EU to break up over constitution?

[Nizark]

Just in to the drudgereport

EUROPEAN UNION COULD 'SPLIT' OVER CONSTITUTION
Thu Sep 23 2004 21:52:02 ET

THE EUROPEAN Union could be destroyed by divisions over plans for a new constitution, the world's most influential business journal declared today.

In a warning to Europe's leaders, The Economist said it was 'probable' the EU would split into rival camps if one or more countries votes against the constitution.

But it argued that such a collapse would actually be a good thing with Britain and other countries able to choose how much - or how little - they wanted to be involved.

'These referendums could throw the EU into the sort of crisis that puts the integration process into reverse or even causes the EU to split,' warned the magazine.

'The EU may indeed split. But a split need not be a dis-aster. It could lead to a multi-layered EU in which different countries adopt different levels of political integration and experiment with different economic models.'

However, the magazine added that there was also the potential for a 'darker' out-come. 'A split could cause Europe once again to divide into rival power blocks. 'That could threaten what most agree is the Union's central achievement - peace in Europe.'

The Economist's analysis is spelt out in a special 14-page report today on the state of Europe under the headline 'a divided Union'.

It argues the European Union have been gravely damaged by three core problems - economically it is falling far behind the U.S. and Asia, politically it is deeply divided on issues like Iraq, the new EU constitution and the euro and its legitimacy has been shattered by a crippling 'lack of popular understanding and enthusiasm'.

These problems have left the EU highly vulnerable at a time when it has just taken in 10 new members, including eight relatively impoverished countries from Eastern Europe, fuelling fears about immigration and cheap labour.

And The Economist identifies the controversial new constitution as the straw that could break the camel's back.

A total of 11 countries - including Britain - have now pledged to give the people a vote on the constitution.

The magazine also argues that change is necessary to stop Europe slipping further behind its rivals.

'Europe's share of the world economy is shrinking as the United States constantly outstrips European growth and the Asian economies surge ahead,' it warned.

END
_____________


I guess the hundreds of thousands of US troops in Europe didn't create the 'peace in europe'...it was the EU that held the line against Soviet aggression!

The Euro was a great idea too. And BTW Europe, hows your military interoperability going?

[moughoun]

I guess the hundreds of thousands of US troops in Europe didn't create the 'peace in europe'...it was the EU that held the line against Soviet aggression!

The Euro was a great idea too. And BTW Europe, hows your military interoperability going?

Yes the US had nothing to do with it, they were just sight seeing, yes we showed Ivan a thing or 2 with our bent banana law's, Euro is the greatest idea in all of human history and the first rubber boat division will come on line next week 10 year's, we are just so freaking evil it hurt's woot muhahahahahahaha muhahahahahahahaha

[Kriz]

It's about peace between EU states ****head (like France and Germany for example), not about peace with the USSR. Jeez you really are dumber then you look :bash:

[Siddar]

Not one of the coments you three have made has anything to do with what was posted. :slap: :slap: :slap:

[moughoun]

Not one of the coments you three have made has anything to do with what was posted. :slap: :slap: :slap:

Yes mainly because the article is full of **** ;) so, so are we

[platform389]

THE EUROPEAN Union could be destroyed by divisions over plans for a new constitution, the world's most influential business journal declared today.

"legs of iron, and feet of clay..."

Indeed. :(

[Seiyuuki]

They'll get over it and then drink some champagne.

[Siddar]

Not one of the coments you three have made has anything to do with what was posted. :slap: :slap: :slap:

Yes mainly because the article is full of **** ;) so, so are we

Care to add reasons why you think article if full of ****?

[Knutsen]

Can someone please explain why when someone posts an article about the EU it only mentions the UK on one side and France and Germany?
Everytime i read an article i get the impression that the EU is only to f*** the UK with France and Germany leading that and poor brits resist european evilness....


the new EU constitution and the euro and its legitimacy has been shattered by a crippling 'lack of popular understanding and enthusiasm'.


In Spain and all the countries with euro i've been to in the last 2 years (and i've been to 9 more countries with Euro) i've not heard anyone remembering their old currencies.


