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Comment by HarHarVeryFunny | Hacker News Reader

The members of the EU are countries, not states (& the EU itself is a political/economic alliance, not a country).

"State" in this context is the same as the state in "head of state," AKA "a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government." Other examples of this usage are "nation-state" and "city-state."

It is common to refer to the members of the EU as "member states."

So then why not just refer to the whole list as states rather than countries ? IMO it be weird to do so, but at least consistent.

I'm curious what state you're from where it's normal to refer to EU members as "member states" ? USA perhaps ?

"State" refers to "any sovereign polity". The US is weird here in that it pretends it's internal political divisions are sovereigns and refers to them as states, but that doesn't make every other country in the world not a state.

Definition from wikitionary (but nothing is special about this choice of dictionary, you should find a similar definition in any dictionary): https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/state#Noun

Of course they know that. How dumb would one have to be to not know France, Italy, Germany are countries? :-)

So then why not refer to them as countries - that's how they would refer to themselves (I'm ex-UK myself). Doesn't make any sense to say "I know they're countries but I'm just gonna call them states instead". The EU context doesn't make any difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union

> The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe.

"State" made perfect sense in context of the post.

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