European federalism

[removeduser_4536284751384]

I think this would be great, and I'm fairly sure it will happen withing my lifetime. What do you think?

Also, what rights should be included in the constitution?

[B.Kaiser]

I think we'll see further integration in the coming decades, the speed of which will be largely determined by circumstances. For example: when everyone thought Stalin was going to invade (during the Korea war), we came very close to having a European Army. Every country signed on at the time, but eventually the French failed to ratify the treaty. The idea was never heard of again, because the Russian threat soon diminished. Another fine example is economic integration: not until the somewhat dubious bookkeeping of the Greeks started to endanger the value of the Euro, did politicians start calling out for for an 'economic authority' in the form of a European Monetary Fund. This, of course, would probably mean giving the European Commission more clout to act against member states who violate the stability pact, which wouldn't be possible under normal circumstances.

I do think the creation of an actual Federation is unlikely, unless a crisis of epic proportions forces our collective hand. The member states run the show in the EU and there is likely a limit on how much autonomy they are willing to give up. Integration will be a very gradual process.

[Tiberios]

Personally my support for the EU stopped after the Lisbon treaty was shoved down our throats.

[Treize]

It would be a very very bad thing for multiple reasons.

[6th Vigil]

The EU will be lucky enough to continue for the next 2 decades let alone integrate further.

[removeduser_4536284751384]

The EU will be lucky enough to continue for the next 2 decades let alone integrate further.

I guess that's why it has done nothing but integrate hugely since its inception

I mean it started out as the European Coal and Steel Community of just 6 countries

[Romanos IV]

I guess that's why it has done nothing but integrate hugely since its inception

I mean it started out as the European Coal and Steel Community of just 6 countries

The main problem with this integration, is that nowhere have the European peoples been askef to voice their opinion by ballot. Well, they were asked, but whenever the outcome was negative, it was ignored. I'm sure the vast majority of Europeans do not want that kind of integration.

Moreover, things like carbon tax and the way the Lisbon treaty was implemented have convinced me for the failure of the joke of 'European democratic, multicultural, mult-this, multi-that union, Empire with good guys everywhere' etc etc etc.

[removeduser_4536284751384]

The main problem with this integration, is that nowhere have the European peoples been askef to voice their opinion by ballot. Well, they were asked, but whenever the outcome was negative, it was ignored. I'm sure the vast majority of Europeans do not want that kind of integration.

Moreover, things like carbon tax and the way the Lisbon treaty was implemented have convinced me for the failure of the joke of 'European democratic, multicultural, mult-this, multi-that union, Empire with good guys everywhere' etc etc etc.

the current EU is an absoltue joke, the commision is a haven of corruption. I don't there habve been any non-corrupt commissions

however that needs to change

[Romanos IV]

the current EU is an absoltue joke, the commision is a haven of corruption. I don't there habve been any non-corrupt commissions

however that needs to change

The Commision also voted for the President and the Foreign Affairs Minister by themselves, I mean shouldn't there be EU-wide elections for these matters?

[6th Vigil]

I guess that's why it has done nothing but integrate hugely since its inception

Indeed it has done well to integrate as far as it has especially considering the public opposition. However, consider the appointment of Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton both two unknowns. I have no doubt that the former is as good coalition builder but he is also weak enough that he will not encroach on the national leadership. Even the most pro-integration leaders, France and Germany, do not want EU institutions taking power away from them. All these financial troubles in the eurozone have also exposed flaws that some have suggested can only be solved by a "EMF". This of course would require another treaty which has been thought out of the question due to the effort expended on Lisbon. The EU is so tired that the mere thought of another treaty defeats them. Doesn't look so great to me.

mean it started out as the European Coal and Steel Community of just 6 countries

There is a difference between growth and successful integration.

[Adrian]

I think this would be great, and I'm fairly sure it will happen withing my lifetime. What do you think?

Also, what rights should be included in the constitution?

Europe and the world is in a new age change is in the air as always humanity adapts nothing can stop the force of history itself change will bury the old and replace it with the new im glad im around to see it.

[Treize]

And than what?
The foreigners would always have a mayority meaning that we are overrulled by foreigners.

[removeduser_4536284751384]

And than what?
The foreigners would always have a mayority meaning that we are overrulled by foreigners.

what country are you from?

