Comments by "Archangel17" (@MDP1702) on "Has the EU Given up on Brexit Negotiations? The EU's New Plans for a No Deal Brexit - TLDR News" video.
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@davidrenton
If you think the last 10 years have shown an energetic , decisive EU then well.
I haven't, then again neither have I seen an energetic and decisive UK government in more or less the same time, this goes for most countries tbh. At least the EU has a reason why it isn't.
but it has to federalised and that's it undoing
It definitely needs to be federalised, though I don't think it will be its undoing, I can see some nations dropping out because of it, but the ones I look at to do so, I would rather get rid of anyway.
to dissolve the nation state
That depends how you see it, there are plenty of power that can remain with the current memberstate national level (if it isn't given to lower governments first).
but Europeans will never go for that
I think you underestimate what people will go for.
How do you think Germans will feel being the bank for the whole continent.
They do get a lot of economic benefit from the EU. I guess I could ask, how does London and the south-east feel being the bank of the UK?
I design complex system's
The EU is indeed complex, out of necessity of it being an international organisation and being as democratic as an international organisation can be.
People would have said the same about the US early on, back in the beginning there are many similarities to the EU now.
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@davidrenton
Here's the difference , we can get them out
So can it also be done in the EU. The national leaders can voted out in national elections, MEP's in direct elections and commission members are influenced by both the EP and national elections. Can it be better? Sure, just like the UK system can be much improved, now BJ has a majority with only 43% of the votes.
European voters have very little say over the EU policies and direction.
Practically as much as UK voters, since every law needs to be passed by the EP and the overall direction of the EU is set by the national leaders.
The EU will require Tax raising powers, and budgets as they have indicated.
Don't know how this is relevant as a response to what I said in that sentence.
Europe is too diverse in term's of culture, history, business and wants/needs. Federalisation either means an averaging of practices, culture or the dominate partner enforces their way's on others. Either way it's will be unsatisfactory to most, German methods will not work in Italy.
I often hear that, but then it is the same in the US, UK, ... Not everywhere is the same. Different regions want different things and vote different, that is why you need a good balance between federal and local. Everything regarding culture would be local, history doesn't matter that much, in fact at this moment history looks to be used more like a unifying factor.
I'm from London , I don't mind at all, why because it's my nation, my fellow country men/women, London should support the poorer areas.
Well, then why couldn't this be the case in the EU if you can create an EU sentiment/feeling of EU unity, which already exists more than you think.
How much affinity does the average German or French have for say Hungary , will they find common cause, this is the thing , no one is truly a proud EU citizen as they are in their nation. No one would fight for the EU, like they would for their country.
Personally I disagree with this, but maybe you just have another experience with that. Though Hungary is already a special case, acting more like leech, wanting the good parts, but not the bad and attempting/supporting to subvert EU laws an regulations. Which shows why the EU needs better way of dealing with that.
The EU is not an emotional thing, it's doesn't get to people's heart's like the pride in one's nation,
Again, that highly depends on region. Also early on in the US, most people didn't care about the US, it cared about their states. The feeling towards the US grew overtime. No reason this can't happen for the EU too.
I don't follow Football, but how many people would support a EU team, over say Spain or the Netherlands. It doesn't happen.
Again different, even the UK has multiple national teams. An EU time might be nice though in the long run, but unlikely/unnecessary.
*The US is different why because it was created from scratch, no history and a dominate culture that enforced Language, Idea's, Law, Culture all. *
And we aren't the 18th century anymore either. And to say it had no history is also not quite correct. The history was brought from Europe. All in all history doesn't matter that much, except for the history of the current generations.
France and England/UK have been rivals for centuries, yet in the past century they were strong allies.
The US seperated from the UK and fought a second war in 1812, yes again they have been strong allies.
History isn't everything things can change. There is no history that can really be a problem for further unification.
By the time mass immigration occurred in the US (19th centaury) from non N European countries, the US was established , it had a defining image, so people assimilated to that.
Actually they didn't, you got communities living together based on origin, you got newspapers in different language, ... The US essentially is a quite diverse nation. It is rather recently (past few decades) many people "lost" their culture of origin. Often their culture got mixed with other aspects of US tradition/"culture".
America at it's core is fundamentally a N/W European society, doesn't matter where your from, it's still a European inspired state.
Yeah, because nearly all immigrants came from N/W Europe before the past 2-3 decades.
