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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

You forgot about Iceland!

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