The magazine also argues that change is necessary to stop Europe slipping further behind its rivals.


Slipping further?? WTF? is this a gold medal race?


politically it is deeply divided on issues like Iraq
Europe's main problem isn't Irak. Believe or not there are EUROPEAN matters in which the US is not involved. Man , the US are not the center of the world, there can be discussions without the US in the middle.


hows your military interoperability going?
Ask the UK, they are the biggest obstacle.
(the fact that we have no common army yet doesn't make us worse than anyone. In fact our quality of life is unarguably the best in the world)


economically it is falling far behind the U.S. and Asia,
Yep, that's why the US invaded Iraq and wants to change Chavez in Venezuela, because the OPEC wanted to use Euros for their transactions. There's a great article by an american cathedratic about this.

[Kitsune]

It's interesting how some asshole can quote an article and distort it totally to the negative side. Wishful thinking, perhaps?

The constitution will pose a problem. And it is possible that the EU might divide into a rim and a inner core. We will see. Economically, the EUs part of the World economy will shrink...but so will the one of the US, since the reason is the ascend of Asia.

Anyway, here is the article "A divided Europe" from the Economist:


SURVEY: EUROPEAN UNION

A divided Union

Sep 23rd 2004


The European Union has achieved much, but it may now be pushing up against its limits, says Gideon Rachman

FOR many centuries Europe was the world's most powerful, prosperous and technologically advanced continent. That period of European cultural and political dominance came to a definitive end with the second world war. In 1945 Germany was defeated and in ruins; France was half-starved and humiliated; Britain was bankrupt and on the point of losing its empire; Spain was a backward, isolated dictatorship; and the countries of central and eastern Europe had been absorbed into a Soviet empire. Nobody would have guessed that Europe was at the beginning of a new golden age.

In 2004, a continent that had been wracked by war for centuries can look back on almost 60 years spent largely at peace. A continent that lay in economic ruins in 1945 is now prosperous as never before. A continent that in 1942 could list only four proper democracies is almost entirely democratic. A continent that was divided by the iron curtain until 1989 now enjoys free movement of people and common political institutions for 25 countries, stretching from the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the borders of Russia.



The EU is built on a series of treaties. It recently welcomed 15 new members and is considering further enlargement. A new constitution was written last year. Some of its members share a single currency, the euro, which is controlled by the European Central Bank.





This new period of peace and prosperity has coincided with the rise of a new form of political and economic organisation. The founding fathers of what is now the European Union—Jean Monnet, a French civil servant, and Robert Schuman, a French foreign minister of the 1950s—were convinced that the origins of conflict in Europe lay in the continent's system of competing nation-states. As Schuman put it, “Because Europe was not united, we have had war.” Those founding fathers were determined to build a new union in Europe that would banish conflict for good. Their building-blocks were economic, but their goals were political.

Starting with agreements between six countries on the pooling of coal and steel resources in 1951 and moving on to the creation of a common market in 1957, the EU has gradually spread into a plethora of activities. Today it is hard to think of a field of public policy in which it is not active. It is involved in everything from foreign policy to immigration, and is reckoned to be responsible for around half of all new laws passed in its member states.

The people who run the European Commission in Brussels like to believe that this golden age of peace and prosperity is directly linked to the rise of the EU. Yet this view is often contested. Peace in Europe, it is argued, could equally be credited to the presence of American troops on European soil, and prosperity to the same causes of economic growth as in the United States or Asia, such as rising productivity and increasing trade. As for freedom, the revolutions in central Europe and Spain, Portugal and Greece were not led from Brussels.

Indeed, say critics of the EU, far from promoting peace, prosperity and freedom, it now threatens all of these achievements. In Britain, for example, Eurosceptics see a direct threat to British self-government and democracy in the many laws emanating from institutions in Brussels over which the British electorate has no control. In Britain and elsewhere, critics also argue that the EU is increasingly responsible for a tide of unnecessary regulation that is engulfing the European economy. And some believe that its overweening ambition may end up causing exactly the sort of conflicts that it has been seeking to eradicate. Martin Feldstein, an eminent American economist, has argued that the launch of a single European currency could cause political tensions culminating in war.

