Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmurray | Hacker News Reader

> When the UK was in the EU it had a much more pro-market, pro-EU expansion agenda.

Do you mean an anti-EU-expansion agenda? If so I totally agree: as someone who quite likes the EU but doesn't favour further integration, it was good to have the UK tempering any efforts in that direction.

View on HN

It seems that the UK was a very strong advocate for EU expansion until about 2013 or so when our government decided they didn't like East Europeans:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/enlargement/news/uk-no-long...

Edit: There was quite ridiculous scare mongering in the UK media at the time about Bulgaria and Romania. No doubt part of the general trend that eventually led to Brexit.

Thing is that some candidates for expansion have questionable practices when it comes to democracy. This is why those countries often see the EU in a positive light as it isn't as corrupt as their local gov at least.

I don't think current EU leaders really have any long-term plan, they just keep on steering in the same direction. Can be good or bad depending on your perspective.

The UK was in favor of enlargement precisely because it would hinder integration. The best explanation of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE

I knew precisely what this would be before clicking on it! Well done!

I don't think it was fear-mongering that led to anti-EU sentiment so much as basic economics. Since most Europeans learn at least some English in school, you have an asymmetry when it comes to jobs.

Eastern Europeans can look for jobs in their home countries as well as in Britain. British folks, on the other hand, don't really get any more in the way of job opportunities unless they speak Romanian or Polish. So you have a situation where you have increased competition without increased opportunity.

Actually, being native English speaker is always a money making skill by itself. Seriously, having a western look and speaking English are marketable skills. There are people who literally make living out of it.

When it comes to Easter Europeans, they need to have the skills to get the job in first place(Polish don't get the jobs because of their Polishness), they must be able to speak some English in addition to one or two languages that they already know and they must have the capital to move to UK(Usually means years of savings).

If the British are having hard time to compete with Eastern Europeans they need to look into their education system. The government as the first step in HR will help with reducing the competition but in the same time that means that UK companies will have less options in hiring which is likely to reduce the output.

In my opinion, companies should be allowed to hire whoever they want and work visa or nationality is not a skill, just blunt regulatory barrier for voter distribution.

A lot of it was simple cost-of-living arbitrage. A worker sending money home to a family in Poland or especially Bulgaria/Romania can undercut someone who's trying to support the same family at UK prices. On a global scale that may be "fairer", but you can understand why the UK populace would be against it.

Of course there's a cost of living arbitrage but that's everywhere. Many people work in London but live out of London, it's a choice you can make and it comes at a cost(travel times) that you may or may not want to take just as the Polish don't see their family for long time.

In Turkey there used to be the argument against Women working, they said professional women are making man unemployed or underpaid causing social problems. It's not that different from the argument that Polish employment are causing British social problems. What about doing better job than an immigrant who can barely speak yor language? But no, they banning competition is easier.

You could make the same argument against any regulation of work. What about doing a better job than the person who's willing to work 12-hour days? What about doing a better job than the person willing to go without safety equipment?

Maybe we should have laws to prevent a race to the bottom on long commutes, living away from family, or having everyone in a household work, just as we have laws to prevent a race to the bottom on working hours or safety.

I see your point but comparing nationality to safety equipment does not compute.

>Maybe we should have laws to prevent a race to the bottom on long commutes, living away from family, or having everyone in a household work, just as we have laws to prevent a race to the bottom on working hours or safety.

I agree that it creates problems and, we can have safeguards like that. The point is, the safeguards should be same for everybody if we are aiming for merit based employment.

Sure, go ahead and implement ban for 12 hour work days but don't do it on nationality/race/gender base. Of course you can have exceptions for certain groups(like women who give birth to a child can have special benefits) but blanket bans for based on those is simply not O.K. if you want to have a fair society.

On the other hand, you may not want to have a fair society or fair means a different thing. I understand that there are different ideologies who would advocate different structures in the benefit of a certain race/gender/social status. Racism, sexism, classism are not novel ideals.

