Europe

[ART]

federal

[Olivier]

Canada is a federal state and it works pretty well.

[!Pretfles!]

So is Belgium,
doesn't work at all unfortunately

[Olivier]

So is Belgium,
doesn't work at all unfortunately

Really? Why?

[Donald]

So is Belgium,
doesn't work at all unfortunately

Really? Why?

One simple example:
I, as a German, have interests in a highspeed train from Cologne to Paris. My government supports Belgium with payments for the construction of the Belgian part, because the train is useful to Germany as well. The Belgians find that the train will run through the francophone part, which is a disadvantage to Flanders who have no highspeed train yet. They block the train.
In a compromise the Belgians decide on a second highspeed train through Flanders (to Amsterdam). However the Flanders area is smooth while the Walloon area has some hills. This make the walloon tracks more expensive than the tracks in Flanders. This is not acceptable and Flanders needs a compensation. They block the train.

Meanwhile they seem to have found new compromises and you can see that the construction is carried out now. After 10 years.

Federalism becomes very unefficient, if you want to provide "justified" solutions to everything. This only leads to discussions which are motivated by mutual envy. For similar reasons the German federalism has slowed down over the recent 55 years. Investments and innovations rather get blocked than started.

PS: I voted for "federal" because I believe you can set it up properly.

[Olivier]

Federalism becomes very unefficient, if you want to provide "justified" solutions to everything. This only leads to discussions which are motivated by mutual envy. For similar reasons the German federalism has slowed down over the recent 55 years. Investments and innovations rather get blocked than started.

PS: I voted for "federal" because I believe you can set it up properly.

OK, but no government could lead a 450 millions of Europeans speaking 23 languages, with many very different cultures. Federalism is already there for agriculture or the euro. After all, what is the ECB if not a federal institution?

The linguistic rivality is a reality also in Quebec. Some French speaking Canadians don't like the English speaking Canadians. Some feel Québécois and not Canadian, some feel Québécois though rthey only speak english...
But it works with a kind of anglo-franco-americano spirit.

Personnaly I find these mixed societies very interesting.

To compare... what are the competences owned by the Länder? and owned by the Fed Gvt?

Olivier

[yli]

I think the biggest problem in the European Union, is that everybody keeps on thinking in countries. I think the countries must be swept a side, with their monarchies or parlements. And then a federation of ethnic groups should be created.

I have voted "federal"

[Dakkus]

I think the biggest problem in the European Union, is that everybody keeps on thinking in countries. I think the countries must be swept a side, with their monarchies or parlements. And then a federation of ethnic groups should be created.

I have voted "federal"

Just my thought. Independence as itself isn't a value for me. I may want to have my country independent, if not being independent causes a threat for me or my friends.
But it's far from necessary that becoming a part of another country (thus losing independence) causes a threat to anyone living in the country which loses its independence.
I'm absolutely sure that even if EU became a federation, no kind of harm would be done to the Finnish culture. Or at least no such "harm" that wouldn't happen anyway because of the existence of the phenomenon called cultural evolution.

[groentje]

I think know, that a community of countries, with a strong confederal structure is the most likely thing to happen.

[Olivier]

I think know, that a community of countries, with a strong confederal structure is the most likely thing to happen.

Like in Switzerland?

[Aaron]

I voted for community of independent countries. I am not sure if even that would work.

I have lost my belief in EU. It looks to be so that those countries which are the most impudent get the best benefits. All this subliminal economical protectionism and breaking against mutual treaties are seriously damaging the whole community. For example every country which has broken against the economy and stability treaty (or whatever you call it in English) have got away with it. UK gets a huge reduction to its annual payments and in the meantime enjoys full benefits of EU.

What's more, they decided to take ten not-so-productive new members to EU which means a huge raise to annual payments from the other countries. It will take a long time before the new members will be productive. We already have older members which will probably never be able to produce more money to EU than they will receive.

There are still people who have the naive belief that despite of this everything will turn better to everyone after all. I don't have this belief anymore. Not only the new member countries but also the old ones are in front of huge structural changes - traditional industry is moving to cheaper countries out from EU. This is nothing new, but now we are not talking about textiles but really labour-intensive areas like shipbuilding, automotive and other metal industry - now we have Chinese ships, and I think Chinese cars will be common everywhere after ten years. We will have to find ways how to employ the people who are unemployed from industry which is vanished. On the top of this, there will not be enough of ratepayers who could fund everything. The generations are smaller and smaller. Maybe it is better like this because there will not be enough of work for everyone anyway.

Maybe we will have to start to think in the future: What will we have after EU?