Comeback kid Sarkozy ?

[Gustaf]

Why people like Antonio, or Belgiansocialist are so much in love with the EU when the union has done more than any other single institution or organisation to prevent and roll back Socialist policies in Europe.

I'm not some kind of utopist living in dreamland, SC. I'm well aware on EU's flaws, which are enormous and disgusting. I hate the way the Commission works without any actual mandate from the European People, I hate the fact they enact failed neoliberal policies, the fact selfish countries always refuse any progress in common solidarity, the fact Germans have imposed their retarded austerity dogma and are ready to ruin every country to maintain it. However, I also realize that without the EU, European countries are even more screwed. As weak as European integration is, the little bit we have is still indispensable and we'll need more in the following years. In the word's globalized economy, countries which represent 1% of the world population and face a massive demographic ageing won't be remain competitive for long, and especially won't be able to sustain comprehensive welfare states as multinational corporations grow stronger. European federalism is the only way for Europe to survive as one of the world's power, to escape the natural decline we are starting to experience. Not the European Federalism as we know it, but real European federalism : with a democratic federal government, elected by the European people and which has an effective power over national government. Why is it so hard to understand ? Why do you Euroskeptics systematically take commitment to the europeist ideal as a support to EU as it currently exists ? Why the possibility to reform EU and correct its flaws rather than outright disbanding it is always discarded ? This is what I don't understand.

How does centralizing power to an inefficient and undemocratic bureaucracy make us more competitive?

The thing I never understood with europhiles is the logical leaps they always make in their argumentation. There is a general emotional linkage going on where buzzwords are thrown around and rhetorically connected (history, peace, globalization, solidarity, strong, etc) but the logical chain is typically very obscure.

Why do you want Europe to be a world power? I don't. I think reducing the influence of Sarkozy, Berlusconi and the other jokers in power around Europe is probably a good thing. Going to world summits to rattle sabres and have photo-ops with world leaders is fun for them, of course but I don't see much benefit in it for me. Most of the world's best countries to live in are small ones and I don't see my life being improved by the construction of Europe.

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My take on the left being pro-EU actually goes sort of both ways. I don't see why anyone commited to either left or right ideology would like the EU particularly. It pretty much combines the worse of both camps - the right's distaste for democracy and ordinary people with the left's distaste for individual liberties and free markets.

[Gustaf]

'Brussels' isn't the unmoving elephant, Swedish Cheese, it are the member states who at every step of the road fail the European ideal. Why are Merkel and Sarko the faces of the eurocrisis, rather than Juncker and Van Rompuy? Because the great players aren't willing to allow the European level to grow more autonomous, and because the small players are largely too selfish to psuh for it. The fact that the Union still is standing after having been used as some sort of bogeyman for personal gains by politicians without too much scruples and off all possible political convictions, is a testament to the strength of its inspiring ideas and ideals.

Am I happy the Union is sometimes used to push neo-liberalism down the throat of unwilling victims? Surely not. Am I glad the EU is undemocratic? No. But as Antonio has pointed out, the EU is something that has to be reformed, not abolished. The European Construction has always been a difficult one, and its completion has seemed distant ever since the EDC (CED)  failed in the Assemblée Nationale back in 1952. Yet it is a project that has continued towards it completion for most of its existance, overcoming many set-backs along the way.

The utter intellectual dishonesty (and sometimes stupidity) of eurocritics also helps to strengthen one's love for the project, it should be said. I'm sorry but every time Nigel Farrage or Geert Wilders open their mouths, or that I read a Daily Mail-article on Europe, I remember that I should be glad that I'm not supposed to side with those people.

@Gustaf: It's not as much about the EU being a world power, as about the EU guaranteeing its members a certain level of autonomy and independence which is not evident for minor players on the international stage. You sound even more unrealistic than even the most dreamy europhile when you start to represent the world without the EU as one where European nations would all just happily coexist and thrive in splendid isolation from the rest of the world.

Isolation? Who said anything about isolation? Or do you mean we will become one of those poor backwater countries like Switzerland or Norway? Or like the horrible non-EU country I was born in?

I guess it's true that all countries who aren't parts of an emerging federation are suffering horribly...

No one is really challenging the autonomy or independence of my country (apart from the EU of course). What you're talking about is forcing things on other people. I realize that this becomes easier if we have more guns to wave on the international stage. Problem is that I a) don't have much of that I want to do and b) what I would like to force on other countries won't be done by the European Federation. I see no reason to trust their actions on the international stage, especially given the track record of both the European institutions and the major European nations.

But if I understand your arguments for the EU being good, they are that it a) has been around almost as long as the Soviet Union before its collapse and b) that there are stupid people opposing it (which funnily could also have been applied to the old USSR). Can't say I find that very convincing when stacked against all the concrete economic and democratic problems caused by the EU.

[Gustaf]

Aren't the EU treaties negotiated by national governments ? If only there were a strong demo-europeist political movement in Europe, they could be able to push forward a reformist agenda and eventually negotiate a new treaty transforming the nature of the EU. Some steps forward already have been made, with the EU parliament being stronger now than it was in the 80s. However, most of them have been ruined by the anti-Europeans, who don't care about democratic reforms because they think the EU IS BAD!1!!!1!

Of course some countries would never support such a federalist agenda. That's why I think UK, for example, should be kicked out, and that the 2004-2007 expansions were major mistakes.

So in other words you do not support the EU at all, you just support a European federal state, but you think that if (and that's a big if) by a chance one day a qualified majority of EU member states would happen to have goverments with the same leftiest EU ideal as you at the same time they could potentionally pass a treaty that would overturn 90% of the things the union has stood for in decades transforming it into something it has never been as long as we kick out the United Kingdom and other possible states that might be opposed... good plan. It all makes much more sense now.

Outright pulling out of the EU would make even less sense, though. Apart from the obvious economic consequences of closing border and coming back to weak national moneys, it would overturn the few steps forward EU has already done. Improving what we already do have seems a bit more realistic than destroying everything and getting back to the beginning.

Who said anything about closing the borders? You do realize that one can have open borders without the EU?

And I'm perfectly fine with my "weak national moneys" thank you. If you really want to make the euro a part of your argument, be my guest. I think that part sort of argues itself for our position.

PS: this idea that the anti-EU movement has ruined EU progress is pretty ridiculous. What anti-EU movement? It has never had any influence anywhere outside of maybe the UK. Do you have any concrete examples of this?

Your argument seems to be that there could be a European Union that was good and therefore it follows that we should be strongly in favour of any European Union which happens to actually exist. That doesn't really make much logical sense.