States would have most of the rights

the federal government would have certain rights like those outlined here

it's not like the federal government could decide to build an airport where your house it.

Besides we are all European.

[Treize]

Should the EU do more or do less than it does today?
Like pet stuff?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joFc3iC6q-8

Decentralisation is good but because of that we don't need another level of government.
Besides since I am from the Netherlnds that would mean that my money would flow away to backwaters in the East, the South and the very very West.

We are all Europeans, yes but that doesn't mean a thing. You must not be in the position to elect someone that would control my life, that is not representative at all.

Besides, Europe will be better with competing states instead of a block. That has been Europe's strenght. I had a video but I can't find it.

[Thorn777]

We are all Europeans, yes but that doesn't mean a thing. You must not be in the position to elect someone that would control my life, that is not representative at all.

Besides, Europe will be better with competing states instead of a block. That has been Europe's strenght. I had a video but I can't find it.

The thing is IPA, we where running the show for century's. We made up the biggest portion of global economic strength. Now other economies have huge and constant growth-rates that are bound to surpass us within a few decades.

All our big competitors are huge single nations(US, China, Russia, India, Brazil) who can set its course without asking each district, each respectively not having its own enduring democratic process and own currency(thats why we already have the euro).

Would the EU not get its act together, or even fall apart we would be severely weakened on global terms. You might think: what do I care, Holland will do great by itself, but ask yourself: when Germany doesn't have a voice globally, then this would hurt your single most important trading-partner substantially, thus hurting Holland as well.

Now, I'm not for a federalist EU. Each nation needs to stay sovereign, have its own gov, army, etc, but I do think its important to hand over the vital mandates concerning global politics and currency-regulation over to the EU.

Its indeed a loss of some if not substantial sovereignty, but I believe its just an undeniable necessity in this day and age. Europe's national glory days are gone...

[Treize]

The thing is IPA, we where running the show for century's. We made up the biggest portion of global economic strength. Now other economies have huge and constant growth-rates that are bound to surpass us within a few decades.

All our big competitors are huge single nations(US, China, Russia, India, Brazil) who can set its course without asking each district, each respectively not having its own enduring democratic process and own currency(thats why we already have the euro).

Would the EU not get its act together, or even fall apart we would be severely weakened on global terms. You might think: what do I care, Holland will do great by itself, but ask yourself: when Germany doesn't have a voice globally, then this would hurt your single most important trading-partner substantially, thus hurting Holland as well.

Now, I'm not for a federalist EU. Each nation needs to stay sovereign, have its own gov, army, etc, but I do think its important to hand over the vital mandates concerning global politics and currency-regulation over to the EU.

Its indeed a loss of some if not substantial sovereignty, but I believe its just an undeniable necessity in this day and age. Europe's national glory days are gone...

Now that's good to know.

A few things:

-Small countries can be succesful, infact smaller countries have better living standards that big countries. Norway, Switzerland and most microstates all have hiher living standards than China, India, Brazil, the US and most European countries. In my opinion welfare is far more important than the power of the state. And I also prefer a democratic, small and representative state over a powerfull state without.

-Germany has quite a say, it has a large population, I mean Russia has a population of 120 million and a far smaller economy than germany yet they have influence... You might want to stop making military cuts prehaps?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

-I really really need to find that damn video.
(I'll try again.)

EDIT:
The video was probably removed BUT I found an article with almost the same content by the same writer.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/da...anging_places/

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It’s a polar switch. The Orient is becoming decentralised, dispersed and dynamic, just as the Occident becomes centralised, sluggish and sclerotic.