There's not that much left to integrate, anyway. There's Montenegro, maybe Albania and North Macedonia next, a big maybe for Serbia (do they still want in?) and Bosnia and a definitely "no chance in hell" for Turkey (even though in the early 2000s it looked like a real possibility). Ukraine is too much of a hot potato to be touched by the EU. I forgot about Moldova, but for better or worse half of its population is already working abroad.

To be clear, I wasn't talking about geographical integration, but further integration of national institutions. E.g. An EU army, a shared EU tax policy...

No doubt, France is pro-EUarmy and pro-EUtax, as long as the army speaks French and the tax goes to French farmers.

France contributes more to the EU budget than it gets out of it, including farming subsidies. With the UK gone, France is/will be the second largest contributor, in absolute terms. The largest beneficiaries, again in absolute terms, are the two countries that pretend to be Euro sceptic, Hungary and Poland. Go figure.

Of course that's just the EU budget. The advantage that all countries but particularly France and Germany (and, for another couple of weeks, the UK) get from frictionless trade are enormous.

https://m.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/europa/70580...

And don't forget Germany benefits form those countries dragging down the currency too, perhaps more than it does for trade barriers.

Thanks for the clarification. Yeah, I'm with you on this, don't see much scope for further integration on that front, at least not from the bottom up, especially after this pandemic that has made the borders and the national differences all too real again.

The elites will try to impose it from top to bottom, and when they'll encounter resistance they'll of course blame it on populism/Russia malevolence/the electorate being stupid and the like, that is if they'll decide to go to the polls to impose that further integration (which I have very big doubts they will).

It’s funny because in the early 2000s, everyone was against Turkey joining because of its economic woes. Today they’re against it for political reasons that could have been completely averted by its being a member state - all while proving that it had real, untapped economic potential all along.

But who knows if it would have been in Turkey’s own best interest to become a member state.

Who's to say Turkey's political problems would have been avoided? They're caused by demographic pressure and inequality that the EU can do little about. People consider Hungary and Poland bad but Turkey is Hungary + Poland on steroids.

Unfortunately, for most outsiders (including myself, I must confess), Turkey = Istanbul, when a few hours drive out to the rural areas will prove otherwise.

You forgot about Iceland!

It would probably be a good idea to get the economies to a more uniform state before adding more member states. There's a lot of difference between standard of living in rural Bulgaria and downtown Munich.

This is why I think the timing of Brexit is quite poor. Polish GDP has trebled since joining the EU. Eastern Europe generally is on lower wages and their working in the UK was seen to be pushing wage deflation for many working class trades. The problem would lessen over time, so effectively we've seen the worst of it already. The UK will leave without bearing the fruits of the project in that regard.

I see some indications that EU will in fact try to swallow that hot potato, i.e. the Ukraine. Just my two eurocents, from looking at the Polish media for some years and talking to many Ukrainians.

The carrot of eventual EU membership is being dangled, yes. But "eventual" could be 50 years away. I don't think the EU wants to have to deal with Ukraine's recent problems, such as Crimea, the Donbass War, relations with Russia. But maybe, given a few decades, those problems will reach some kind of resolution.

A lot of EU states never really wanted Cyprus in until the dispute with the North and with Turkey was resolved. But Greece insisted on Cyprus being allowed in before that, and threatened to block enlargement to other member states if it was not, so the rest of the EU didn't have a choice. There is no equivalent country demanding Ukrainian admission. Even if some EU countries might like Ukraine to join, nobody is going to say "Unless you let Ukraine in, we will veto Montenegro/North Macedonia/Serbia/Albania/Kosovo/etc's admission"

And Russia will quite possibly take the idea of Ukrainian EU membership badly – although exactly how Russia reacts depends on what is the state of EU-Russia relations at that point of time. Given that Ukrainian EU membership is decades away, if it ever happens at all, who knows what state EU-Russia relations may be in by then.

Judging by Brexit, 50 years is a reasonable timeframe.

Who knows, maybe after Putin dies, we might get Muscovy, Kazan, Perm, the Republic of Novgorod, Crimea, etc. Going by Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, etc., very likely.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com