Would the European Union collapse in 2017 ?

Hello,

the European Union seems to be still solid in 2017. However, their is big threats to the existence of European Union. European Union had at its very beginning two aims :
_ Prevent a third conflict in an Europe considerally weakened by two devastating conflict.
_ Prevent the europe to become either a zone of influence either of Soviets or of USA governement.

The European Union is an old sweet dreams and existed way long before the WW1. Just after the napoleonic war, some european intellectual started to dream of an European without those regular devastating conflicts. However, their is a saying in my native language "Hell is floored with good intentions". The fact you are well intentionned doesn't means that your action will have good consequences.

Today the European Union is threatened by three facts :
_ A new rise of nationalism.
_ The lack of comprehension of how the European Union, the lack of democracy inside the EU.
_ The fact that most people in Europe don't have a decent level of English. Even if the British are getting out of Europe, the european need a common language to communicate, and for practical reasons, this one should be english.

This years, 2017, will be a major years because two countries know their most important elections :
First the netherland will renew their representant in march.
Secondly, in April, french people will elect their new president and renew one of their two representant chambers.

Both of those countries have a common point : they presented the constitutionnal european treaty to the people by referendum and both of those people refused. The treaty was finally accepted by the french and dutch leaders but without the people consent. (Basically, the people said no and their leaders aid "whatever").

If Geert Wilders or Marine Le Pen are elected this years, the European Union could lose one or both of their founding members and the biggest contributor to the european budget (despite deep financial problems, France is still the second biggest contributor to european budget, even if you consider what the EU send back to France).

This seems still really unlikely, but their can be still surprises. The European Union is getting slowly but surely to its own collapse.

What do you think about that ?

 

I think it's safe for 2017, but then I've already bet that it would start to collapse in 2020, so I want it to hold out a little while longer.

 

Still waiting to see how hard Brexit is going to be.

 

The United Kingdom is still really different. They weren't a founding member and never played the game, they never did a real effort to build the european build and are more comfortable with their commonwealth.

French and Dutch however deeply invested themselves into that. A long time, the heart of the European Union was the german-french duet, even if I think it's over.

 

Only your first aim is correct, the EU was clearly in the influence zone of the US. From the very beginning the aim of a somehow united Europe was in the mind of the fathers of the EU.

Nationalism is a product of the actual crisis and the anti EU forces will lose attraction if the right measures are taken. The nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary depend heavily on EU money, they will be the last to leave.
The condition of the EU democracy is far better than transported by the press of some countries. It was a kind of blame game that a lot of national gouvernments played the last years. They claimed the positive effects for them and a lot of negative stuff caused by themselves was blamed the EU for.
The EU uses different official languages, english will still be one of them.

The anti EU party of Geert Wilders will gain about 20%, but no other dutch party will build a coalition with him. Le Pen in France is quite successful actually but i don't think that she will win the second round of the election. Both populations still have a pro EU majority.

The referendum question ist nothing the EU can be blamed for. The national gouvernments decided not to ask their people.

The EU will adjust and evolve. I don't see a a collapse happening in the near future, the crisis will be a catalysator for changes. Different plans for the EU future are discussed and we will see positive changes.

The EU is far from perfect but just have a look around the world. It's a unique project of peace and cooperation.

 

[double post]

 

Project of peace and cooperation ?

I don't think anymore. That's a long time EU don't start again project like airbus. We are too one of the zone of the world who spend the most money on buying weapons. That could have been true, but not anymore. The only project of the EU is making money, the new EU absolutely don't care about peace or human life. The new EU is more about "money & rivalries".

Probably some eastern countries have some interest to stay into EU, they get more money than they gave but french have less and less interest to stay in EU, we have to give more money than we get, that's not a big problem, but we have to renounce more and more to our sovereinty. We never accepted the European constitutionnal treaty, we don't want of the CETA and we will get it. The traitors we call leader are greatly responsible of them, they always acted against the will of the people.
But who is responsible doesn't change a fact : french are in an union they didn't whished for, and that against the will they exprimated.

Today Marine Le Pen is around 40%, exactly 15 years ago, her father did 20 %. 15 % years ago the far left was for the EU, today they are against. Most french aren't attracted either by the far left or the far right, but most of them are becoming eurosceptical.

