SPD sellout complete: Merkel becomes chancellor

[lord of the mark]

BTW, the pledge was instituted precisely to reinforce the sense of loyalty to the general interest, and to discourage just the kinds of particular interests you want to discourage. It was adopted at a time of mass immigration, due to the fear that different immigrant groups would put loyalty to their original country above that the new country. I think the pledge has helped, of course some of our Canadian friends (who have also absorbed many immigrants) disagree.

In any case I would suggest that while we've certainly never had a civil war over ethnicty here, its certainly been a troublesome issue at times. I would note that the UK HAS had some fairly nasty unpleasantness among its components - mainly in Ireland. Scotland of course has been quiet since 1745 (but THAT was pretty nasty). That Scotland WAS quiet was largely due to its lead role in the Empire (and the fact that it was Protestant AND english speaking) when the empire declined, it began to push for devolution, and is in fact a big supporter of EU membership, IIUC.

IN France of course, you dealt with the largest linguistic minorities in the middle ages, and the Bretons and Corsicans have been too small to be more than minor troubles.

This doesnt mean the EU project is doomed. It DOES mean that prematurely integrating too much could be dangerous, and that the attempt to preserve large elements of national sovereignty in Europe isnt necessarily hostility to Europe.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
This doesnt mean the EU project is doomed. It DOES mean that prematurely integrating too much could be dangerous, and that the attempt to preserve large elements of national sovereignty in Europe isnt necessarily hostility to Europe.

Prematurely integrating too much is indeed bound to failure. There was an attempt at creating the "United States of Europe" between the two World Wars, with French and German diplomacy leading the attempt. It was that failure that shaped the idea behind the EU as it is now:
To create as many actual day-to-day contacts between people, before a more actively political integration. Trade was seen as instrumental in this, but it was definitely not the only instrument they were thinking about. And trade was also not their end in itself.

While I'd love to see a fast-forward integration of Europe, I know it cannot happen. And I know it wouldn't be wise. My stance in this thread is not "we need to go faster!".
It is a contention about the long term vision for Europe. The British vision for Europe is not one of eventual political integration. In the British vision for Europe, nation-States still are overwhelmingly dominant actors determining the fate of the EU of their dreams. No paradigm is supposed to shift.

Such is not the case in every country. Even the new members show a much higher ability to "think big". They show that they can be willing to build something different, to take part in the undertaking.

And it makes a whole lot of difference.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Prematurely integrating too much is indeed bound to failure. There was an attempt at creating the "United States of Europe" between the two World Wars, with French and German diplomacy leading the attempt. It was that failure that shaped the idea behind the EU as it is now:
To create as many actual day-to-day contacts between people, before a more actively political integration. Trade was seen as instrumental in this, but it was definitely not the only instrument they were thinking about. And trade was also not their end in itself.

While I'd love to see a fast-forward integration of Europe, I know it cannot happen. And I know it wouldn't be wise. My stance in this thread is not "we need to go faster!".
It is a contention about the long term vision for Europe. The British vision for Europe is not one of eventual political integration. In the British vision for Europe, nation-States still are overwhelmingly dominant actors determining the fate of the EU of their dreams. No paradigm is supposed to shift.

Such is not the case in every country. Even the new members show a much higher ability to "think big". They show that they can be willing to build something different, to take part in the undertaking.

And it makes a whole lot of difference.

Cite for the 1920s effort. I thought US of E was a term coined by Monnet, AFTER the war.

And by premature, I didnt mean to imply that full integration SOMEDAY was inevitable. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that some might believe that that full political integration for Europe is never a good idea.

There have been few examples of successful multiingual democracies. Belgium and Switzerland are particular exceptions, with some very specific historical circumstances that made them possible. (And Belgium is very pro-European in part, at least, due to the fragility of its own state) We in North America have been able to watch the agony of Canada - thank god its at least peaceful (for the most part) though of course that had its own historical circumstances that rendered it more problematic. Now you guys may all learn each others languages successfully. Or you may manage to create a democratic polity in which you dont share a common political dialog. Or you may just fail to be democratic, no matter how good the system you have on paper. I dont know.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Spiffor


Such is not the case in every country. Even the new members show a much higher ability to "think big". They show that they can be willing to build something different, to take part in the undertaking.

And it makes a whole lot of difference.

the new members may be less skeptical of integration than the Brits, but I doubt they are enthusiastic enough to want to push the brits out, though. They are enthusiastic in part BECAUSE the presence of Britain balances the dominance of France and Germany, IIUC.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Cite for the 1920s effort. I thought US of E was a term coined by Monnet, AFTER the war.

