The European Parliament: now with balls!

[Pekka]

laurentius, yes, it's fun when you don't consider us being unequal. Funny indeed.

All you people think small countries are totally equal to the few big ones, and even MORE powerful at some points.

Everything else is semantics until this ones is resolved. You can throw all kinds of BS papers in front of me, but until the arrogance stops, and the muscling around, it's the sign of unequality and there is NO way around it. Only super TRUE EURONITES would think it is, because they want to have that EU rod in their butt so hard they can only spell 'Thank you Sir, Can I have another one?!'

Internationalists . I'm not sure are they living in bigger clowds than communists did.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by alva

Sir Ralph, false analogy is not a bad reply. Stack of BS kind of is, but when you're going circles around the issue, then I can't be arsed to debate the same thing over and over again, when my claim is really very simple.

I think what Sir Ralph is trying to say, starts with an 'F' and ends with a 'Z' with only letter in the middle. I gonna leave it u to you to guess which one.

I was going to make the helicopter test, but then a sudden burst of work-mania interrupted my sweet Apolyton time.

No offense intended, Pekka, but replies like "this is a pile of BS" or "you are wrong because you are arrogant" remind me indeed of these "other posters".

[Pekka]

What ever.

But until my main concern is removed, I have no reason to play along. Chewbacca defense is not working. Confront this issue. Stop lying to yourselves. This is it, this should be #1 concern of EU. It's quite funny, I'm standing here for equality, and these other folks don't care much about it.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by laurentius
The laws vary from country to country, but the common laws apply to everyone and I dont think there have been any cases where they havent.

I believe Pekka has repeatedly brought up the growth and stability pact which France and Germany broke with impunity while the smaller states were forced to continue to follow. The pact was agreed to by all countries and adopted by all countries so it was common European law amoung Euro using countries and yet it seems that some states can ignore this law without paying the perscribed penalty while others cannot.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Pekka
All you people think small countries are totally equal to the few big ones, and even MORE powerful at some points.

I can't think of anybody in this threads who believes it.

[Pekka]

Spiffor, well then I am mistaken of your tone of the posts. So, you admit the unequality?

So this is what we are supposed to fight, and unless you don't want to fight unequality before going into deeper layers of EU, then the priorities are just wrong.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Combat Ingrid
Just for fun, I checked up the US government website to see how power is distributed among their states. I used California and Wyoming for the comparison as they have the largest and the smallest state populations, respectively.

It turns out that both states (as all other of their states) have two senators in the senate.
In the house of representatives, on the other hand, Wyoming has only one very lonely representative while California has 53! Now that's really horrible imperialistic and arrogant oppression of the small states!

UGH!!!

Earth to CI, come in CI.

You are missing the point my friend no one has said that small states and large states must have the exact number of influence though I do believe they should have the same influence per capita wise so Spiffor has a point. I have been talking about how the growth and stability pact was agreed to by every Euro using state including fines of up to 1% of GDP for any country which broke the 3% debt limit barrier. Every single state in the EuroZone agreed to this and in the first year both Greece and Portugal were threatened with the 1% of GDP fine for breaching the debt limit, but, facing such a massive fine both countries made big cuts to their government to barely scrape by. Two years later though Germany and France both flagrantly broke the debt limit and then walked away without paying the 1% of GDP fine. This is a text book example of member states not being equal before the law.

You see we are not talking about voting representatives nor anything like that instead we are taking about legally binding treaties and how the smaller European states are always bound by these treaties but Germany and France seem to ignore what ever they like and get away with it. I see this as a major cause of alarm for any country which uses the Euro since it means that none of the agreed upon treaties which form the bases of the Euro can effectively be enforced. If the EU can't enforce it's treaties amoung member states in relatively good times like now then what happens when things are really bad?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Pekka
Spiffor, well then I am mistaken of your tone of the posts. So, you admit the unequality?

So this is what we are supposed to fight, and unless you don't want to fight unequality before going into deeper layers of EU, then the priorities are just wrong.

Spiffor is saying that on a per capita basis small country votes are worth more then big country votes while in an absolute sense the big countries get more of a say then little countries. The solution to this is a bicamrial legislature where the upper house has the same number of Senators from each state and the lower house is based upon population. It addresses the concerns of both big and small states.

One is meant to be equal and one is meant to be proportional.

[Combat Ingrid]

Oerdin, noone denied that they broke the stability pact. What I'm debating is this:

Originally posted by Pekka
"I thought he wanted Finland to have as much weight in the decision-making process as France."

The other thing and this too as well. It's time for you to accept us as 100% equal member in all aspects of the game.

To me that sounds like Pekka wants all states to have equal representation, regardless of population size.

[Pekka]

Yes, and considering the power few big ones use own their own agendas, like I said, even if I had 1000 votes it would matter very little. Our agendas are not on the table usually. Sometimes, we don't even get the memo on meeting about say.. the constitution. So we are treated like this, we are unequal in the face of the big ones. So, either we can solve this, or we can't go on about the federation. If the blocs stay, it will only affect us negatively. And they will stay, unless the unequality is solved NOW before going in.