But for now the EU is riding high, with more and more countries seeking to join it. Having started with just six members in 1957—Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands—the EU now has 25. Its biggest ever expansion was completed in May this year with the addition of ten new members, mainly from the former Soviet block. The Poles, the Spanish and others undoubtedly won their freedom without any help from Brussels. But they all saw joining the EU as a way of consolidating democratic gains and spurring economic and political modernisation. For much the same reasons Turkey and the Balkan countries are now waiting in the wings.

Enlargement should be enough of a challenge to keep the Brussels machine humming for the foreseeable future. But oddly enough, many of the most ardent believers in the creation of a European federation see enlargement as an unwelcome distraction from the EU's most urgent business: to develop into a real political union. Enlargement and political union—“widening” and “deepening” the EU—have often been portrayed as opposing courses, but in fact in the past five years they have moved ahead simultaneously. On January 1st 2002, 12 EU countries ditched their national currencies and adopt a new single currency, the euro; and in June 2004, the 25 EU governments agreed on the Union's first ever written constitution.



Over the past decade Europe has displayed a daring political imagination


Over the past decade Europe, a continent often accused of sclerotic caution, has displayed a daring political imagination that has produced a run of successes. Javier Solana, the EU's foreign-policy chief, explains: “Our philosophy is jump in the pool, there is always water there.”

The trouble with that kind of philosophy is that it can eventually lead to a nasty accident, and indeed the European project looks increasingly troubled. Economically, the EU is falling further behind the United States, and can only envy the dynamism of China or India. Politically, its members have been at each other's throats over Iraq, the management of the euro and the constitution. Perhaps most dangerously of all, the EU is plagued by a lack of popular understanding and enthusiasm.



The penalties of success
The survey will argue that many of the EU's current difficulties stem from its past successes. In post-war Europe, achieving peace and re-establishing prosperity seemed like urgent and difficult tasks that required political sacrifices. Now, though, long years of peace and prosperity in western Europe, together with the collapse of the Soviet threat, make further European integration seem much less urgent. Indeed, the very depth of the political integration achieved so far has caused something of a backlash as the EU has gained new powers that threaten deeply rooted national traditions. Sometimes this has been in important fields such as frontier controls and fiscal policy, but sometimes, too, it has been in areas that irritate by their triviality.

The post-war gains in European prosperity may also have begun to create their own problems. Rich countries such as Germany and France were encouraged to develop elaborate welfare states which are becoming increasingly unaffordable as populations age. Before the creation of a single EU market and a single currency, such problems could be regarded as mainly national in character. But now they can cause tensions across the Union.

Enlargement is another example of a success that makes the EU a riskier place. By increasing the diversity of political interests and views within the Union, it has made them much harder to contain within a single framework.

European federalists—the heirs to Monnet and Schuman—are well aware of these problems. Some believe that a new impetus for European unity can be provided by trying to build up the EU into a new superpower—a global force that can equal the United States. But so far any moves in that direction have served only to deepen divisions within the EU, in particular over attitudes to America.

The EU's new constitution represents another effort to preserve and deepen European unity, but it too could backfire. For the constitution to come into force, it must be approved by all 25 EU countries. At least 11 of them are likely to hold referendums, and in a few of those, notably Britain, the verdict is likely to be negative. Such an outcome could well provoke a crisis within the Union.

This survey will conclude that the EU may indeed split. But a split need not be a disaster. It could lead to a multi-layered EU in which different countries adopt different levels of political integration and experiment with different economic models. If the EU were preserved as an over-arching framework, it could actually benefit from such diversity. But there is also a darker, if less likely possibility. A split in the EU could cause Europe once again to divide into rival power blocks. That could threaten what most agree is the Union's central achievement: peace in Europe.

[Danzer]

In Spain and all the countries with euro i've been to in the last 2 years (and i've been to 9 more countries with Euro) i've not heard anyone remembering their old currencies.

