European Politics

Re: European Union

The Presidential Secretariat of Ukraine has set 2017 as the target year for Ukraine's entry into EU. Ukraine is, however, only a member of the European Neighbourhood Policy and the issue of eventual EU membership still remains unclear as the EU's enlargement agenda is already full and some Western European member states are resisting any further expansion.

This has not much to do with the Euro (yet) but still interesting to know that this country wants to take these steps.
 
Re: European Union

There are certain businesses in Washington DC that are accepting and actually encouraging people to pay in Euros right now because the dollar sucks. Just my 2 cents.....  ;)
 
Re: European Union

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Re: European Union

Powergirl81 said:
...FYROM?
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Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia.

And allow me to recommend you to never get engaged in a discussion about the name. ;)
 
Re: European Union

Powergirl81 said:
So Albie and Ardius, if I'm understanding you, are you guys saying that England will change its currency from the pound to the Euro in the near future? Or is it more to the effect that you accept it like any other form of currency? I guess that's a big deal over there because America is 48 continuous states and the dollar is the dollar. When we went to Toronto last summer we went through the currency exchange, but the dollar was almost dead even with the Canadian dollar. So if you would travel to Sctoland and Wales, do you need to change currencies every time? Or do they accept the pound like England would accept whatever the Scottish currency is and the Welsh currency is...? Forgive me, I don't know what they are. I'm not exactly on top of this stuff, but it caught my interest.  :) I remember when my hubby and his friends went to Europe in 1998 they had to go through all the hassle of changing currencies. Guilders, francs, pounds...by the end of the trip they were confused because they were drunk and stoned and all the coins looked the same!  :lol: Some even had holes in them. So now that the Euro has taken over every countries' separate currency, so how far does that go? If you go to Russia, you need to exchange to...rubles or rupees is it?

...Enough questions for now  :P
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lol, Scotland and Wales dont have their own currencies, I dont think they have ever had, at least not for a very long time. England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands all use pounds sterling.
Im fairly sure it was Spanish peseta's that had holes in them.

Oh, and the UK is very unlikely to go Euro any time soon because of the stupid government we have at the moment. Like me and Albie said, there's a problem of "identity loss" that people are worried about and they will not like to see the pound disappear any time soon.

Yeah, I remember the days when it was constant currency exchanges from country to country in europe, such a pain. A lot easier now though, fortunately I never used to go to more than one country back then, so it wasn't that bad.
 
Re: European Union

Forostar said:
The Presidential Secretariat of Ukraine has set 2017 as the target year for Ukraine's entry into EU. Ukraine is, however, only a member of the European Neighbourhood Policy and the issue of eventual EU membership still remains unclear as the EU's enlargement agenda is already full and some Western European member states are resisting any further expansion.

This has not much to do with the Euro (yet) but still interesting to know that this country wants to take these steps.
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Why the concern/objection with including Ukraine in the EU?  Ukraine has moved substantially from Russia's influence over the years, I thought.

And I hope Croatia gets in the EU in late 2009.  I think economically it will be great for the country.  I wonder how they'll handle Slavonia (the eastern portion of Croatia which is the poorest largely due to the war).
 
Re: European Union

Genghis Khan said:
Why the concern/objection with including Ukraine in the EU?  Ukraine has moved substantially from Russia's influence over the years, I thought.
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Good question, to be honest I'm curious as well.

Genghis Khan said:
And I hope Croatia gets in the EU in late 2009.  I think economically it will be great for the country.  I wonder how they'll handle Slavonia (the eastern portion of Croatia which is the poorest largely due to the war).
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That's pretty soon. I hope all the best will come from it.
 
Re: European Union

I personally have no objection towards a Ukrainian membership. The government may still be suffering from democratic teething troubles, but a genuine desire is there. I'm a bit concerned about the treatment of the Russian minority, but my awareness may be influenced by overreaction from the Federation of Russia. The country is still very poor, but I think it has economic growth potential.
So while I think the Ukraine is not yet ready for membership, it's on its way. 2017 sounds like a good date.

I suppose most western EU members would have an objection towards this because of the reasons I mentioned (particularity the poverty), combined with the enormous size of the country. Many of the 'old' western countries are still digesting Polish membership, and if another heavyweight of that proportion -with much more potential economic influence- joins, Central/Eastern Europe will have much more say and challenge the western countries' leading roles even more. It's really just a power game, sad but true.