From Wikipedia:

talian writer and politician Giuseppe Mazzini called for the creation of a federation of European republics in 1843. This set the stage for perhaps, the best known early proposal for peaceful unification, through cooperation and equality of membership, made by the pacifist Victor Hugo in 1847. Hugo spoke in favour of the idea at a peace congress organised by Mazzini, but was laughed out of the hall. However, he returned to his idea again in 1851.

Following the catastrophe of the First World War, some thinkers and visionaries again began to float the idea of a politically unified Europe. In 1923, the Austrian Count Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Pan-Europa movement and hosted the First Paneuropean Congress, held in Vienna in 1926.

In 1929, Aristide Briand, French prime minister, gave a speech in the presence of the League of Nations Assembly in which he proposed the idea of a federation of European nations based on solidarity and in the pursuit of economic prosperity and political and social co-operation. Many eminent economists, among them John Maynard Keynes, supported this view. At the League's request Briand presented a Memorandum on the organisation of a system of European Federal Union in 1930.

In 1931 the French politician Edouard Herriot published the book The United States of Europe.

As for who coined the article, another article in Wiki indiciates that Victor Hugo coined it, though ti really isn't a difficult term to figure out

And by premature, I didnt mean to imply that full integration SOMEDAY was inevitable. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that some might believe that that full political integration for Europe is never a good idea.

It may sound reasonable from their perspective. From my perspective, it is terrible, as it is a considerable dumbing-down of the European dream. It is actually a lack of European dream. The EU needs a dream if it is to succeed in the long run. If not, the EU will be just a dumb diplomatic agreement that will dissolve at some point with the ebb and flow of internaitonal politics.

There have been few examples of successful multiingual democracies.

You forgot India, which is fairly significant IMO. And I would add that Spain's grave language problems have resulted in Spain becoming a federation with several official languages.
Besides, there have been few countries that were multilingual when the wave of democratization hit them. Most multilingual kingdom have crumbled as soon as the king was overthrown, simply because there had never been any positive attempt to cement the populations with each other - the only unifying factor was the king (hardly something the populations consider legitimate).

Give me examples of countries where democracy failed because of multilingualism. The Candian democracy doesn't look like it's failing (it has even overcome very harsh difficulties). Nor does the Belgian, the Swiss, or the Indian one. But maybe I've missed something: is there any country that stopped being democratic because it was multilingual? Is there any countyr that was democratic to begin with, which splitted because of multilingualism?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
the new members may be less skeptical of integration than the Brits, but I doubt they are enthusiastic enough to want to push the brits out, though. They are enthusiastic in part BECAUSE the presence of Britain balances the dominance of France and Germany, IIUC.

There is quite some truth to what you say. France (much more than Germany) drastically pushes for its national interest in the EU. France often wants to steer the whole EU to follow its own interests. And indeed, without a balancing power (the UK), the new members would probably get shafted more often in day-to-day politics.

However, when it comes to the vision for Europe, the one that requires to like the idea of Europe, I don't think the matters of France vs UK are of importance among the New Members. As soon as the societ empire crumbled, these countries wanted to join the EU. It was not only about money, it was also because they wanted to show the world and to show themselves that they have nothing to do with the Russians, that they aren't "Easterners" but genuinely European just like the countries they wanted to join. This is why these countries insist so much at beaing called "Central Europe" rather than "Eastern Europe" btw.

Contrast it with the English who refused to join the EU at first, and the causes for joining have never been a willingness to be European (it was mostly because their own attempt at making a free trade area was a failure, and because they feared to be out of a too powerful Europe).

Compare the behaviour of the New Members last June, when they accepted to have their subsidies cut for the sake of solving the British-French row, to Thatcher's "I want my money back".

Yes, I think there's quite a difference in the fundamental worldview wrt what Europe should be.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


the new members may be less skeptical of integration than the Brits, but I doubt they are enthusiastic enough to want to push the brits out, though. They are enthusiastic in part BECAUSE the presence of Britain balances the dominance of France and Germany, IIUC.

Quite right - an EU without Britain doesn't make much sense.

A two speed model doesn't work either because it simply will result in two EU's. If some countries makes a "fast track" with tight integration etc, there will be serious problems when others tries to join - either you have to rebuild the fast track union or the new participants has to surrender totally.

At the moment there are not much sense in making top level merging when there are so many new countries that are more in need for low level merge - and to that all the potential new members.

