Comment by akie
8 hours ago
People here REALLY love to complain about the EU.
Do you understand what the EU even is?
Imagine trying to create a single set of laws to apply to all of the countries in North and South America at the same time. Just try to imagine it, because that's about as close an analogy as you're going to get. Now re-evaluate your criticism in that light, and understand that comparing a single state to a collection of 27 states is more or less a non-sequitur.
They weren't asking for a "single set of laws". "Single market" however is a pre-existing concept recognized as "one of the EU's greatest achievements" [1], and lacking regulations in providing said market is what their critique was about.
[1] https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/single-market_en
> "one of the EU's greatest achievements"
And it is! People here are always complaining about the EU as if it's a single state, even though it's very clearly in the process of becoming one. It's a long road, we're not sure if we're going to make it all the way to the finish line (but I suspect we will), and we're going to have some happy little (and big) mistakes along the way. But for now it's imperfect, and it might be imperfect for a very long time to come. It's still a lot better than not having it, and we're actively working on improving it.
> People here are always complaining about the EU as if it's a single state, even though it's very clearly in the process of becoming one.
Rather: if you look at what the EU is doing, it is rather a huge advertisement that the EU should not become one.
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If you dont have a real single market, what is EU? just easier to cross the borders?
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Yes, well, the point here was that we are going backwards.
> People here are always complaining about the EU as if it's a single state, even though it's very clearly in the process of becoming one.
I think that attempts at making the E.U. a state are doomed to fail. There are too many differences between countries, including customs, language, legal systems, etc. The United States of America works because all states largely inherited or adopted the British social contract. You can't replicate this in Europe. The E.U. should have never been more than a free trade agreement. The currency union was a big, fat mistake that amplified the Great Recession in many of the poorer E.U. states.
> Imagine trying to create a single set of laws to apply to all of the countries in North and South America at the same time.
I actually think it would be quite a bit easier than it is to create the EU. There's a lot more broad cultural homogeneity between the countries in the Americas than there is within Europe. Even on the topic of language you've got the vast majority of all peoples speaking some combination of Spanish, English, and Portuguese. And Latin America has a bit more limited geopolitical concerns than Europe does which makes managing some tensions easier than it might otherwise be.
But I'm not sure why you are considering "it's hard to create the EU" to be a defense against complaints or criticism related to the EU itself. Maybe it's hard and it won't work and the criticism is reflecting that and others are pointing out that it's a flawed task to begin with for some number of reasons. For my own part I think it has been a fascinating topic and a remarkable accomplishment of statesmanship to even get the EU to this stage, albeit like anything there are some very valid drawbacks.
> There's a lot more broad cultural homogeneity between the countries in the Americas than there is within Europe
No, not really. Unless you believe the Hollywood view that everything south of the US border has a Sepia filter
Intra-Canada commerce is a PITA in itself
Do you think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the central American countries? (Mexico being North America, yes I know)
Yes, yes really. No I don't believe there's some color filter south of the border - that's your baggage/perception of Mexico/Central America.
> Do you think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the central American countries?
Did you mean How do I think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the Central American countries? If so I'd say it's nuanced and many people in those countries have their own views and their own various problems to solve, just like folks in France have a different view on immigration than, say, Switzerland, or how Germany and France can't agree on a fighter jet project and are looking at different industrial policies, or how Spain has a lot less interest in Ukraine than Latvia does.
Of course South America is incredibly culturally diverse, but I think it's a lot more homogenous than Europe is not just in terms of policy but culturally too. But hey if you disagree, sure make your case if you'd like. I'm just discussing the topic based on my own perceptions. The EU has something like 27 official languages and an Americas block would likely have 3 or so - that itself is the kind of thing that makes integration a lot easier.
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The EU laws apply to every State in the same way and do not have to be rewritten to be transposed, especially for ex-nihilo new taxes like this one.
“It’s hard to do X under conditions C” is a good explanation for why “X is crappy” but it seems like a poor reason to re-evaluate “X is crappy”. For a small business owner, larger markets with lower barriers to entry are better than smaller markets with fragmented standards.
An explanation for why some markets are smaller and fragmented is interesting academically but it doesn’t change that it’s not worth participating in.
America does it with 50 states
I know that this is a popular point-of-view in the US, but your states and legislative processes are all very homogeneous in comparison. You guys mostly speak the same language, you have the same cultural touch points, you have a shared history, shared media, and mostly centralized power.
Your country looks more like Germany (and if you know your history, that's no coincidence) than it looks like the EU.
