Quote: (02-10-2014 05:28 AM)KorbenDallas Wrote:
I think the EU is doomed to fail. When the EU was sold to the voters of Europe it was sold as more of a confederacy of nations for the mutual benefit of its members, but has morphed into a "United States of Europe" without the history of the United States as a single country or democratic legitimacy.
I think it's because they aren't like a "United States of Europe" that they'll fail. It's all bureaucracy to get anything done at the EU level.
In the US, if the federal government passes a new law on telecommunications, that's that. It takes effect and companies follow it.
In the EU, they don't actually have a framework to do this (there is no "EU law"). Instead, they pass a "directive" and then all 28 countries of the EU have X months to pass their own individual legislation that conforms to this. Some countries won't pass it either because it's not a priority, or some particular clause violates their constitution, or they'll pass it but make some minor change. The EU routinely publishes a list of which countries did not fully implement directive X and so on. It's just a mess to get anything done.
Or take something simple like movement of goods and just driving a car. In some countries (Sweden, Finland, etc), you must use your headlights at all times when driving, day or night, summer or winter. In other countries (Portugal) it's illegal to use your headlights during the day. So how easy is it for a manufacturer to sell cars for the EU market? They have to specialize them for each country (one with automatic headlights, the other without), while in the US they can just make one car and it's eligible to be sold in all states (ok the one exception is California emissions, but that's about the only case).
Or let's look at situations that affect people, like marriage and divorce. Up until 2011, divorce was illegal in conservative and Catholic Malta, meanwhile gay marriage is allowed in countries like the Netherlands. So is a gay marriage in one EU country recognized in another? What about a (straight) divorce?
Then there's fiscal authority. Why don't we worry about US states going bankrupt? Because basically they can't. States are not allowed to run a budget deficit (bond issues in limited cases are allowed). What about state liabilities? Well the biggest liabilities -- pensions and elderly health care -- are largely handled by the US government in the form of Social Security and Medicare. So these burdens can be spread at the national level, and we don't worry too much about a specific state getting out of hand financially and crashing the entire US economy. Not so in the EU -- which country is causing issues this month due to lack of fiscal restraint? Ireland? Cyprus? Slovenia? Italy? Spain? And there's nothing the EU can do about it, except issue sternly-worded press releases.
If Obama wants to call the "head of the EU", who does he call? Is it Herman van Rompuy, president of the European Council? Or is it Catherine Ashton, high representative for foreign affairs? Ahh, or maybe it's Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission? No wait, maybe it's Evangelos Venizelos (Greece's Deputy Foreign Minister), because Greece currently holds the EU presidency. Obama better not wait on that call though -- the EU presidency rotates every 6 months, so by July it'll be some guy in Italy he'll need to call.
To me, the EU is the worst of both options. It imposes too many restraints on individual countries so they can't make their own decisions, while at the same time not having enough authority to rein in countries that get out of line.
I'm not down on Europe at all -- I just think the current EU structure is not going to survive in the long-term without significant changes.