It is way more important to get rid of problems such as Spiff's example with polish/french obstructions. An obvious solution to this is to get the new eastern europe members up on same level as the west. This is actually happening, but it takes time - before that process is nearing it's end, there are not much sense in building thighter political bondings.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Spiffor

You forgot India, which is fairly significant IMO. And I would add that Spain's grave language problems have resulted in Spain becoming a federation with several official languages.
Besides, there have been few countries that were multilingual when the wave of democratization hit them. Most multilingual kingdom have crumbled as soon as the king was overthrown, simply because there had never been any positive attempt to cement the populations with each other - the only unifying factor was the king (hardly something the populations consider legitimate).

Give me examples of countries where democracy failed because of multilingualism. The Candian democracy doesn't look like it's failing (it has even overcome very harsh difficulties). Nor does the Belgian, the Swiss, or the Indian one. But maybe I've missed something: is there any country that stopped being democratic because it was multilingual? Is there any countyr that was democratic to begin with, which splitted because of multilingualism?

All the countries you here mention (India, Spain and Canada) has used wery big sticks to prevent a splitup.

You are quite rigth that there are no democratic countries that has split up because of multilingualism but that's because the central government in all those countries it can happen in, fight it with all their might.

[kronic]

Meanwhile we know that the SPD will get all of the important ministries (finance, labour, health). The CDU has abandoned most of her "reform" agenda, too. Have you actually ever seen a party giving up more of her ideas than the CDU this time even before the coalition talks start? Everything we know so far is that the ideas of the SPD seem to become the basis for the government's program. That is the price for Merkel's chancellery.
I don't think it was a good idea of the SPD to grab all these ministries as they produce a lot of unpopular measures. The SPD basically very much reduced their chances in the next election. On the other hand, the CDU will have it extremly hard to push her agenda. It can't be in her interest to let the SPD lead these ministries.

The Grand coalition will probably make more reforms in the spirit of Hartz IV. They will fail as much as Hartz IV did.

I wouldn't mind the elemination of the protection against unlawful dismissal if we were making our welfare system more like the Scandinavian ones. But we aren't. In fact, both, labour laws and welfare system become more like the ones in the UK or the US. It's rather annoying that the SPD switched to the CDU positions. The SPD has accepted the superiority of the Anglosaxon system over both, the continental and the Scandinavian approach to welfare states. The new left party isn't really pushing for more Scandinavian elements either. They bascially just want to leave everything as it is.

Schröder has contributed a lot to that development (he actually was the driving force). Those outside of Germany who favour economic liberalism should actually applaud and not criticize him. Because he did what they want.

Concerning Europe, I don't see Germany making an alliance with the UK. The Germans don't want that. And the strong role of the Social Democrats in the government will make sure that the British ideas won't be supported by the government. That said, Merkel and the CDU don't support the British plans regarding the CAP anyway since the farmers are the clientele of the CDU and not of the SPD. In fact, Schröder could have accepted CAP reductions easier than the CDU.
The most likely outcome is that Germany will play a very passive role in the next years. And that's certainly not good for the EU.

[germanos]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


the new members may be less skeptical of integration than the Brits, but I doubt they are enthusiastic enough to want to push the brits out, though. They are enthusiastic in part BECAUSE the presence of Britain balances the dominance of France and Germany, IIUC.

I very much doubt that's the case.

Historically, they have little ties with Britain (being in either a German influence or under a German thread) and France would have been equally far away.

I think for most of the new members (in fact former Warsaw-pact) the escape from the Russian Bear is the predominant force that drives them in the EU, more then anything else.

And the only reason they are getting in is excactly the 'historical obligation' that the (cold-war) West has to the (cold-war) East. (with the sole exception that Germany has in fact histotical ties to them that no other EU member has (excluding Austria that wasn't a member of the EU during the cold-war))

[BlackCat]

@germanos : Your description of the new government seems to say that they will keep on the old track downwards ? Is that true ?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by kronic
The most likely outcome is that Germany will play a very passive role in the next years. And that's certainly not good for the EU.

Indeed

Are the next elections planned for 2009?

[kronic]

Yes. But it's rather doubtful that the coalition doesn't break up earlier.

[Spiffor]

How does it work, for anticipated elections? TheParliament votes to dissolve itself, and the President agrees?

[kronic]

No, the parliament can't vote to dissolve itself. The chancellor has to propose a vote of confidence. If it is lost, the president can dissolve the parliament. That's what Schröder did this year.