Do you have a positive, negative, or indifference feeling about the European Union in general? And why is that?
Wow. You're really going at this! My opinion of the EU? Generally positive. It's about a decade from being anything "real", but I'm betting that by 2025 it'll be a constitutionally bound federation, with a federal government, a joint (or close to joint) military. Should be interesting to see Rome rise again in Europe. ~String
Seems like a pretty good idea so far, although the variance between actual Continental politics and the visions of EU-crats seems to be a bit wide at the moment. Time will tell. I also am of the opinion that many EU proponents are too sanguine about it, and too dismissive of the prosaic, national politics that still dominate the Continent. Also lacking is a coherent vision of how the EU, NATO and the various national governments are going to approach security.
I think the European nations are probably better off economically being part of the EU and having the Euro than they would have been if they had kept things the way they were prior to the Maastricht Treaty. There are advantages in a unified currency and unified less burdensome commercial rules. The EEC and the European Parliament did exist prior to the Maastricht Treaty. This European Union is starting to seem more and more like a government and I think that is good. I think wars between European nations may be a thing of the past.
Hrrmm, not so sure about the Rome part, Italian politics is quite intriguing, Silvio Berlusconi has a lot of controversial issues, etc. How does the EU approach in security? Also, what do you think about the EU getting bigger and bigger? Turkey, Croatia, and the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia (FYROM) have been officially accepted as candidate for EU memberships. Albania, Montenegro, Iceland and I guess Kosovo is waiting in line.
This is true! I keep all of my money in Euro. All my Asian friends that I know who are also studying in Europe keeping their saving in their Asian home countries in Euro, too. The exchange rate of many Asian currencies are decreasing against Euro (though quite slow but steady).
I was referring--tongue-in-cheekly--to the Roman Empire. Same place, different time. Though, on an interesting note, it was the Treaty of Rome that brought the EU into existence. Some end-times Christians claim that this is the fulfillment of some biblical prophesy that the Antichrist would come from a reborn Roman Empire. AFAIK, there isn't one beyond mutual protection. There are some hints that some small joint forces would be created to test the waters of a unified European Army/Navy/Airforce. Interesting, the EU will have to decide upon an operating language if that ever came about. The EU already adopted an official-ish language of business and documentation (English), much to the chagrin of the French. It was sort-of their last ditch effort to save their language from an inexorable death sometime in the next century. It appears that only the Francophone officials wanted French. Everybody else saw the writing on the wall and went with English. The current global language of business and science is English. The legal, and official, languages of maritime and aviation activity is already English. The momentum won't change soon. Even the rise of China and India moves the momentum of English along at a faster pace. India, having been an English colony and the Chinese being obsessed with becoming the next superpower, all teach English at a frantic pace. This cannot be seen for any of the four other "major" languages: Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish and French. Why not. Pretty much everybody in Europe, except for Russia will be welcome. I doubt that Russia will ever petition to join or that they'd ever be accepted. Belorussia and Ukraine may, one day, petition to join, but not for a while. I'm of the opinion that Turkey will be accepted. It'll probably stop at that. ~String
I think the disparities in wealth between members of the EU may already be to large. My understanding is that people of EU member states are free to move to and work in other EU nations labor markets without restrictions. I know Germany already has a lot of Turks and Kurds living there but would Europe really be ready for mass immigration from Turkey? The EU needs to create economic policies that benefit the EU states but it is hard to make one set of policies that could benefit both rich and significantly poorer nations. I think that the EU would actually be stronger if Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland and the Baltic States were not in the EU. Also perhaps Spain and Portugal should not be in the EU. The United Kingdom has also been problematic in my opinion because they often don't go along with the program. Perhaps South America should form an South American Union and a South American currency based on the EU model but there too there would be some difficulties of there as well of wealthier and poorer nations needing different economic policies. A Southeast Asian Union might also be a good Idea.
At present, it doesn't. Which is the point: a major political feature of Europe - security - is currently left to be arranged by NATO and the various national governments. Turkey will never join, and I doubt many Balkan states will any time soon either. It's possible that the rest of Scandanavia will eventually join up, and maybe even Switzerland, but I think we've seen most of the enlargement that is likely to occur in our lifetimes.
Spain is quite industrialized. It's the world's 8th largest industrial nation. Portugal as well is quite modern. Both nations are totally pro-EU. Why would you say that they shouldn't be in the Union? It's happening. Mercosur Somebody has thought of that too: http://www.southasianunion.net/ ~String
I think the Euro is overvalued. I don't think it is as overvalued as the dollar but I do think the EURO is overvalued. The reason I think this is because you can higher workers with comparable skill levels as European workers for much less money in developing nations. Perhaps the Euro must go up in order for the dollar to fall because certain types of financial managers insist on keeping their money in a major currency and the Japanese government will do whatever they have to to keep the Yen from rising much. Nobody trusts developing nations currencies and I guess to many developing nations governments have used money creation as a a source of government revenues in the past but developing nations are where the real growth should be in the near future; not in Europe. If the Euro is not pushed irrationally higher because people view it as the only alternative to the dollar then wealth invested in Indonesia or the developing world in general should outperform wealth invested in Europe. But perhaps you can't invest in fixed income deposits in nations where you can't trust the Central banks policies. There is probably some fund you can buy shares of that invests in a diversified selection of low risk companies through out the developing world. This perfect fund as an alternative to the Euro won't be easy to find because when Americans or Europeans invest in the developing world they generally are not looking for low risk companies.
Spain is a mess financially. Check it out in the back pages of the Economist. To much of the Spanish economy was based on construction and a Real Estate bubble. Spain started out less developed when Spain entered the EU compared to Some other nations. Compared to Romania Spain is certainly fully developed. Barcelona certainly looked modern when I was there in the 1980s but I guess some other parts of Spain must have been a little underdeveloped if my memory of articles that I have read is correct. Spain is doing better than I thought on the GDP per capita stat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita Maybe I was wrong; but that is why I said maybe for Spain and Portugal because I was not sure where they fit economically. Maybe I was wrong about Greece as well.
The word "Nirakar" comes from India and reflects both what I think my strength and my weakness is and that is that I am "formless"; but I am not from India. I lived in India for a year and have visited India repeatedly but I am not even of Indian ethnicity. I was not thinking about how I would confuse the few people who knew enough to be confused when I chose "Nirakar" for my name here at sciforums. I was born in Boston and am of German, English and Swedish ethnicity. But you are right because India is very good and you are also wrong because India is also bad. India or at least part of Pune Maharashtra is the country I know second best unless I assume I know Canada because isn't Canada like part of the USA? I can't even speak Marathi or Hindi other than a few words so I really barely know India.
Needs to be closer. France and others are too independent at times. but otherwise a good start. Smaller countries need to form regional blocks to overcome the influence of the US.
