections have a strongly local flavor. However there was and is a strong sense of shared interests and common purpose.

Walter and others here appear to be optimistic that the EU will find generally acceptable solutions to the fundamental political questions involved in the further development of an EU government and constitution. While I am unburdened by any particular knowledge of the situation, I find it very hard to believe that this can be done. Today the governance of the EU is done through a peculiar interaction of the member governments, a growing central bureaucracy, the EU Commission, and an EU Legislature whose role in all of this I find difficult to understand. There are more than a few internal contradictions here and of course the fundamental question of state sovereignty to be considered. Will France tolerate an Estonian finger on the trigger of the 'Force de Frappe'?

That's not only a question for the EU - if at all - that would have been a question more for NATO!

Walter,

NATO is dead. We haven't had the funeral yet, but it is quite dead, along with the sentiments that accompanyed its founding.

Besides, the French never constrained their nuclear deterrent to NATO policy or control, in any way.

So you wouldn't mind to have a Czech finger on the trigger of some US Nuclear Weapons?