Of course, the true euronite believes believe in happiness and joy, that there won't be any blocs. Just like there's no hunger in NK.

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Spiffor is saying that on a per capita basis small country votes are worth more then big country votes while in an absolute sense the big countries get more of a say then little countries. The solution to this is a bicamrial legislature where the upper house has the same number of Senators from each state and the lower house is based upon population. It addresses the concerns of both big and small states.

One is meant to be equal and one is meant to be proportional.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Pekka
Spiffor, well then I am mistaken of your tone of the posts. So, you admit the unequality?

I admit consider it obvious that Member-States are unequal between each other. they are unequal before the law, which is outrageous - the common law must apply to everybody equally.
They have unequal political say, as big countries have more MEPs than smaller ones, and they have more votes at the Council. This political unequality strikes me as something completely normal though, because it's normal that 80 million Germans have more sayt than 400,000 Maltese.

There is another political unequality, which is between citizens of the EU. Each individual citizen has not the same political weight depending if he comes from Malta or from Germany. Each individual Maltese has much more say than each individual German. (It takes 80,000 Maltese to elect one MEP. It takes 800,000 Germans to elect one MEP which will have exactly as much power)

You'll notice the subtle difference between an individual citizen and a Nation-State. A citizen and a Nation-State are not the same thing.

So this is what we are supposed to fight, and unless you don't want to fight unequality before going into deeper layers of EU, then the priorities are just wrong.

The real problem here is the legal unequality between States. That some States can break the law while others cannot.

And to solve this problem, the solution is not to whine, saying "it's bad", and basically continue the system that creates these abuses in the first place. As long as Europe will be a haggling board featuring powerful and powerless nations, the powerful will bully/vassalize the powerless - such is the nature of international relationships.

No, the answer is to strip Member-States for the power of abusing collective laws. And the most efficient, elegant, and simple way to do it, is to give that power to a Parliament -whose primary cleavages are ideological ones, rather than nation, self-centered ones.

[Pekka]

"The real problem here is the legal unequality between States. That some States can break the law while others cannot."

YES!.. (and numerous other things, but this being the worst).

"This political unequality strikes me as something completely normal though, because it's normal that 80 million Germans have more sayt than 400,000 Maltese."

Normal, yes, but IMO also unacceptable.

"Each individual Maltese has much more say than each individual German."

In THEORY. But while Maltese agendas are not prioritized at all, their votes aren't so good anymore.

" As long as Europe will be a haggling board featuring powerful and powerless nations, the powerful will bully/vassalize the powerless"

Yes, and when we are moving to bigger and better things, I rather we make the arrangements being equal, not going into it with bad starting point.

"No, the answer is to strip Member-States for the power of abusing collective laws. And the most efficient, elegant, and simple way to do it, is to give that power to a Parliament -whose primary cleavages are ideological ones, rather than nation, self-centered ones."

Forming ever more powerful blocs, and lobbying system and corruption. In real life this happens, in theory when everyone is good folks, it doesn't. But real life.. that will happen. And the ones making the move are the ones who are powerful NOW. This is why we need to solve this before going to any strippings of anything.

If we are going to be the outskirts, then the risk is that the corruption and money run blocs and lobbying system will enable the center of EU get ALL the good while the outskirts gets what's left. Now you say, that this is OK because most people live in the center. I say that is racist, disgusting and appaling and I give no support to such thing.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Not quite. It takes some powers that were previously held by the Finn, the French etc. governments.

Last time I checked, neither the Finns nor the French were ruled by monarchs

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Last time I checked, neither the Finns nor the French were ruled by monarchs

Indeed. But our governments act as if they had the endorsment of 100% of the population.

I'm sorry, but I oppose my government on pretty much everything. Most French citizens now oppose the French government. Yet our president / prime minister / minister /civil servant who does the haggling (depending of the importance of the issue) acts as if 60 million people were his clones. Chirac speaks for me and millions of others when he supports an unacceptable policy by my (and millions of others') standards.

Besides, haggling is a fundamentally antidemocratic way to govern. In order to reach an objective, one has to make plenty of sacrifices to the Partner countries, no matter the ideologies. For example, in France, we tend to love our public services ; yet we accepted to privatize them (the decision was taken by Chirac the Conservative and Jospin the Socialist) because we sacrificed this bargaining chip.

Did we accept privatization in order to put Trichet at the head of the ECB? Did we accept privatization in order to put Giscard at the helm of the Constitutional Convention? Did we accept privatization in order to keep the CAP? I don't know.
What I know, however, is that our elected Prime Minister took a decision that goes completely at the opposite of what he stands for, and of what he was elected for. That's because of the "bargaining chip" mentality that is inherent to the form of government we have in the EU