I also support Croatian membership. I'm not fully educated on the country, but it seems to me that it has recovered well from the war, has a working democratic government and is developing economic wealth.
 
Re: European Union

Sweden may put the Euro issue to a referendum one of these years and probably the people will vote to keep the Swedish Krona for some reason. You can, however, pay with Euros in most shops, restaurants and such here and you can get Euros at most ATMs. Personally I find the Swedish reluctance a bit strange; if I join any organisation I have to agree to all its' rules, not just the ones I like and the Euro conversion is a part of the EU. It's my opinion that when we said yes to an EU membership in 1994 (1995? Oh the years run away from me :P ) we agreed to the whole package, not just parts. On the other hand, I think the yes-vote won with 51,5-48,5 % in the referendum meaning it's no absolute majority to membership at all. Also, a few of the parties in our parliament (and some just outside trying to get in) actually have in their party agenda to leave the EU?! Go figure. It's the green party and the party formerly known as the communists :innocent: I believe that we're a bit different from the rest of Europe in that it's our green and communist parties that are actively against membership - in the rest of Europe I seem to remember it's totally different. Am I right, Perun (you seem to know a lot about this)?
 
Re: European Union

Belgium, Netherlands against EU warming to Serbia; want war crimes suspects in court first

BRDO PRI KRANJU, Slovenia: Widening a rift over Serbia, Belgium and the Netherlands said they oppose steps to quickly make the Balkan nation an EU candidate, saying Belgrade must first deliver key suspects to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal.

Ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers Friday and Saturday, the Belgian and Dutch ministers said in a newspaper article that the EU would lose all credibility if it lowered its membership criteria for Serbia.

To join the bloc, EU candidates must be democracies, have functioning market economies and a clean human rights record.

Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime political leader, and his military commander Ratko Mladic, remain at large. They have been indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for genocide and other crimes, including the slaughter of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

NATO officials believe supporters help keep them out of sight. Mladic is believed to be hiding in Serbia, but there has been no word about Karadzic's whereabouts for years.

Serbia insists it is cooperating with the war crimes tribunal, but that it can't locate Karadzic nor Mladic.

That view has found some sympathy at the European Commission.

Ollie Rehn, the EU enlargement affairs commissioner, said Friday that "full cooperation means (Serbia) must do everything in its power ... to arrest and transfer" Karadzic and Mladic to The Hague. But, he said, Serbia has in recent years handed over about 20 war crimes suspects.

Still, the Netherlands and Belgium want to see top suspects of the Balkan wars delivered to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal.

In the Op-ed article in Friday's Belgian daily De Standaard, Foreign Ministers Karel De Gucht of Belgium and Maxime Verhagen of the Netherlands said: "Mladic's arrest and his transfer to The Hague are the best proof Serbia wants to be part of Europe and embrace European values" of democracy and rule of law.

"Serbia belongs in Europe. But unlike other EU nations, we do not want to achieve that goal by weakening the (membership) conditions the EU has put to Serbia," the ministers said.

They added that Serbia "must meet all criteria" before the EU signs a pre-membership Stabilization and Association accord with the Balkan country. That deal collapsed in mid-February when most of the 27 EU nations began recognizing Kosovo's independence. Belgrade says Kosovo remains a Serbian province.

The Netherlands has been most opposed to a pre-EU membership deal for Serbia, a view that stems from a national trauma over the inability of Dutch U.N. peacekeepers to prevent the Srebrenica massacre by Mladic-commanded troops.

De Gucht and Verhagen said "full cooperation with the Yugoslav tribunal" is a crucial condition for the signing of the agreement. "As a potential member of the European family, Serbia must abide by those norms ... Serbia will have to face its recent past and come clean. Ratko Mladic faces charges of crimes against humanity, the worst crimes committed in Europe since World War II."

The Netherlands has already vetoed the pre-membership accord with Serbia, but France and Sweden keep pushing their EU partners to grant Serbia official candidate status.

"We want Serbia to be given official EU candidate country status as soon as possible, and are prepared to help Serbia to move toward accession," Bernard Kouchner and Carl Bildt, the French and Swedish foreign ministers respectively, wrote in a joint article in six European newspapers on March 12.

The Belgian and Dutch foreign ministers rejected that out of hand.

