[HN Gopher] German government will push for a European federation
___________________________________________________________________
German government will push for a European federation
Author : doener
Score : 22 points
Date : 2021-11-25 19:14 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.euractiv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.euractiv.com)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Helmut Kohl, the ex-Chancellor, understood very well that German
| might is better used sparingly and almost gently. Germany
| _pushing_ anything is likely to revive many historical
| resentments.
|
| Aside from the resentments, what really bothers me is the
| construction of the eurozone. At present, it is a club whose
| largest members - aside from Germany itself - are deeply in debt,
| with no prospect for debt reduction. There is already talk about
| relaxing the Maastricht stability criteria, because not even
| Belgium is capable to keep its public debt under control.
|
| Does it mean that the future of the EU is an
| "Umverteilungsunion", redistributive union which takes from the
| relatively few members with balanced sheets and gives to the
| other ones? (That ISN'T what the Germans agreed to when the euro
| was created.) Or is the debt can going to be kicked down the road
| by keeping the basic interest rates at 0 forever, so that the
| indebted countries do not go bankrupt trying servicing their
| debt, and hoping that this won't lead to runaway inflation?
| tasogare wrote:
| There is no way to do this in democratic way, French citizens
| _already_ voted against it in 2005.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_European_Constit...
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| No way its happening, so many countries have gained their
| independence recently in EU and are already fed up with the
| current format of union itself.
| nixass wrote:
| Those "recently independent" countries are fecked without EU,
| so they better jump on the train or be consumed by eastern
| threats
| inglor_cz wrote:
| As far as physical security goes, the eastern members rely
| on NATO, which in practice means the USA. All the
| threatened countries (Baltics, Poland, Romania) rely on
| American deterrence as a last resort.
|
| Within the EU, the German army is in no condition to fight,
| the British is, but UK left the club, and France is
| entangled in Africa.
| nradov wrote:
| To give some sense of how useless the German military is,
| a few years ago they didn't even have guns so they had to
| carry broomsticks and about shout "bang!".
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/germany-cant-explain-use-
| broomstick...
|
| At another point literally _all_ of their submarines were
| broken. They couldn 't send even a single one into
| combat.
|
| https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2017/10/20/all-of-
| germanys...
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| That was a rather flawed EU constitution document, not an
| attempt at federation. One could still have a federation with a
| sane constitution. (not saying one should, but it's entirely
| plausible)
| _Microft wrote:
| Side note: if you are curious where the term "traffic light
| coalition" comes from: the traditional symbolic colors for social
| democrats, liberals and the green party are red, yellow and green
| respectively[0]. It is also a term that is _less unwieldy_ to say
| in German ( "Ampel" = traffic light) than it is in English.
| Referring to combinations of colors is a common way of describing
| coalitions of political parties here.
|
| The names Kenya-coalition (black, red, green = conservatives,
| social democrats and greens) and Jamaica-coalition [1](black,
| yellow, green = conservatives, liberals and green) after the
| colors of the countries' flags are also commonly used. It might
| sound silly at first but it's a way of concisely describing
| combinations of parties without having to come up with new names
| all the time.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light_coalition
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_coalition_(politics)
| anandrew wrote:
| Why?
|
| _Further integration steps are necessary as the "time is calling
| for it" and the "people are waiting for it," Bullmann said._
|
| Oh, I see. Hard to argue against such rock-solid reasoning.
| slater wrote:
| correct link:
|
| https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/german-...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That's why the 'loss' of the UK is important: it has increased
| Germany's dominance over the EU.
|
| France is not well managed enough economically and is also still
| shackled to the post-war policy of not disagreeing with Germany
| on anything.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-25 23:02 UTC)