Maybe, but it’s easy to see the EU as having been invented by and for those countries, Italy in particular.
Greece and Spain didn’t even join until the 80s, what with being dictatorships.
ShivaX
3306
Well, Greece already saw the downsides of it when Germany leveraged the apparatus against them.
Italy is big enough to maybe work the system, but they’re also Italy so I expect them to fuck everything up. Sorry Italy.
Oh, I agree that the small players get pushed around, but you only have to see the monetary and political volatility of Italy before the EU and the Euro to understand why they wanted to form them in the first place. I once read a comment to the effect that the EU / Euro was a plot by Italy to acquire German central bankers.
Why? Spain and Greece have been net receivers of EU funding for decades now. They aren’t going to leave and neither is Italy despite it being a net contributor. Their massive national debt combined with shaky banks is an economic bomb that will go off the moment they leave.
I did not write those words.
Apparently, quoting a quoted quote screws up the attribution.
Others have said how this is really a misjudgment, but I’ll pile on. Spain is extremely pro European, to the point the populist parties (extreme left or right, don’t matter) here can’t even think of questioning EU membership. I don’t think there’s any anti-EU party.
@Ginger_Yellow touched on the reasons. The EU can have its issues, but we compare it with a Dictatorship. The net funding also helps a lot.
ShivaX
3312
I mostly meant before it actually happened. Remember the EU was an idea Europe has been kicking around for quite some time.
Smaller economies and less stable governments seem the most likely to get the short end of the stick. Greece already saw some of that, to where many people were sure they were leaving the EU to try to inflate themselves out of the shitshow they were in. As far as Spain and Italy, I’ll be honest I just picked the most fascisty places. My knowledge of modern Spain is basically nothing and of modern Italy is that they were going Trump before anyone else and have been almost since Benito was around.
I’m more than willing to admit I was wrong, my bigger point was that I didn’t think it would be the UK who fucked the dog first, though they do have enough national pride, I guess. I just assumed overall they weren’t idiots that would shoot a gift horse in the face just because the Empire ended forever ago.
I maintain alot of the supposed issues people have can be solved by us. I also think most of those issues don’t hold up under any sort of scrutiny though.
Not up to them. As far as I know, article 50 can be stopped, without notice, indefinitely, by the UK.
No, the UK can rescind article 50. Take it back. Say “Huh, actually, we’re not leaving after all.”
It can’t pause article 50.
Good luck finding a PM that will take Brexit back though…
Ok, what does the short end of the stick mean? Not as friendly a treatment as possible, sure. Kicking the can instead of fixing the problem? Quite probable. But how many times did countries default and not get screwed in the short run? And in the medium run Greece didn’t see much of a way of defaulting, pissing off the rest of the countries of the EU and not be screwed…
Still, that’s the Euro, not the EU. Leaving the Euro, if someone manages to do it without screwing up the economy in the process can be a good idea, and it’s quite popular in some places.
Leaving the EU, less so…
Solve the Irish Border issue, then.
It cannot. It can be withdrawn entirely by the UK, but not postponed without the agreement of the EU.
A point: the EU actually has always had a system that gives the small states a disproportionate amount of power as compared to the big states - generally more so than is the case in most other democratic institutions. An MEP from Malta, representing some 80,000 people, wields as much power as an MEP from Germany representing ~800,000. So the idea that countries like Denmark, Holland, Greece, etc. can be/were bossed around by the big states in the EU don’t really reflect the reality. On top of that. national delegations also don’t always work together - sometimes favoring working with ideological partners from other countries.
The system did get a bit out of balance during the 2000s, due to all of the new additions to the Union. But that actually pushed the balance more in favor of the small countries, since most of the new additions to the EU have been small countries, prompting reforms to try and prevent the most egregious imbalance. Thus the current system is that you need 55% of member states representing at least 65% of the population for most legislation. For particularly sensitive issues (such as membership or… Brexit), you need unanimity. Which is why the UK can’t ignore Ireland, no matter how much they’d like to.
Not to mention the various mechanisms that work on unanimous Council consent (topically including Article 50 extension), or by votes from other representatives of member without population wegighting.
That’s what I meant. Stop the process. Decide what we actually want. Lay the ground work. Serve the notice.
A problem created, or at least highlighted by brexit.
I am referring to the supposed problems people raised as reasons to leave the EU.
Like people thinking Turkey was going to join imminently and we’d be swamped by 80 million brown fanatics. - - > fact check and get Boris Johnson etc to apologise for this on TV.
Like people thinking Eastern Europeans are benefits scroungers and job stealers (sometimes at the same time…!) - - > expose the facts and tighten up the system
Like people concerned the NHS is being over run by European health tourists - - > I suspect the real numbers will show more brits as health tourists abroad than vice versa and will also show that the NHS is simply badly run and wasteful.
Like the fisheries industry getting a bad deal - - > define a good deal for us and go fight for it.
My central point remains that there is ALOT we could and should have done and be doing as a country that is more productive but more challenging than playing the blame the EU game.
Ah, I completely misunderstood. Sorry about that!
No drama. It was easy to misunderstand what I was saying.
The UK knows what it wants, it’s just not on offer.
