Europe's old laggards will never balance US power

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Cork
The idea of a United States of Europe is just an idea. It will never happen.

I'm either on your ignore list or you decided not to read the bit where I intimated how dumb it is to predict anything in the distant future :rolleyes:

Sparks

This is the impression I get from meeting Germans.

Met all of them, did you Cork?

I'll have my hat with salt corinthian , if the U.K ever vote in a referendum for the final integration of itself into a United states of Europe.
I'll eat the feather first though if they vote for the Euro,they are just too nationalistic for that.

There was a time that I would have said that about the IRA winning in the North. And now we have a convicted gun-runner as an elected member of the Government down here.
It's enough to make a man switch to chocolate hats...

Cork

I think that EU countries will always put national interests first. Even look at the trouble they're having to come up with 1 billion for aids relief in Africia. Look at the common EU position during the war in Iraq.

It is about time - we in Ireland gave our EU EU partners a few lectures on prudent Financial management. when you look at the Economic & Growth pact regarding the Euro. Borrowing Restrictions are being igrored even by the Germans.

This was an agreement concerning the introduction of a Common Currancy. Many countries have consigned it to the trash heap.

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Cork
It is about time - we in Ireland gave our EU EU partners a few lectures on prudent Financial management.

Hahahahaha

You're joking? Right?

Or just don't know the first thing about macroeconomics?

Typedef

Even though I tend to vehemently disagree with the notion of a Federal European Union, I think that given the history of it's evolution so far, that such an entity is an enivability.

It is mostly an accepted paradigm that each sucessive treaty brings a United States of Europe further to fruition, or whatever one chooses to call and ever increasing integrationist paradigm.

Military alliance, Currency alliance, Economic alliance, aside from tax varying powers the EU, 'is' for all intents and purposes a proto-State. I have little compunction that the EU will not eventually through the desire of old European powers, coalesce to form a Federalist/quasi-Federalist bloc.

With or without the British, Irish, Swedes, Austrians and others. The notion I think of "Core" Europeans being thwarted in Federal integration is wrong. So long as that integration is not imposed by overt or serrupticious means on Euro-sceptic countries , or the intentions of European treaties hidden to mean that integration is not the goal of the Union , then Federalism can't be opposed, for those who wish it.

I oppose Federalism, because the means of it's fruition to date have been at best a pandemic of propaganda. For the British, Europe is 'never' going to be a Federal Republic, for the French that is exactly where the EU is going.

Thus for me, it is a little difficult to say that Ireland (a) knows what it is Europe will be and (b) is complicit in what it has become.
Creeping Federalism is what I'm alluding to and I, in the socio-political sense oppose Federalism. If it was stated in each sucessive treaty that the likely outcome of voting Yes, in perpetuity to Europe would be a Federal State 'and' the Irish people still voted Yes, I would be silent on the subject.
However since in my view, a quite dishonest and misleading slide towards Federalism is in evidence, I must oppose it on the grounds of a lack of transparency.

I'll qualify that last statement. During Nice (mark 2), it was stated to the Irish people that 'Irish neutrality' will never be breached by participation in a Common European defence, without a Referendum being called.
Rather unfortunately, the likes of Fine Gael are already saying that "Neutrality is gone" and that "Ireland has an important part to play in the founding of a Common European Defence policy" in this context.
Hmm, I must have missed that entire campaign perpitrated by the main political parties, not 12 months ago, which proported that Irish further participation in whatever level of integration one believe's the EU is heading to, will mean, participation in a military alliance.

Thus Federal integration to me, seems to be preticated on dishonesty. Let's be clear, I have no problem, with the decision of the Irish people, if those decisions are made with the full facts and intentions of the Union in evidence. To me, those facts seem malleable, to suit the requisite propaganda, in order to bring further and further integration, and so I oppose it.

Basically.

Cork

Originally posted by The Corinthian
Hahahahaha

You're joking? Right?

Or just don't know the first thing about macroeconomics?

Ireland has not breached any EU borrowing requirements. Some EU countries have unfortunately.

Sparks

Ireland has not breached any EU borrowing requirements. Some EU countries have unfortunately.

And that's how you define "prudent Financial management"???
*snort*

And I suppose that the ability of the government to go from having a major surplus in the treasury to having a deficet in the space of a year is down to magic leprechauns tiptoeing in and stealing our gold for their crocks, huh?

