Comeback kid Sarkozy ?

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

a) ...how much Democracy is reduced in the EU system.
b) ...how much of a handicap the neo-liberal common sense among the EU ruling class is for every national government of red shade.
c) ...how little the EU, even if it worked much better than today, has to offer for the working class and the poor in general.

Point b) and c) are why I will never understand how some left-wingers can be such die-hard EU-defenders. I mean I think the EU is repulsive just for being so completly anti-democratic, but at least when the EU forces legislation down the throat of its member countries it's most usually policies that further my political agenda.

Why people like Antonio, or Belgiansocialist are so much in love with the EU when the union has done more than any other single institution or organisation to prevent and roll back Socialist policies in Europe.   

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Not the European Federalism as we know it, but real European federalism : with a democratic federal government, elected by the European people and which has an effective power over national government. Why is it so hard to understand ? Why do you Euroskeptics systematically take commitment to the europeist ideal as a support to EU as it currently exists ? Why the possibility to reform EU and correct its flaws rather than outright disbanding it is always discarded ? This is what I don't understand.

The whole idea that the ideals behind the EU are sound and good, and it just need to be reformed to reach it's full potential just remind me of those girls who cling to abusive jerk boyfriends who thinks that they still have good hearts and that they're going to change... someday.

If you think you can actually change the union, good for you, but it won't happen. Brussels is an unmoving elephant, it makes D.C. look like a place of innovation and fast reform. It's not even able to abolish the rule that parliament should move between Brussels and Strasbourg twice every year even though everyone agrees it's stupid and just costs an unnecessary amount of money. You think the institution that can't even manage such minor reform will suddenly start to radicly change principles that are engraved in every single piece of EU legislation and precedent I have read? No, even if you believe that a European Federation is a necessity, surly you must see that the current federation is just standing in the way for such an institution to ever come about.

Of course I don't agree with you that a European Super State is necessary at all. We do have a problem with an aging population, yes, a major problem that could very well destroy our economy. But just adding all of our old folks together in one big happy federation won't make them any younger or solve the problem at all.   

And as far as power go I couldn't care less if Europe remains a major world player. I know France and Germany has still not accepted their lost empires and the fact they can no longer go around telling everyone in the world how to run their own business. But the world will be fine even if the two are just small nations among other nations. 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Isolation? Who said anything about isolation? Or do you mean we will become one of those poor backwater countries like Switzerland or Norway? Or like the horrible non-EU country I was born in?

Well I have no memory of pre-union Sweden so I guess it was so increadibly horrible I must have repressed all my memories up til the age of four.

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Again it's the girl with the abusive boyfriend argument. "Sure he treats me like sh**t, but he has a good heart, I know I'll be able to change him." Look if someone's actions are rotten it doesn't matter if they have best intentions. Over the years the EU-has only become more undemocratic as time goes by. We're now at the point where this wonderful peace keeping institution doesn't seem to care if one of it's member states turn into a semi-facist dictatorship as long as they don't infringe on the free market. I do not see how you think that institution will suddenly turn into something great. If a house is rotten to its core you cannot simply renovate it, you need to tear it down and start over.

I'm not even going to adress the other argument because I know you're really above the "Hitler was a vegetarian" arguments and the simplistic thinking that something is inheretly good just because people you don't like oppose it.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Except that institutions are not people and can be reformed, as long as there are enough people who want to reform them. Unless you can prove us how and why EU is inherently bad an unavoidably has to become an authoritarian neoliberal technocracy, you've got no point at all.

If corporations can be people in America why can't institutions be people in Europe?

But to be serious, I'm sure the EU could be reformed if it had the democratic structure to let the people decide. That isn't how it is now. Any radical change to the nature of this organisation would have to happen from the top down, and the top has no intrest in what so ever to dimish it's own powers and make it-self responsible to voters. Truly I have seen no top european politician from either side of the spectrum do anything to try to make the EU more democratic.

As for market liberalism, yes that is an inevidable part of the union. It's part of the founding documents, every single treaty since and 60 years of CJEU court precedent. It is as much a part of the EU as the federalism itself   

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Aren't the EU treaties negotiated by national governments ? If only there were a strong demo-europeist political movement in Europe, they could be able to push forward a reformist agenda and eventually negotiate a new treaty transforming the nature of the EU. Some steps forward already have been made, with the EU parliament being stronger now than it was in the 80s. However, most of them have been ruined by the anti-Europeans, who don't care about democratic reforms because they think the EU IS BAD!1!!!1!

Of course some countries would never support such a federalist agenda. That's why I think UK, for example, should be kicked out, and that the 2004-2007 expansions were major mistakes.

So in other words you do not support the EU at all, you just support a European federal state, but you think that if (and that's a big if) by a chance one day a qualified majority of EU member states would happen to have goverments with the same leftiest EU ideal as you at the same time they could potentionally pass a treaty that would overturn 90% of the things the union has stood for in decades transforming it into something it has never been as long as we kick out the United Kingdom and other possible states that might be opposed... good plan. It all makes much more sense now.