Actuallly here in holland a lot of people want their old currency back.

[achilles]

Not one of the coments you three have made has anything to do with what was posted. :slap: :slap: :slap:

Yes mainly because the article is full of **** ;) so, so are we

Care to add reasons why you think article if full of ****?

the article is full of **** because it claims that the constitution can be a reason for break up and because the EU supposedly is here in order to establish european peace. Someone should inform the author that this is why the European Commity started 50 years ago in the first place...well, things have changed a great deal since then and the EU is practically a pure economic union. As such...constitutional disputes are not very likely to cause any break-up (that was moronic journalistic exageration), as long as BUSINESS go well cause this is what the EU is all about. I havent seen any political integration taking place so far and to be honest i dont care if it does not occur...

Perhaps junk articles like this one lead to way-out-of-line statements like nizark's in his first post...(that goes to your post and dont take it personally)

[achilles]

by the way, whats the source of the article? :roll:

[Knutsen]

Thanx for the info Danzer, The netherlands and Finland are the two countries i haven't been to.

I guess it will take time, in spain at first it was the same but now mainly old 'abuelas' (grannies) complain about the euro. I think in a couple of years nobody will remember their old currencies.
For example here in Spain it was a hard change, whereas in Germany 1 euro = 2 marks approx, in spain 1euro= 166 pesetas. So imagine the conversion during the first months. And the prices rose a lot. The most typical conversion was to raise 100 pesets (60 cents) to 1 euro, thats 60% more

[Sharp]

EUROPEAN UNION COULD 'SPLIT' OVER CONSTITUTION
Thu Sep 23 2004 21:52:02 ET

THE EUROPEAN Union could be destroyed by divisions over plans for a new constitution, the world's most influential business journal declared today.

In a warning to Europe's leaders, The Economist said it was 'probable' the EU would split into rival camps if one or more countries votes against the constitution.

But it argued that such a collapse would actually be a good thing with Britain and other countries able to choose how much - or how little - they wanted to be involved.

'These referendums could throw the EU into the sort of crisis that puts the integration process into reverse or even causes the EU to split,' warned the magazine.

'The EU may indeed split. But a split need not be a dis-aster. It could lead to a multi-layered EU in which different countries adopt different levels of political integration and experiment with different economic models.'

However, the magazine added that there was also the potential for a 'darker' out-come. 'A split could cause Europe once again to divide into rival power blocks. 'That could threaten what most agree is the Union's central achievement - peace in Europe.'

The Economist's analysis is spelt out in a special 14-page report today on the state of Europe under the headline 'a divided Union'.

It argues the European Union have been gravely damaged by three core problems - economically it is falling far behind the U.S. and Asia, politically it is deeply divided on issues like Iraq, the new EU constitution and the euro and its legitimacy has been shattered by a crippling 'lack of popular understanding and enthusiasm'.

These problems have left the EU highly vulnerable at a time when it has just taken in 10 new members, including eight relatively impoverished countries from Eastern Europe, fuelling fears about immigration and cheap labour.

And The Economist identifies the controversial new constitution as the straw that could break the camel's back.

A total of 11 countries - including Britain - have now pledged to give the people a vote on the constitution.

The magazine also argues that change is necessary to stop Europe slipping further behind its rivals.

'Europe's share of the world economy is shrinking as the United States constantly outstrips European growth and the Asian economies surge ahead,' it warned.


The main division reside in the comprehension of the Europe by other peoples.
This "economist (?) or journalist should accept to see the real reality and not to accept the one that they would like to see.

[gbos]

by the way, whats the source of the article? :roll:

Don’t tell me you actually read it. I stopped at the title. rofl

[Midav]

Same with the Germans. From my understanding, many Germans want the D-Mark back.

...

[perdurabo]

i heard a story one guy had trip around europe at the end in germany near Polish border all his paper wuros where out he had only coins (revers of euro is diffrent depends in witch country they where made) he go to bar for coffe and waitres started to looking at coins and rejected few of them with words "sorry but this isn't german euro" :lol: :lol: :lol:
EU will not split or break up its too good deal for all there are misunderstandings some points that we are diffrent and we argue but its normal.
Hell look at location of moust europeans!!

