Comments by "Paul Aiello" (@paul1979uk2000) on "Who really leads the European Union?" video.

  1. It's usually the Germans and the French but in truth, even thought they are the big players in the union, they can't get anything done unless there is enough support from enough other members, so even thought some members can guide the direction of the union, no individual member actually runs the union. With that said, bigger members like Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland are always going to have a bigger say based on their economics and population size and rightly so. In any case, there's always going to need enough broad support from big and small members to pass or block new laws and changes but with all that said, clearly the balance is shifting in favour of Germany and other more central European countries and mostly because of EU expansion which opens up more trade and other benefits with the eastern EU countries and it's usually always neighbouring countries that benefit the most, throw in that Brexit happened which is closer to France, it's easy to see how the balance can shift, but in the end, it doesn't really matter because there's always going to be a need for broad support to pass something and in that sense, no one country runs the EU, they all do. As for the vision for the EU, that's not going to be determine by any individual EU members and more likely to be determine outside powers like the US, China and a rising India, in other words, the EU will change in areas that it needs to do so they can better compete with them on the world stage, in other words, expect a lot more integration in key areas, regardless of wants, the alternative is that we get pushed aside by the other big powers around the world which could have a big negative impact on the economy, politics and even our social systems which I'm sure many of you know, the US and China would love to water them down, so yeah, expect more integration, not because we want it, but to protect our interest.
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