The fact that french will quit EU is just a matter of time.
Most candidate to the french election spoke about changing the EU, only 2 of them spoke about maybe quit it if he doesn't changed. We all know the EU will not change, that's why I say, the departure of France is only a matter of time, especially when the CETA will start to be applied.

 

What is fake must fall.

 

Could you develop please ?

 

The french and the german people are experiencing the longest period of peace and cooperation since the treaty of Verdun, 843. Stupid to toss it away with catchphrases like sovereignty and France first. None of the french poblems will be solved by a Frexit, they will accumulate.

Right after a Frexit the "new Franc" will devalue in a range between 20% to 40% and the debts will have to be paid back in €, the interest rates for new debts will raise heavily. That will harm France severly and i can't imagine the French to be that self-destructive.

Rather evolve a better EU.

 

Is it peace who creates EU ? Or EU who creates peace ? I think it would be first one.

The debt will always have to be paid back, but we could use some of the 21 billions we donate (to be honnest, we receive 14 billions too). We are not the greek.
A lot of problems come from the french only, like the heavy corruption atmosphere. Rather than wasting that money for countries who hate us. Furthermore we could still refinancate the debt by making our central bank.

The only thing that EU is succeeding to do is making poor people even poorer. Even in the debtless germany, 20 % of the population is under the poverty thresold.

You reproach me to say "France first", even if I will never exprimate that like that, I just say we have to care ourselves. We don't have to let our country collapse in the EU if we can do better oustide. If the french don't care of France, nobody will. Germany is acting "Germany first", this is exactly the policy that A.Merkel did. Every countries seems to act first for their own interest, or more precisely for the interest of their own elites.

The first step to salvation of France with first to purge our political institution from the corrupted and corruption by voting extremly harsh laws on corruption.
The second step is caring of EU.

 

Well, take "the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people – the "four freedoms" – within the European Union".
Those are the fake pillars on wich the EU stands. Only two of them - free movents of goods and services - are reasonable and acceptable. The other two are dangerous.

 

I would tend to think that only free movement of people is the best thing. We need to exchange students, we need to do some research together, however, we don't need some 2 $/hours paid worker in France.

 

I think someone should ask Brussels a three word question if it wants the EU to survive, let alone prosper: the London Agreement?

 

Let's take these one by one;
*Yes, there has been a rise in nationalism, but mostly sparked by a sudden migrant-invasion provoked by the Middle-east war including Libya (that is allow economic migrants from Central Africa to pass through the country.) That factor is diminishing for the moment, and a solution is being discussed as I write between belligerents (in Syria). In part, the migration has also been provoked by ISIS, and that particular cause is being dealt with as well.
*There is no "lack of comprehension" about how the EU works amongst EU nationals. (Most have learned in school.) There is not, however, a popularly elected Executive - just the Legislature and Judiciary components in place. It is about time that the EU elects a President.
*English is a common business language. For political purposes the present (costly) mutual translation of national languages that takes place at EU meetings in Berlaymont and Strasbourg seems to work well enough. Nobody is complaining about "mistranslation".

Europe's malaise is due to a more fundamental factor, I submit. It is far too high unemployment, which manifests itself in the rise of hobgoblin national "political leaders" espousing cockamamey political theories to address what is a failure of the economy to keep unemployment down at acceptable levels.

Why did that phenomenon happen? Mismanagement at the local level of national budgets resulting from an economic recession imported wholly from the US (called the Great Recession), which dampened also European economic demand.

The failure, I submit, of the EU was at the level of incompetent National Politicians who did not know how to manage a major recession ...

 

It's in the making. If there is any "problem", it's in the UK - which is trying to "salvage" certain preferences that the British would like to retain. Like no border controls on passenger traffic.

The reading I get from Brussels, however, is that the Brit referendum was a major mistake that Cameron let happen, and now that it has happened, Britain must pay its consequences in full. Or, other country "ignorant political groups" might try the same quick exit-strategy - a National Referendum.

Live and learn - but the Brits have chosen "the hard way" ...

 

I disagree about the "$/hours paid worker in France" - if you wanted to build a house here, you would want such workers.

French labor-costs have skyrocketed because of professional mismanagement at a political level. The French Labor Code has more words in it than the bible - and it is the prime reason that jobs were shipped off to China, leaving France - since the 1990s - with some of the worst unemployment rates on record. (French unemployment has never been lower than 10% since Mitterand - except for exceptionally brief periods of time. See French unemployment rate history here.)