So for it to be like the US , you need to have a dominate culture, what would that be French, German, Spanish.
And this is you misunderstanding me and/or being ingenuine. I said the EU was similar to the US early on, not that the EU is already the same as the US or would become exactly the same. And trust me, if you go through the US you will find many different cultures with also many similarities. At this moment you could say that you have the US culture group, with many different subcultures. This is similar for large parts of the EU (though you could split up the EU maybe in a nord-western, southern and eastern culture group. However these culturegroups are becoming more similar overtime already.
There doesn't need to be a dominate culture or culture group. That is just a fallacy. There have been empires/large nations throughout history with quite a lot if diverse cultures that lasted longer than the US has existed for now.
Will there need to be a common language for example? Yes and personally I'd guess this would be english. Why? Because it is the most used/spoken language in the world, it is a neutral language now the UK left, it is used by important allies and used in many international fields.
So the EU is nothing like the Early US, it's not even comparable.
It is, you talked mostly about current or middle late US, not early US. And especially not the political and "loyalty" situation of early US.
Your siblings analogy doesn't make any sense.
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@davidrenton
I would disagree about getting them out or not even that if your a Greek voter you can vote for your MEP fine, but that MEP has no power , Greece will never have a say , so your vote is illusionary. There is nothing a Greek voter can do to influence the direction of the EU. They are at the at the mercy of the bigger countries.
How is this different in the UK? England has more MP's and is stronger than Wales, scotland and NI combined. If England wants to really do something the only thing they can threaten with is seccesion, which is also possible in the EU. Germany and France combined have around 25% of MEP's, and these always vote based on ideology more than country of origin. In the commission both have only one commisioner and in the council they together only have 2 votes or 33% of the population.
Through official means they don't have anywhere near full control. Now, ofcourse they have immense soft power to influence others, but they'd always have that, this has always been the case. Larger/more wealthy nations have more influence than smaller/less wealthy ones. Whether this is in the EU or outside it is the same. However by being in something as large as the EU, Greece has overall more softpower worldwide and is more capable of playing along on the international stage, even if it is through the EU.
Also consider that in many aspects members have veto rights, I wouldn't say Greece (or any member) is powerless. It can stop any trade deal, any new admission and so much more.
True Boris had 43% of the vote (which in the UK is actually historically very high, usually it around's 35% for a party to get power), Labour got 32%, that's the way 1st past the post works, Winner take's all.
And that is what I personally find undemocratic, a large part of the voters are essentially not heard or represented.
*We did have a vote where we used PR and each vote counted , that was called Brexit ,where the majority of voters voted for it.
To the Media a winning government with say 35% has more legitimacy than a PR vote with 52%.*
I am not going to dispute brexit won the vote, though there was a lot of misinformation present during the campaign. Easiest example is "getting a deal will be easy", "there will be no no deal brexit", ...
The point about European difference's is that a top down approach won't work, what is suitable for Germany will not be for Italy. Therefore with an open market , freedom of movement do you enforce German practices on Italy.
This is the same in the UK. What is suitable for England might not be for Scotland, what is suitable for London might not be so for the north-east/west.
Unfortunately this is a consequence of being in a larger nation/entity. Which is why you need to keep as much power as possible local, with mostly things irrelevant of region or things that can't be done locally efficiently being done on the higher stage.
Look at the fishing issue, this highlights the difference's, for France it's a big issue, Germany couldn't give a hoot, but France will probably have to compromise on something that's vital to it, to make Germany happy.
You get this in any nation larger than a "large city state".
The US as I said come from a different place, these on the whole where people looking to start afresh, have no baggage on the past, they could experiment and do things differently.
I can understand where you are coming from, but it doesn't matter. For one these people still took the burden of (relevant) history with them. Furthermore their experiment was inspired by European thought and history, like the dutch republic, ...
This also doesn't change how people thought. Early on the states were where the loyalty was. The only reason they formed the US was because they realised they were stronger together and needed to be strong in a world with other strong nations that might have interests in them/their surroundings. This is exactly how most people look to the EU now. Their loyalty is still with their nation, but they realise they need the EU to be stronger in the world (and the other benefits ofcourse).
