The EU. Where did it all go wrongE

[Mindful]

Ivan Krastev’s After Europe reveals the anti-democratic rot at the heart of the EU.

Had I been cryogenically frozen in January 2005 I would have gone to my provisional rest as a happy European…Madrid, Warsaw, Athens, Lisbon, and Dublin felt as if they were bathed in sunlight from windows newly opened in ancient dark places…cryogenically reanimated in January 2017, I would have immediately died from shock. For now there is crisis and disintegration wherever I look…’
(Timothy Garton Ash, New York Review of Books, January 2017)

In 2002, political scientist Ian Manners argued that the European Union (EU) was a ‘normative power’, a facilitator helping other states to govern through the rule of law and democracy with ‘a commitment to placing universal norms and principles at the centre of its relations with its member states and the world’ (1). The discussion of normative power came at a time when the EU was riding high. It was seemingly attractive, and expanding, with the internal transformation of several states, including former Warsaw Pact and ex-Yugoslav states, meaning that they now met EU membership criteria (the so-called ‘big bang’ expansion in 2004). It was also burnished with a seeming moral lustre thanks to the EU’s support of the NATO bombing of Serbia in support of Kosovo’s independence in 1999, an episode widely seen as a model of ‘humanitarian intervention’. Robert Cooper, a British diplomat, confidently asserted that the EU was a ‘postmodern’ power in which questions of nationality and sovereignty were mere historical memories in a system designed to allow interference right down to member states’ ‘beer and sausages’. Little wonder author Mark Leonard confidently asserted in 2005 that the EU would run the 21st century.


The EU: where did it all go wrong?

 

[Mindful]

^^^
And so to 2018. If you now wrote and submitted a manuscript entitled ‘Why the EU will run the 21st Century’, it would likely head straight into a publisher’s shredder. The list of the EU’s travails is now a very long one: The financial crash; Greece under what Varoufakis has called ‘debt serfdom’ until 2060; the EU’s soft coup against Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi; debt crises in Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus; the Syrian refugee crisis; Brexit; Le Pen’s near shot at the French Presidency; crushing levels of youth employment in Italy, Spain and many new member states; Poland and Hungary under special measures from the EU…

So where did it all go wrong? Ivan Krastev’s short but excellent new book, After Europe, takes a hard look at the current state of the EU and considers what has happened to this liberal cosmopolitan project that seemed so unstoppable just over a decade ago. Krastev paints a picture of two EUs; the liberal, cosmopolitan, post-national EU of the political elites; and the distant, estranging, controlling EU experienced by European peoples. And these two EUs have been brought crashing into each other, argues Krastev, by the migration crisis.

Krastev explains that the European Union, founded with the 1992 Maastricht treaty, is rooted in what Francis Fukuyama called the ‘end of history’. Fukuyma argued not that events and conflicts would stop, but that, after the failure of Communism, there would be no more political and ideological contestation. So it was as a post-ideological, post-political institution that the EU emerged.

Krastev argues that the migration crisis has pulled national electorates back into the political picture, as the borderless, cosmopolitan ideal of the EU is forced to confront the reality and impact of migration. ^^^

 

[fncceo]

"The EU. Where did it all go wrong"

It's not hard to figure out. The concept that a sovereign people turn over control of their country to un-elected, foreign bureaucrats who administer their laws and economies has never been a recipe for success.

Once the bureaucrats have finished looting the country they will leave behind an ungovernable mess.

 

[Mindful]

"The EU. Where did it all go wrong"

It's not hard to figure out. The concept that a sovereign people turn over control of their country to un-elected, foreign bureaucrats who administer their laws and economies has never been a recipe for success.

Once the bureaucrats have finished looting the country they will leave behind an ungovernable mess.

There's also the debt fiefdom of Greece to Germany.

 

[LuckyDuck]

^^^
And so to 2018. If you now wrote and submitted a manuscript entitled ‘Why the EU will run the 21st Century’, it would likely head straight into a publisher’s shredder. The list of the EU’s travails is now a very long one: The financial crash; Greece under what Varoufakis has called ‘debt serfdom’ until 2060; the EU’s soft coup against Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi; debt crises in Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus; the Syrian refugee crisis; Brexit; Le Pen’s near shot at the French Presidency; crushing levels of youth employment in Italy, Spain and many new member states; Poland and Hungary under special measures from the EU…

So where did it all go wrong? Ivan Krastev’s short but excellent new book, After Europe, takes a hard look at the current state of the EU and considers what has happened to this liberal cosmopolitan project that seemed so unstoppable just over a decade ago. Krastev paints a picture of two EUs; the liberal, cosmopolitan, post-national EU of the political elites; and the distant, estranging, controlling EU experienced by European peoples. And these two EUs have been brought crashing into each other, argues Krastev, by the migration crisis.

Krastev explains that the European Union, founded with the 1992 Maastricht treaty, is rooted in what Francis Fukuyama called the ‘end of history’. Fukuyma argued not that events and conflicts would stop, but that, after the failure of Communism, there would be no more political and ideological contestation. So it was as a post-ideological, post-political institution that the EU emerged.

Krastev argues that the migration crisis has pulled national electorates back into the political picture, as the borderless, cosmopolitan ideal of the EU is forced to confront the reality and impact of migration. ^^^

Where did it all go wrong?? Two words....."George Soros."

 

[Mindful]

Surrender to Brussels Agreed: Britain Obeys all EU Laws, no Control of Fisheries, Open Borders to 2020

Surrender to Brussels Agreed: Britain Obeys all EU Laws, no Control of Fisheries, Open Borders to 2020
The United Kingdom will agree to follow all European Union rules after Brexit and keep the nation's borders open for the duration of the…

BREITBART.COM|BY OLIVER JJ LANE

 

[montelatici]

The EU is far more democratic than its member states. The European Parliament is democratically elected by EU citizens. The Commission President is democratically by the Parliament. The Commissioners are appointed by the democratically elected governments of the member states. The Council council consists of the democratically elected leaders of the member states. And, to top it off, the Parliament can dissolve the Commission (the civil service) at any time by a simple majority vote. There is no unelected house of lords in the EU, for example, or an unelected head of state like a king or queen.