"A quick signing of a Stabilization and Association Agreement must not be the bait to help pro-European Serbia politicians to an electoral victory," they wrote.

"It would show little respect of our own rules (and) there is no guarantee that easing the (membership) conditions will lead to more stability in the Western Balkans and to reforms in Serbia itself. Dropping the requirement of full cooperation with the Yugoslav tribunal will only play into the hands of nationalist forces in Serbia."

They added, "We are not out to alienate Serbia. Our main aim is to prevent the EU from alienating itself. ... The values underpinning our successful cooperation in democracy, freedom and respect for human rights, must not be eroded. That would greatly harm the union's credibility if it bartered away its own conditions. We must not go down that road."
 
Re: European Union

I scaned the EU on wiki a week ago or so (completely unrelated to this thread) and I was surprised to read the UK was a member of the EU. I thought they were not, due to the pound essentially being the strongest currency and that it didn't want to lose that. Now the discussion here is Pound vs. Euro... so what exactly is going on? Is the UK a member? since when and is the only pressing issue currency?
 
Re: European Union

Being a member of the EU doesn't mean you use the Euro as your currency.  The Eurozone is related to the EU, a project therein, but there are countries that don't use it, Britain and Sweden being the two that come immediately to mind.
 
Re: European Union

Yep, and Denmark.

A short version of the EU's history, with help of wiki.

It started with the European Coal and Steel Community.

The political climate after the end of World War II favoured Western European unity, seen by many as an escape from the extreme forms of nationalism which had devastated the continent. One of the first successful proposals for European cooperation came in 1951 with the European Coal and Steel Community. This had the aim of bringing together control of the coal and steel industries of its member states, principally France and West Germany. This was with the aim that war between them would not then be possible, as coal and steel were the principal resources for waging war. The Community's founders declared it "a first step in the federation of Europe"", with the hope that this would enable Europe to pursue the development of Africa. The other founding members were Italy, and the three Benelux countries: Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. So first:

1951:
France
Germany
Italy
Belgium
Luxembourg
Netherlands

Then two additional communities were created in 1957: the European Economic Community (EEC) establishing a customs union, and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for cooperation in developing nuclear energy.

In 1967 the Merger Treaty created a single set of institutions for the three communities, which were collectively referred to as the European Communities, although more commonly just as the European Community (EC).

In 1973 the European Communities enlarged:
Denmark
Ireland
United Kingdom

The 1980s:
Greece
Spain
Portugal

In 1990 after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the former East Germany became part of the Community as part of a newly reunited Germany.

The European Union (EU) is a political and economic community of twenty-seven member states, located primarily in Europe. It was established in 1993 by the Treaty of Maastricht, adding new areas of policy to the existing European Community founded in 1957.

1995:
Austria
Sweden
Finland

In 2002, twelve member states adopted the euro as a single currency (for the current situation, see post Perun).

In 2004, the EU saw its biggest enlargement to date when ten new countries, most of which former parts of the Eastern Bloc, acceded the Union:

Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Hungary
Latvia
Lithuania
Malta
Poland
Slovakia
Slovenia

2007:
Bulgaria
Romania

On a smaller note:
On 15 December 2008, The Caribbean islands of Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius will become part of the Netherlands as special municipalities. The government of the Netherlands is currently investigating the consequences of a change of status within the European Union for these islands. They are currently listed as overseas countries and territories in Annex II of the Treaty of Rome and as such are not considered part of the EU. The islands are opting to become an outermost region of the EU, the same status the Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands and the French overseas departments have. European commissioner Danuta Hübner has said before the European Parliament that she doesn't expect many problems to occur with such a status change, as the islands' population only consists of some 30,000 people. As the islands are currently listed in an Annex of the Treaty of Rome, the treaty needs to be changed before the new status can take effect.
 
Re: European Union

Ignorance and identity torpedoed Irish vote, EU survey finds

Ignorance about the impact of the European Union's Lisbon Treaty on Ireland and fears that it would threaten its national identity were the main reasons for Ireland's rejection of the text in a referendum, according to an EU survey published Friday. Of the 53.4 per cent of voters who said no to Lisbon, 22 per cent said that they did not know enough about the treaty to approve it, 12 per cent said they wanted to protect the Irish identity and 6 per cent each said they wanted to safeguard the country's neutrality and tax system, the Eurobarometer survey found.