Immigrant's adapted to the newly created US 'culture'
The problem is, they didn't, which sparked tensions in the past. It is only in the past few decades/century you see a more "unified" culture.
it's a melting pot with a dominant culture, that being a Northern European one
Because most of the the immigrants were also European. Immigrants from elsewhere, were only a small minority. Even at this moment (with much larger non-european immigration), you have around 50-70 million people not from European descent. And in fact German is the largest group of origin. Up untill the world wars many german immigrants couldn't even speak english, you had entire communities speaking german, reading german newspapers, ...
they went to American school's
When I speak about similarities it is in US 1800-1850. Schooling wasn't as universal as now.
fought in the US Army
For some time most of the US armed forces consisted of state troops/militia's, there was quite a lot of resistance against a federal army (or at least a powerfull federal army). This isn't too dissimilar from the EU currently. And in most EU nations, there is a majority support for a European army.
flew the US Flag.
EU flag is also flown in many EU nations. Again in early US the state flag was as important/more important than the American flag.
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@davidrenton National/Ethnic interests (at least contributed).
Most large nations eventually fall due to internal problems. This can be national/ethnic, but also religious, politics, succession (the many civil wars for power in the roman empire weakened it severely), ...
If your Chinese in the US, Indian it doesn't matter on the whole you , your life, you way of work, the law's you adhere to are from that American system
This is a bit redundant, obviously you are going to live by laws of the region you live in. And as it stands the live of people aren't the world are becoming more similar due to globalisation.
Why Europe is different from the US is each and every country has developed a long time before
And countries change overtime. In the past you had many different cultures and even very different dialects in France, it wasn't one country, this however changed overtime. If you look throughout history there is a trend of more and more cultural harmonisation with just some differences remaining that are more or less irrelevant to the governing of a nation at large.
and not be worried about State or Historical differences.
Like with the civil war, which was driven by state and historical differences?
When you did have a fundamental difference between the states, you had a civil war. These 2 sides had totally incompatible views and the only resolution was succession or war.
So now you're contradicting yourself, first there were no state and historical differences, now it suddenly leads to a civil war. And the EU knows and learned about this by making it possible for states to secede. The US apparently hasn't, because states can still not secede legally.
This is the thing the UK has more in common with the US/Canada/Australia/NZ (even Japan) then say Italy
Obviously, at some point in time the UK controlled all of these regions, this is completely irrelevant. The UK isn't going to form a new nation/political entity with these nations.
Though an Japan I disagree. Japan has a lot in common with the west as a whole.
So why should the EU feel ownership over us
It doesn't?
why can't they accept we are a European country not in the EU and treat us such
You do know every kind of relationship the EU has with other European countries (except Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, since there is no real meaningfull relationship) has been looked at as an option. The problem is that for every of these possible relationships a UK red line would be crossed. Thus for the EU-UK relationship they needed to look beyond Europe. The problem is that the UK is still in Europe, with easy connections to it and even sharing a border, thus a new kind of relationship had/has to be found, somewhere between what other European nations have and what non-European nations have.
they say yes those Water's are yours's but we demand access to them
Honestly I don't have enough knowledge about the fishing problems to talk about it, but I am sure it is more complex that this.
why they don't with Japan and Canada
Because one is on the other side of the world and the second at the other side of an ocean?
Brexit has been the most lied about thing in recent history. When people voted Brexit it wasn't an attack on Europe , we still wanted to be friends, but we have seen how petty , how vindictive the EU has been. This doesn't make the heart grow fonder, it want's us to have nothing to do with them.
The EU has always made it clear that it would act in the best interests of the single market and that getting an agreement/deal wouldn't be as easy as brexiteers claimed. These kind of trade deals are usually negotiated for years. Throughout this process the EU has tried to make it work, but internal UK difficulties didn't help. Inexperienced UK negotiators that often got switched, different PM's, difficult UK parliament situation, ...
Honestly the EU hasn't acted petty at all, it was the UK that underestimated EU resolve and everything that comes with these negotiations and clearly wasn't ready for it.
The more brexit played out, the happier I personally was that the UK left the EU. Because politicians kept and keep blaming the EU for their own failure and lack of prepardness.
If the EU wanted to play petty, it would have prepared for a no deal and refused any extension.
Maybe it is different in the UK, but overall the UK is seen as the one being petty, wanting to leave, but at the same time keep most of the benefits. The UK could never have received a better situation/deal than they had in the EU. Even as a member it received much special treatment.
well the EU needs to let the UK go
It was always the UK that asked for extensions. The UK already left the EU. Everything the past year is just done to try and minimize the fall out for both sides.