Worse yet, with the present mishmash that passes for "political debate" in the present election of a new president, the French have not apparently the slightest notion of the "root problem" in the country - which I have defined above ...

 

I reckon the Brussels bureaucrats will run rings around us during the negotiations, not by any intellectual superiority (why, the very idea of that!! ), but by our (the UK's) obsession to 'Do The Right Thing'. The main artifice will be the rule that all EU 27 member states must reach unanimous agreement of the terms of leaving, so all they need to do is arrange between themselves to take turns breaking ranks (ie mischievously rejecting one or other of the conditions ad infinitum) and that could make it impossible for us to leave without handing over serious money to propiate the EU as a whole . . . which of course is why 'Mr Personality' Philip Hammond is inflicting even more austerity on us - so he can accumulate a war chest. In other words they could easily blackmail us by delaying our exit for years to come, or until we are forced to capitulate. So much for 'our European partners'???

 

Well put! All the rest too!

The only questionable point remaining is "how to generate more economic growth?" Despite what EU-constituents might think, it is in their hands (as Consumers) and not that of politicians ...

 

It's only for the big companies. If you are a small individual, you can't do that. Furthermore, those 2$ hours often do a crappy job, and I wouldn't count the number of building in France who theorically costed less, but will often explode the cost by requiring a lot of repairing thereafter and it's happens a lot of times.

Maybe the cost of working skyrocketed, their is a part of pure mismanagement, but most french people believe that everybody deserve to be paid correctly. However some optimization have been done.

When I talk about the problem of the common language, I'm totally aware that the leites understand themselves extremly well, but I'm speaking about the people. If we want europe, we need some european identity. What happens today ? Every nation is focused on their national level. Their is no developped european newspaper. Every nation refer to the EU only for what it can bring to them at a national level. EU is for the moment still something extremly artificial for the people of EU.

 

I wasn't thinking of the UK, I was thinking of the PIIGS.

 

The EU needs to change and improve more in the basic!

There was done a bunch of errors in the past and the behavior of the EU is often shameful as are their reactions against any serious critics. I'm no friend of the EU of today and the BS they did and still do, but there is serious hope that things will change.

We the people are the EU and not the swamp of Brussels is the EU and the EU is a community of independent states with centuries long own history and cultures who give some rights to the community to let it work, but the EU is not the USA of 50 states and Brussels is not Washington D.C. and there is a long way and a library full of points to do before this can happen.
Problem is that the EU is not making step #1, then step #2, #3 etc. ... but step #17 as first, then step #1,593 as second and so on. If they learned that this is BS, then it can be improved.

Everything was fine as far as the EU was an economic community of friends who decides common things together and so on. But since they start to be USE (Untitled States of Europe) and act in many points like this, but not being really so, the problems started!

 

Only Parliament could stop Brexit at this point. The EU could drag it out for two years, but after that, the UK would just be out period. If the EU tried that, the US would bring economic pressure to bear on the EU to stop obstructing the matter. IN reality, the US will always be on the side of the UK and the EU will eventually decide it is better economically to not alienate America considering are ample resources, vast size, and more favorable tax laws would make us a softer landing spot for many of its business' expansion efforts.

 

Wishful thinking?

The worst is over, 2020 will just show slight improvement employment-wise. If the EU has learned anything from this episode it is in thinking that national governments (who screw up a free-lunch budget-wise) will find very little help from German euros loaned to the ECB to rescue them (as regards debt-payments). This fact is most pertinent for the soft southern-states underbelly of the EU.

Which is the way it should be. Inevitably, the responsibility falls back upon country voters who select their leaders. That too is democracy - elect incompetent leaders and you take great risks ...

 

You may be asking for a bit too much in a "union" where more than 25 languages are spoken and only a select small percentage speak commonly English.

Which is why the Union does not have a president (who speaks 25 different languages). Besides how would s/he get elected? Nonetheless, yes, an Executive would be a motivator for closer "union-making".

That may take another generation, one younger and more willing to integrate closer than exists today. The de facto inter-union language will have to be English. I certainly do not see mainstream French rushing to learn that language.

Only a percentage of university graduates do so. But, in another 30/40/50 years English could be the major 2nd-language of many EU members. That will certainly favor more "togetherness" ...