Awe inspiring: the rise and rise of Chinese mega-cities
Like most people who have recently visited the mega-cities of the Chinese littoral, I am returning to Europe awe-struck. And worried, too.
It’s not China’s rise per se that bothers me. Visit any museum and you’ll see that China has been the world’s predominant civilisation for most of the past 3,000 years. Why this should be, I have no idea. China’s lead may derive from topographical advantages, or political ones. It may have to do with culture or religion. It may be because, as some scientists claim, the average IQ in East Asia is 115 to Europe’s 100. Whatever the explanation, the Chinese have generally been wealthier and more advanced than the rest of us. Cartography, astronomy, mathematics, canals, gunpowder, paper money: they were almost always there first. Yet this technological lead rarely posed a threat to the West: the Chinese were generally prepared to dwell in the fastness behind their wall.
The interesting question is why the Chinese fell behind (or, to put it the other way around, why Europe surged ahead). The most convincing answer is that offered by the Australian historian E L Jones (and brought to a wider audience by Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers). To concertina a subtle and elegant thesis, Jones argued that the East’s failure lay in its political uniformity. The Chinese Empire became over-centralised, over-governed and over-taxed. Standarisation worked against local experimentation, and the ruling Mandarin caste preferred inherited notions of classical accomplishment to innovation.Â
Europe, by contrast, was not a state but a state system: a plurality of competing princedoms, each striving to outdo its neighbours, each copying what had been trialled successfully abroad. European culture fostered enterprise and adventurousness: the Chinese were destroying their ocean-going fleet at the very moment that Henry the Navigator was planning his expeditions.
China, in short, fell behind from the 17th century onwards because it became introverted and bureaucratic; Europe surged ahead because it was competitive and diverse.Â
Which brings me to the polar switch. At the very moment that China is reversing its relative decline at the moment that the centralised party structure begins to loosen up Europe is going in the opposite direction, agglomerating more and more power from national capitals to Brussels. An astonishing 84 per cent of laws in the EU now come, not from state legislatures, but from Euro-functionaries (it is not by coincidence that they are known as Mandarins). Just as China toys with ditching its system, Europe vests supreme authority in an unelected Politburo of 27 Commissioners, who rule by a series of Five Year Plans.
I asked a Euro-diplomat in Peking on Wednesday about the devolution of power in China, which has seen local and provincial authorities take over economic policy, education, healthcare, unemployment benefit (such as it is) and pensions. “You cannot imagine it,” he replied, raising his exquisitely manicured hands in horror. “It is as though China had no Commission, no European Court of Justice and no European Parliament”. To which the obvious reply is: they seem to be getting by somehow.
Yes, China has serious economic problems. Much of the country is still in poverty (which is why the EU gives China development assistance, simultaneously complaining about the unconditional nature of China’s own financial support for various African dictatorships). And China’s political system, as I wrote on Tuesday, is appalling. But the trend, at least, is towards smaller government, localism and personal freedom. In Europe, the opposite is true. That is our tragedy.

Telegraph-Daniel Hannan.

[Chlodwig I.]

Now that's good to know.

A few things:

-Small countries can be succesful, infact smaller countries have better living standards that big countries. Norway, Switzerland and most microstates all have hiher living standards than China, India, Brazil, the US and most European countries. In my opinion welfare is far more important than the power of the state. And I also prefer a democratic, small and representative state over a powerfull state without.

Norway has Oil,
and the Switzerland is the Bank for most Dictators, Drug Lords, Mafia Bosses etc.

[Thorn777]

-Small countries can be succesful, infact smaller countries have better living standards that big countries. Norway, Switzerland and most microstates all have hiher living standards than China, India, Brazil, the US and most European countries. In my opinion welfare is far more important than the power of the state. And I also prefer a democratic, small and representative state over a powerfull state without.

Like Clodwig said, their situation is extraordinarily different, because of Norway sitting on a pile of oil, gas, iron, copper, timber, fish, nickel, zinc, etc, Switzerland has this banking system draining trillions of $ and billionaire consumers from across the globe to the country, and are nothing like the trade-heavy Dutch economy.

They fill the niche's, and they can because of their extraordinary situation. If I was them I wouldn't join the EU either.

-Germany has quite a say, it has a large population, I mean Russia has a population of 120 million and a far smaller economy than germany yet they have influence... You might want to stop making military cuts prehaps?

Russia is a major world-power and can afford their huge army because they sit on every natural resource imaginable.

Germany is dependent on trade and has virtually no natural resources of importance at all.

EDIT:
The video was probably removed BUT I found an article with almost the same content by the same writer.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/da...anging_places/

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It’s a polar switch. The Orient is becoming decentralised, dispersed and dynamic, just as the Occident becomes centralised, sluggish and sclerotic.

