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> This is a little misleading because this has actually been the main contention, not the very existence of the EU/EC even since the days of Margaret Thatcher.

Why is Thatcher significant here? She was strongly pro-EEC - she supported remain in the 1975 referendum but she had been long out of any significant political influence by the time integration became more political.

Looking at more recent British politics at the time of the 2016 referendum it was very common for remainers to claim that the EU was just a trade organisation and not going to evolve into a full political union or federal state.

I think part of the problem is that the EU's founding treaties both indicate it is a supranational organisation and promise ever closer union. I would argue that just reflects differences in what different groups of people want.

> Why is Thatcher significant here? She was strongly pro-EEC

Exactly, she was pro-EEC but "Eurosceptic" in that she didn't want this to morph into a political union. I mentioned her to illustrate that the debate on what the EU should be and how far political integration should go, if go anywhere at all, has been going on forever but is more and more "smothered" by accusations of being "far right" for often being not too different from Thatcher.

Remember a famous speech in Parliament in which she said that the single currency was political union by the backdoor. Exactly right.

> it was very common for remainers to claim that the EU was just a trade organisation and not going to evolve into a full political union or federal state.

That's not true. Of course it was a political union, and that was the point of the referendum. Remember the pro-Brexit's line that the people had been sold a trade organisation (in 1975) but got a political union, instead. Now there were claims that the EU would not evolve into a federal state, and this aligns with what I wrote about EU political integration being insiduous and often deceiptful

> Remember a famous speech in Parliament in which she said that the single currency was political union by the backdoor. Exactly right.

I do not think it was much of a backdoor. Anyone who looked at it could see where it should lead.

1. Further political integration was expected at the time of currency union 2. A currency union requires some amount of fiscal union to be stable so its idiotic to have one without the other

> Now there were claims that the EU would not evolve into a federal state, and this aligns with what I wrote about EU political integration being insiduous and often deceiptful

I think part of the problem is that people do not understand how the EU works. A lot of people have a very poor understanding of how their national political system works.

Such notions were also shot down when people had a chance to vote again and again (against the expansion of EU powers), but the bureucrats kept pushing and advertising (with public money) for it, and blackmailing countries with withdrawal of funds if they don't consent to them.

The voting will continue until morale improves!

I'm curious - how do you see Europe surviving if not through further integration?

How do you envision, say Lithuania standing up to Russia, China or the US?

What is your preferred model? All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?

Also, the National Rally is clearly far-right. It was founded by former Waffen SS-members, for chrissake.

The fallacy is obvious right there...

Why would "Europe's survival" be at stake without further integration? Why would Lithuania need to stand up to Russia, China, or the US? (In terms of defense there are military alliances. They have never required political union or giving up sovereignty)

Edit as you added things:

> Also, the National Rally is clearly far-right.

Making outrageous claims does not make them factual.

> It was founded by former Waffen SS-members, for chrissake.

That's the FN that preceded the RN, some other founders were involved in the Resistance, too. That's the typical FUD narrative I mentioned, which takes the situation in 1972 and uses it to describe 2025. Are you saying that the majority of French MPs are Nazis? That's obviously ridiculous. Most US founding fathers were slave owners, so obviously the US are pro-slavery, like the Democratic Party that used to support slavery... Equally ridiculous. Again, today the RN is the main party of the right, nothing more. Their positions today would have made them in Chirac's rightwing government in 1986, not in the FN of the time.

The situation today is more like this: "Why Serge Klarsfeld, the renowned Nazi hunter, says he's ready to vote RN" [1] clearly a little different from your claims...

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/06/23/why-se...

Do you think Lithuania can in any way negotiate on anything approaching equal terms with any of those?

What you're asking for is effectively to become a client state of one of the above.

I notice you didn't address the elephant in the room regarding the National Rally, i.e. its founders being actual Nazis. (like, the Hitler kind, not just random right wing extremists).

Changing their name does not make this any less true - hell, one of their founders was talking about putting a Jewish singer in the oven (!!!) only a few years ago.

> What you're asking for is effectively to become a client state of one of the above.

You optimist! It seems more like one has to be a client state for all of the above simultaneously and be punished whenever contradicting orders are handed down.

>Do you think Lithuania can in any way negotiate on anything approaching equal terms with any of those?

Do you think Lithuania, or other such small countries like Serbia, Albania, Bosnia, Georgia, etc, can negotiate on equal terms with the EU?