Cork, we spend 8 billion euro per year on the Health Service and manage to get a Health System worth maybe one or two billion. And that's just the biggest example of poor fiscal management. And we haven't even mentioned the Squire...

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Cork
Ireland has not breached any EU borrowing requirements. Some EU countries have unfortunately.

I've not claimed that other EU countries are beyond reproach, but I am challenging your assertion that Ireland should lecture her European neighbours on “prudent financial management” - the same Ireland has been wrapped on the knuckles on breaching agreed rates of inflation. The same Ireland who’s government spending is in disarray due to poor long term planning. The same Ireland who decided that building an economy on the basis of inviting multinationals here to create employment with tax breaks would be a good idea even though it was ultimately a disaster no further away than Wales.

So you weren’t joking then... :rolleyes:

Cork

There are EU countries that are in clear breach of an EU agreement that is pivotal to our currancy - the euro. The borrowing requirement was set & agreed upon.

Yet - some countres are in clear breach of it. Yet, some people think that the EU will develop into a political project. The clear breach of EU borrowing requirements show that at government level - individual national interest comes first & common EU reponsibilitys comes a poor second.

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Cork
There are EU countries that are in clear breach of an EU agreement that is pivotal to our currancy - the euro. The borrowing requirement was set & agreed upon.

Yet - some countres are in clear breach of it. Yet, some people think that the EU will develop into a political project. The clear breach of EU borrowing requirements show that at government level - individual national interest comes first & common EU reponsibilitys comes a poor second.

So now your argument is no longer on about “prudent financial management”, given that you can no longer claim that Ireland is any better in this regard than anyone else, but (I assume, as you don’t actually conclude) that simply on a basis that in the present structure of the EU the pursuit of individual national interest as a primary goal to be incompatible with any form of future political unification.

Ignoring the complete inconsistency in most of your arguments in this thread to date and that the majority of unifications seem to taken place largely politically despite such apparent issues, you are ignoring my point on the unpredictability of political forecasting. What happens if national interests are ultimately served by the common good? Remember, the present structures are largely based upon such a premise, given past and present circumstances.

Yet, in your prophetic genius you now can state that regardless of the growth in integration, cooperation and even, dare I say it, political unity the EU has shown from its conception, the glass is still half empty for you, because circumstances will never change – So, of the 25 new nations joining the Union, how many would we have thought would never join only 15 years ago? Yet circumstances changed.

Thus, how can you be so rationally certain that this staus quo will remain and that we’ll be happy to squabble amongst each other? What makes you so certain that future circumstances, and perhaps not so far into the future, will not dictate that greater cooperation is in self-interest?

Personally, I’m not certain either way, but then again, I don’t share your gift for omniscience.

bonkey

Originally posted by Cork
Yet - some countres are in clear breach of it. Yet, some people think that the EU will develop into a political project.

By them agreeing to something, and then finding a need to break that agreement, you seem to be asserting that they are showing that we will never achieve any real political unity in the EU.

By this standard, one could say that no political party in Ireland will ever be able to work with the other political parties, because they too have all made promises that they have then broken as situations have changed and evolved.

Now, I'm not asking you to launch intop a fervent defense of Fianna Fail here, but just think about what you're saying Cork - that failure to stick to some agreements is a sign that working more closely together is an impossibility.

I would have been more inclined to say that slavishly maintaining inflexibility such as what you are doing is a far greater problem.

Not so long ago, people were bemoaning that the EU had the audacity to dare interfere in Irish politics by asking us to make certain changes to the way we treat foreign investors. This was uinacceptable. This was a tragedy of epic proportions. It showed how the EU really was just a front for a federalised Europe controlled by the Big 4.

Strangely enough, all they were doing was insisting that we now stick to an agreement we had made previously, but had been given permission to break for a period of time.

The problem is not that people won't stick to agreements. The problem is that too many nations expect all the other nations to stick to agreements, while still believing that its not only OK to break them themselves, but indeed that it would be wrong to be expected to keep them once there is a reason to break them.

This dichotomy of "the system is wrong when it imposes things on me, but is wrong when it fails to impose things on you - that is the problem.

jc