Other concerns included mistrust of politicians, the possible loss of an Irish representative within the EU executive, the European Commission, and fears that the EU would ignore the voices of smaller member states.

And crucially, 76 per cent of no voters thought that their rejection would allow Ireland to renegotiate the treaty, as happened after French and Dutch voters rejected the Lisbon treaty's predecessor in 2005.

Experts say that that is in fact extremely unlikely, given that such a move would require all 27 EU member states to agree that the treaty is dead, after 19 of them have already approved it.

Young people were particularly critical of the text, with a poll of 2,000 people interviewed by the EU pollster on the three days after the vote showing that two-thirds of voters under the age of 24 had voted no.

And in a further blow to the embattled government of Prime Minister Brian Cowen, the survey revealed that two-thirds of all voters, and 57 per cent of those who voted yes, thought that the "no campaign" was more convincing than the government's "yes campaign".

The Lisbon treaty was formally signed by EU leaders in December in an effort to make the bloc's decision-making more efficient and to give it a higher international profile.

But the Irish rejection means that the new rules cannot come into force, as it has to be ratified by all 27 member states.

Tellingly, only 5 per cent of yes voters gave their support to the treaty because they thought it would make the bloc more efficient, while just 4 per cent thought it would improve the EU's global standing.
 
Re: European Union

As someone who had the option to vote in Ireland, I might as well give my opinion.

The campaign for the Yes side was a total joke, only began at the start of June, and made no convincing argument for those who didn't have a clue what the treaty was about. The No side were promoting themselves since the start of the year, had picked the treaty apart, and were exploiting everything that could be taken negatively.

The main issue was that public awareness of what the treaty meant and what changes it would make to their lives was very low. I tried to read up on it, the 'reader friendly' version being 22 pages PDF bullshit, which to be honest I can't bear. As much as I tried to find out something concrete about it, I don't have the time or patience for it. As a result, I didn't vote, because I'd rather not vote for something that I know nothing about, than make a decision based on what others tell me. If I did vote, it probably would have been Yes, as from my limited understanding of the treaty, the pros outweigh the cons.

I think that the No vote won was because the scare tactics of the No side. Every lamp post had two signs on it, one for Yes, the other for No. The Yes ones mostly had a picture of a politician on it, smiling falsely and looking like a moron, with their name and 'Yes' beside it, whereas the No ones had rubbish about 'People died for your freedom, don't give it up'. 'Give away your rights' and similar negative phrases. As most idiots trust what they see, they would have voted No, or not bothered voting at all.

Now it puts Ireland in a negative light for the rest of Europe, and makes everything much more difficult for the country and EU as a whole.

Just an interesting little side note, for people that think one vote can't make a difference, in one county here, Carlow, the decision was made by a difference of four votes.
 
Re: European Union

So your vote would have made a difference. ;)


Resolve crisis, EU tells Ireland

European Union leaders tell Dublin it has until the autumn to find a way out of the crisis caused by its "no" referendum vote.

European Union leaders have put the onus back on Ireland to come up with a solution to the constitutional crisis sparked by its weekend rejection of the proposed EU treaty.

A declaration from the EU summit in Brussels this lunchtime is expected to tell Dublin it has until October to come up with new ideas on how to resolve the impasse caused by its referendum "no" vote.

Check video to see more --> click
 
Re: European Union

This whole thing reminds me of the crisis in the now United States in the 1780s when they were trying to figure out a guiding document for the emerging nation.

I think that means we'll have a European Civil War in about 80 years...my money's on Poland to be the first country to secede.
 
Re: European Union

This whole thing reminds me of the crisis in the now United States in the 1780s when they were trying to figure out a guiding document for the emerging nation.
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... with the nice little exception that all the EU member states have their own constitution/fundamental law/whatever you'd like to call such a document already.

I guess that's where the opposition against joining the EU comes from among Norwegians. The fact that we have only been independent since 1905 (first union with Denmark up to 1814 and then with Sweden up to 1905) makes the thought of joining another union, with a common constitution replacing the one we have already, hard to swallow for many. Of course, many also think that we manage well on our own - but that's probably true only as long as our oil production rates stay high.
 
Re: European Union

It's not replacing your whole constiturion. If interested you could wonder which are the differences between the two.

Perhaps it won't be easy to admit, but the reasons for Norway to not join the EU are not that hard to imagine.

"What will happen after we'll join the European Union, can we still select our own food?"
 
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