So as a Brexit support I want the UK to have Fair and Friendly relations with Europe , we have no problem with that, but the action's of certain European countries is not conducive to this. The EU and those are being very short sighted and creating a lot of bad blood between us.
If you feel like this, I can only conclude UK politicians or still good at using the EU as a scapegoat. The EU has been nothing but considerate, considering how the UK government acted all these years.
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@davidrenton Europe is full of contradictory systems
Like? And please don't say Poland or Hungary.
it took a lot from England.
What exactly did they take? How did it feel 'British'?
that is not a reason, the EU doesn't claim Libya's Israel's, Turkey's waters, the UK is not in the EU, the EU has zero right's to UK waters, it's very simple. the UK has no right to the EU water, and vice versa. Distance is irrelevant.
1) EU doesn't have a free trade agreement with Libya.
2) Israel's fishing water is tiny in comparison to neighbouring EU nations and is poor fishing grounds apparently. Israel even started building fishfarms.
3) Turkey has negligable fishing waters in the mediterranean due to Cyprus and Greek Islands. Only in the Black sea has it meaningfull fishing grounds. For the black sea the EU had to step in in 2018 to limit fishing to stop overfishing and stepped into an agreement with several nations around the black sea. Why they don't have a deeper agreement on fishing with Turkey, I don't know. Maybe it is because up untill a few years ago it seemed Turkey was going to try and enter the EU, thus it could be dealth with upon them entering? Maybe they didn't want to strain relations and unlike with the UK it wouldn't lose or gain much with a deal/no deal. You'll have to look more into it if you want the answer.
Yes, the EU doesn't have rights to UK waters, which is why they are negotiating on it. And for the record the EU has fishing agreements with many African nations too. The UK definitely wouldn't be a one off.
The EU pay's NORWAY for it's Fish, they as just as close.
And who says the EU isn't offering the UK a similar fishing deal as Norway, but the UK government refused it because they want sovereign fishing ground symbolism? And it definitely isn't as simple as that the EU pays Norway for the right to fish. They jointly manage Norways fishing waters and agree on the amount that can be fished by whom, etc and Norwegian fisher similarly have the right to fish in EU waters.
A Trade deal is easy, we have done 60 in the last year
The UK just got the same trade deals from those countries they had as being a EU member. These countries just agreed to roll over the trade agreement they made/had with the EU and most of these trade deals are practically worthless for the UK. They haven't made a single unique trade deal. Even their "unique" trade deal with Japan is essentially just the trade deal the EU made around 2 years earlier.
The EU has had no interest in getting a deal, they wanted to punish the UK and made unreasonable demands'.
And yet they remain at the table instead of just refusing extensions.
they wish to subsidise their Businesses, but restrict the UK from doing the same
This is just stupid, I know that this has come in the media, however the problem is, the UK hasn't subsidies bussiness as much as it is allowed to for years. All they did about this during the negotiations was acting though. They aren't even close to the limit that would be set for state subsidies. Hell, the deal with Japan has stricter rules about state subsidies then what the EU is proposing.
they want 8 year's fish access,
Yes, and allow UK fishers in EU waters, essentially just continuing the current system. It is not the EU's fault the UK hasn't go a goo fishing industry. If it wanted it could have build up a strong fishing industry by now. Instead now most of UK waters will just not be fished with a no deal brexit. Fishing has always been symbolic for the UK, nothing more.
but restrict the UK from doing the same
Where did this come from?
the UK is not petty for wanting to leave
I never said it was. I said it was petty for wanting to leave, but not lose the benefits. Because that is how the UK government has been negotiating, wanting to get things without something else in return, because with every compromise they would lose "sovereignty".
the EU is trying to punish us for it by making impossible demand's
No, it is not. The EU is acting like it should, looking out for its members. This negotiating style has been agreed on by all members of the council, or in other words all nations within the EU. It is the council that sets what Barnier can and can't do.
No other country would accept the demand's that a separate entity can access it waters
This is clearly wrong seeing the EU has several of these agreements.
No other country would accept the demand how it run's thing's like Government subsidises.
Again clearly you are wrong, since the UK accepted stricter rules than the EU proposes about this in their Japan free trade deal.
only moron's would wish to remain.
Oh great, so the moron calls the people who looked past the misinformation and pandering morons. I guess we've gone full circle.
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