I got news for you, when you're small country bordering large empires, you're gonna get absorbed into one or the other, whether you want to or not, because you don't really have a choice.

Lithuania doesn't need to negotiate with the EU, they are the EU.

The others can't, of course. That's the point! We become one of the predators instead of staying prey like them.

> I got news for you, when you're small country bordering large empires, you're gonna get absorbed into one or the other, whether you want to or not, because you don't really have a choice.

Exactly! That's why we need to build our own empire based on our own rules instead of letting foreign dictators gobble us up.

>Lithuania doesn't need to negotiate with the EU, they are the EU.

Unless the EU gangs up on you and takes away your veto ability "in case of emergency", in which case you have to shut up and take it.

>The others can't, of course. That's the point! We become one of the predators instead of staying prey like them.

Do you not see the irony here?

The EU is us, not national governments. National governments are a relic of old tribal days, we are all Europeans.

I do not feel represented by my national government at all, all they do is get in the way. If we can finally get rid of those impediments, we will be able to project so much more power.

>National governments are a relic of old tribal days, we are all Europeans.

Says who?

Tribalism along with own group preference, is one of the core human instincts, in line with the search for food, shelter and the reproductive instinct. You are free to ignore this instinct because you feel more academically enlightened or something, but you will be in for a rude awakening when you'll find yourself in the minority and eliminated from the gene pool by those who let themselves driven by basic instinct and will vote and reproduce accordingly.

>If we can finally get rid of those impediments, we will be able to project so much more power.

Yes, if we can get rid of local democratic governments with direct accountability and replace them with an unaccountable EU dictatorship, we'll have so much power projection.

> Yes, if we can get rid of local democratic governments with direct accountability and replace them with an unaccountable EU dictatorship, we'll have so much power projection.

I'm glad we agree! I think a Titoist approach would work best, though I also like some elements of Xi Jinping thought - namely the technocratism. What would your preferred model be?

Among the populations of all regions of the EU, only the city of Budapest identifies more with Europe than with their country or region. Even that might be just a protest against Orbán.

>I'm curious - how do you see Europe surviving if not through further integration?

I don't, with or without further integration. Not everyone or everything is meant to survive. Everything has a shelf life. The Roman empire also collapsed. Rearranging the deckchairs of the titanic doesn't change the outcome.

>What is your preferred model? All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?

A union is good, but the EU only worked at preventing another world war between members, not at helping us be united against foreign entities, because you can't force unity between different dethatched cultures just because we're neighbours, as proven by Yugoslavia, the USSR, etc.

Every EU member is still driven by self interest and own group preference, which will be the EU's doom. Like Spain doesn't really care as much about the Eastern war as Poland or Romania do because they're far away from the war and don't see why they should pay more taxpayer money for it. Germans care more about something happening in Austria than about what's happening in Bulgaria. And so on.

>I don't, with or without further integration. Not everyone or everything is meant to survive. Everything has a shelf life. The Roman empire also collapsed. Rearranging the deckchairs of the titanic doesn't change the outcome.

Why have strong opinions if you're really just a doomer?

Yugoslavia broke up mainly due to ethnic not cultural differences, it wasn't Croatian Serbs against Bosnian Serbs.

And the entire point of a healthy relationship is to compromise and try to understand the other side, which is the point of the EU.

So Spain contributes to the east as a compromise for getting heavy subsidies themselves.

>Why have strong opinions if you're really just a doomer?

Are you the opinion police?

>the entire point of a healthy relationship is to compromise and try to understand the other side, which is the point of the EU

The problem with compromise is that everyone becomes equally unhappy. And when everyone is unhappy strange results come at elections.

EU member states are so different, that you can't have regulations that benefits an economy like Denmark and also simultaneously one like Romania. Which is how places like Romania now have German energy and grocery prices but Romanian wages and pensions. Not exactly a great compromise for a lot of Romanians.

>So Spain contributes to the east as a compromise for getting heavy subsidies themselves.

It doesn't matter how it is in reality, what matters is how Spanish voters perceive it come election times. Elections are always won on vibes and feels rather than facts and arguments.

>Are you the opinion police?

For asking a question?

>The problem with compromise is that everyone becomes equally unhappy. And when everyone is unhappy strange results come at elections.

And the alternative is exactly what?

Compromise is not a negative or a positive otherwise healthy relationships wouldn't be defined by those who find compromises.