Awe inspiring: the rise and rise of Chinese mega-cities
Like most people who have recently visited the mega-cities of the Chinese littoral, I am returning to Europe awe-struck. And worried, too.
It’s not China’s rise per se that bothers me. Visit any museum and you’ll see that China has been the world’s predominant civilisation for most of the past 3,000 years. Why this should be, I have no idea. China’s lead may derive from topographical advantages, or political ones. It may have to do with culture or religion. It may be because, as some scientists claim, the average IQ in East Asia is 115 to Europe’s 100. Whatever the explanation, the Chinese have generally been wealthier and more advanced than the rest of us. Cartography, astronomy, mathematics, canals, gunpowder, paper money: they were almost always there first. Yet this technological lead rarely posed a threat to the West: the Chinese were generally prepared to dwell in the fastness behind their wall.
The interesting question is why the Chinese fell behind (or, to put it the other way around, why Europe surged ahead). The most convincing answer is that offered by the Australian historian E L Jones (and brought to a wider audience by Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers). To concertina a subtle and elegant thesis, Jones argued that the East’s failure lay in its political uniformity. The Chinese Empire became over-centralised, over-governed and over-taxed. Standarisation worked against local experimentation, and the ruling Mandarin caste preferred inherited notions of classical accomplishment to innovation.Â
Europe, by contrast, was not a state but a state system: a plurality of competing princedoms, each striving to outdo its neighbours, each copying what had been trialled successfully abroad. European culture fostered enterprise and adventurousness: the Chinese were destroying their ocean-going fleet at the very moment that Henry the Navigator was planning his expeditions.
China, in short, fell behind from the 17th century onwards because it became introverted and bureaucratic; Europe surged ahead because it was competitive and diverse.Â
Which brings me to the polar switch. At the very moment that China is reversing its relative decline at the moment that the centralised party structure begins to loosen up Europe is going in the opposite direction, agglomerating more and more power from national capitals to Brussels. An astonishing 84 per cent of laws in the EU now come, not from state legislatures, but from Euro-functionaries (it is not by coincidence that they are known as Mandarins). Just as China toys with ditching its system, Europe vests supreme authority in an unelected Politburo of 27 Commissioners, who rule by a series of Five Year Plans.
I asked a Euro-diplomat in Peking on Wednesday about the devolution of power in China, which has seen local and provincial authorities take over economic policy, education, healthcare, unemployment benefit (such as it is) and pensions. “You cannot imagine it,” he replied, raising his exquisitely manicured hands in horror. “It is as though China had no Commission, no European Court of Justice and no European Parliament”. To which the obvious reply is: they seem to be getting by somehow.
Yes, China has serious economic problems. Much of the country is still in poverty (which is why the EU gives China development assistance, simultaneously complaining about the unconditional nature of China’s own financial support for various African dictatorships). And China’s political system, as I wrote on Tuesday, is appalling. But the trend, at least, is towards smaller government, localism and personal freedom. In Europe, the opposite is true. That is our tragedy.

Telegraph-Daniel Hannan.

I don't know where Hannan draws his many mis-conceptions from, but the days where the British could bombard the Chinese coast-line with a few ships are long gone.

Maybe he should take simple historic facts like these into his considerations on "China's lost advantages".

In any case, Europe is as decentralized as it gets, and they'd need a gazillion years to get to our level, and I'll doubt they ever want to go to the level of decentralization where the EU is now.

And?

The oil is not in the hands of the state, is it? The companies who exploit it aren't bound to Norway, are they?
Besides our welfare level isn't really alot worse.

No the state has large ownership in all the key-sectors. Ever heard of Statoil? The state controls approximately 30% of all the Norwegian company-shares at the Oslo stock-exchange.

Also the tax-paying private company's provide many jobs for tax-paying Norwegians.

[orange]

Integration of Europe to one big state is horrible mistake. Centralization and monopolization of law making leads to stagnation and decline. Look to history. Did Ottoman empire, China or Mughal Empire make the biggest economical and technological progress between 15 - 19 century? No. The biggest progress was made in highly decentralized Europe.

[Thorn777]

Integration of Europe to one big state is horrible mistake. Centralization and monopolization of law making leads to stagnation and decline. Look to history. Did Ottoman empire, China or Mughal Empire make the biggest economical and technological progress between 15 - 19 century? No. The biggest progress was made in highly decentralized Europe.

Todays world is an complete other, centralization didn't lead to stagnation, and there is not going to be "one big state".