[Shadow]

I like the Euro.

[Knutsen]

Me too, it's easier to say 10000 euros than 1663860 pesetas.
And it's really useful when you have to visit several coutries in few days.

The story about the guy is not that surprising, some guys i met asked me if they had euros in Portugal!!!! Damn, Portugal is just kilometres away...

[Knutsen]

Hell look at location of moust europeans!!
I think it would be interesting to make a poll about the location of europeans in this forum.

Me: Spain

[foxtrot023]

the article had no idea on economics. Once united by a common currency, it is very hard to go back. Hence, the Euro will accomplish what every Euro politico or conqueror has dreamed of since the romans: A united Europe.

[Siddar]

This thread is a perfect example of tendency of euro posters on this board to try and deligitmize any news source that posts info on europe they disagree with.

The funny thing here is that they really have no idea on who economist magazine is and why they posted that article.


For those that dont know the Economist is a very old UK publication and is very very very pro EU. The reason for them publishing the worse case scenario isnt to undermine EU its to suport it. There goal is to say European voters need to ratify the new consitution are EU will disapear so you better vote yes.

Just because this tactic for getting EU consitution aproved hasnt been fed to you yet by your goverments and trust me it will be doesnt make the story and source wrong.

I sugest you all go back and read the posts on the economist actual story and consider it on its merits and not your one sided im always right mentality.

[Nizark]

Oh, and just for the record, I got the article from drugereport.com.

[Phil642]

Europe! YES!

[Knutsen]

I sugest you all go back and read the posts on the economist actual story and consider it on its merits and not your one sided im always right mentality.

I've never read an european saying we are always right. The fact is that when someone wants to give an argument against europe or europeans sooner or later fall into the old "you europeans think you're right..... blah blah blah".

My experience here is that many europeans (contrary to many american counterparts) give sources and well built information to answer whereas many americans (i'm not generalising, just my experience in this forum) tend to answer with a "that's BS, you're stupid.....".


This thread is a perfect example of tendency of euro posters on this board to try and deligitmize any news source that posts info on europe they disagree with.


Again , there's the counter-example in which for many americans the sources are either biased against or have no credibility ( I remember a post about an article that was BS cause it was published by *******)

[Knutsen]

Of course there are americans who post great things (although sometimes i might disagree) and europeans telling BS (in my case i've insulted more than once), but my personal experience is usually what i've just written.

[foxtrot023]

This thread is a perfect example of tendency of euro posters on this board to try and deligitmize any news source that posts info on europe they disagree with.

The funny thing here is that they really have no idea on who economist magazine is and why they posted that article.


For those that dont know the Economist is a very old UK publication and is very very very pro EU. The reason for them publishing the worse case scenario isnt to undermine EU its to suport it. There goal is to say European voters need to ratify the new consitution are EU will disapear so you better vote yes.

Just because this tactic for getting EU consitution aproved hasnt been fed to you yet by your goverments and trust me it will be doesnt make the story and source wrong.

I sugest you all go back and read the posts on the economist actual story and consider it on its merits and not your one sided im always right mentality.

I have an economy degree, and I stand by what I said before: The Euro will unite Europe like nothing else would, and anyone who backs out from the Euro right now is looking for a world of ¨economic pain¨

[moughoun]

I think my European neighbour's have given an answear why the article is **** ;)

[CannibalSquirel]

The story about the guy is not that surprising, some guys i met asked me if they had euros in Portugal!!!! Damn, Portugal is just kilometres away...

Jez...
Those filthy bastards... lol

[Jehuty]

I read the Economist nearly every week and usually they are very pragmatic, i don't know why they are suddendly so pessimist.

Btw i like the Euro. p-)

[Cambridge Rabbit]

"legs of iron, and feet of clay..."

Indeed. :(

Nebuchadnazzer's statue, eh?