>EU member states are so different, that you can't have regulations that benefits an economy like Denmark and also simultaneously one like Romania. Which is how places like Romania now have German energy and grocery prices but Romanian wages and pensions. Not exactly a great compromise for a lot of Romanians

What specific regulation is causing tremendous benefit to Denmark but is causing harm to Romania?

And if Romania pays a lot for energy spot price then that is on Romania, similar to Germany, on top of this grocery prices are not regulated by the EU.

>It doesn't matter how it is in reality, what matters is how Spanish voters perceive it come election times. Elections are always won on vibes and feels rather than facts and arguments.

Then the fault is at those who do understand facts for not approaching vibes with better vibes, I can agree with you that neo politics has been the biggest catastrophe for Europe.

But the only reason why people follow vibes is because of the lack of social, political and cultural issues being part of what it means to be political and instead politics is portrayed as at best as a numbers game and at worst technocratic (just look at chat control, sounds wonderful when your experts are the police and lobbyists but sounds awful if politicians were invested in social perspectives).

>>Why have strong opinions if you're really just a doomer?

>>Are you the opinion police?

>For asking a question?

Calling someone a doomer then pretending you were just asking a question is bad faith argumentation so I'll have to end the conversation with you.

>What specific regulation is causing tremendous benefit to Denmark but is causing harm to Romania?

That was only a though exercise for an example. But to answer your question with something concrete it would be auto industry regulations for example. If China would destroy Eu's auto industry, Denmark wouldn't care since they don't have one, they'll reap the benefits of cheap Chinese import but it would wreck auto making countries like Slovakia or Romania.

>And if Romania pays a lot for energy spot price then that is on Romania, similar to Germany, on top of this grocery prices are not regulated by the EU.

No, that's on the EU, since the EU forced everyone to tie electricity to gas energy prices in the name of environmentalism which disproportionately affects poorer countries.

> On top of this grocery prices are not regulated by the EU

Doesn't matter that the EU doesn't regulate the food prices, but it's the outcome of the EU free market it led to for poorer nations like Romania and obviously Romanians aren't happy.

A lot of EU market regulations have negativity affected the poorer people of the poorer member States. And they still have a right to vote.

What do you mean by "Europe"? Yes, Lithuania has a problem, but the UK, France and Germany do not.

> What is your preferred model?

There are lots of alternatives to turning the EU unto a federal state with its own armies. Alliances for one. It has been NATO that filled this role for over 70 years, and successfully so against a far more powerful threat than Russia.

> All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?

Lots of "insignificant little countries" seem to do rather well. Switzerland, Singapore, Norway,.....

I can see the nationalist appeal of belonging to a big powerful country, but it does not really do the people of a country much good.

The threat isn't just military and it's not just coming from Russia.

Think about economic extortion from the US and China, how would little Lithuania defend against that?

Two of those three little countries have to follow EU law without having any say in it - my point exactly!

> Two of those three little countries have to follow EU law without having any say in it - my point exactly!

The same is true for any treaty. The same is true for internal negotiations within the EU.

> Think about economic extortion from the US and China, how would little Lithuania defend against that?

Could the EU do much better than the larger countries can do by themselves? Especially in the long term its much lower growth rate means its going to be a relatively smaller and smaller economy compared to the US or China.

Despite all the expansion, the EU at the time the UK left was a much smaller proportion of the global economy than the EU at the time the UK joined.

The EU is both the world's largest importer as well as its largest exporter. Its economic leverage is unmatched.

The EU is actually 3rd for both imports and exports. Still massive but... 3rd. In 2024 (in trillion USD):

Exports: China 3.8, US 3.2, EU 2.80

Imports: US 4.0, China 3.2, EU 2.6

You can't just add export/import number for each EU countries to find the EU number because EU countries trade a lot among themselves.

Its economy is a lot smaller than that of the US, and smaller than China in PPP terms, and is growing much slower than either.

Do you have import and export number that adjusts for transhipments? What is the economic impact of the trade?

Even the UK which was an EU member until recently, has a free trade deal with the EU, and is right next to the EU geographically trades more with the rest of the world - and that is including a lot of transhipment trade (look up "Rotterdam Effect"). You can find the same for lots of EU countries.

> What's the point of posting these articles if commenters are only allowed to agree, or disagree, depending on what is the expected correct reaction?

As we say in the EU: to avoid fake news. You either agree with us, or we cancel you. /s