I think, at this point, most people in Europe broadly have the same language as their second language.
> Overall proficiency: According to data from the European Union, over 43% of the total EU population speaks English as a second language, making it the most widely spoken non-native tongue across all 24 non-Anglophone countries in the bloc.
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That analogy would hold only if inter-state commerce was the responsibility of the states rather than the federal government.
> America does it with 50 states
And Germany has 16 federal states.
In theory, true. In practice, state independence has been dead for the better part of a century.
The 10th amendment has been eviscerated by the courts. By a strict reading of its relatively simple language, most of what the federal government does is unconstitutional.
Today, USA is unabbreviated as the “United States of America”, but the country was founded as the “United States for Anerica”.
As such, I am strongly in favor of returning to our former glory by stripping the federal government of most of its power and transferring it to the states.
I am also wise enough to know that will never happen without a long and bloody revolution, and I am okay with that given the lived reality that has defined my life.
We live in tyranny. You may not feel the rolling boil of the water that surrounds you, my fellow Americans, but make no mistake: your goose is cooked.
> state independence has been dead for the better part of a century.
Can you please put a date on when you think this happened and what were the turning event(s)?
Because you could mean a lot of different points over decades. And what and when you think was the turning point is pretty significant.
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> country was founded as the “United States for Anerica”.
Do you have actual sources for that?
(Funny thing, I googled the phrase in quotes, did not realize the misspelling, and was a bit frustrated that the only result was this comment on HN...)
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Given what the states use their current power to do, I'm pretty fine with it so long as the party I'm like is in control of the federal government. If the last ten or so years of politics have taught us anything it's good to be on top with the tyrants, I guess.
Add in the function of the senate and the ongoing public perception of it, and as/if the senate is neutered by populist parties (MAGA/DSA) as they intend to also do with the courts, the argument that the states are sovereign (and they are by definition and constitutional agreement) becomes more and more practically useless, unfortunately (in some ways).
I'm not anti-federal government or anything but clearly we can see that there are issues in how the federal government has become so powerful and yet we're beholden to these two big-tent political parties leaving folks across the various states unhappy with decrees from Washington. Don't like Donald Trump's power over you? Maybe the federal government shouldn't have that power then?
And EU does it with VAT-OSS scheme which was also separate in each country before. There's just no will to do this with EPR because there's too much money and lobbying power in the recycling cartel.
The funny thing is that when the EU introduced these new VAT rules then it screwed over small and microbusinesses as well. It took them years to implement a minimum threshold for VAT (which every reasonable country has, but somehow EU rules did not).
I mean that's what the PPWR directive is already? It's a single set of laws that applies to all member states. They just didn't write any interop so every country has its own system and registration.
If it was just single registration for EU and paying for each kg of plastic or electronics to member states (like you do with VAT already via VAT-OSS) then it wouldn't be such a big deal.
Even if you didn't have any agreement with recycling companies in each member state and you had to pay the highest per-kg fees it would still be manageable for small sellers.
Meanwhile if you want to sell a single circuit board you're looking at several thousand euro in registration fees and several months for processing just to sell legally to 4-5 countries in EU.
This is comical the liberal in their perpetual confused state: "they are doing their very best!", "you couldn't do it better yourself!". The EU primary function is to serve capital interests to protect neoliberalism across the EU at all cost. It's the perpetual shock doctrine, thatcher politics for all, there is no alternative, dead-end, end-of-history, its what you would get when you put the IMF in charge of a continent. Literally everything is falling apart, the fascists scapegoat irrelevant migrants for the mouth breathing median-voter/peasant while the liberals are haplessly groveling at their imperial masters and censure Spain for being an unruly vassal.
You would not have the Euro if the IMF was in charge nor the many failures to have a single capital market. The EU, and politics that created it is much more complex than you think.
Oh please the ECB, EU Commission and the IMF are staffed by the same kinds of people with identical ideology, they are practically the same institution that work together all the time to shiv periphery nations. They never encountered a problem they didn't want to solve with more austerity.
Yeah, obviously we wouldn't try to do that. Our laws, cultures, and priorities are wildly different. By this lens, the main problem seems to be that the eu expanded too much and grew too large to actually have a coherent purpose.
> eu expanded too much and grew too large to actually have a coherent purpose.
Anybody seriously thinking that seems completely oblivious to how central EU is to the economies and every day lives of member states. There is a lot to criticise about EU but without it, the Europeans lives would be much worse and their economies would be nothing to speak of. It is very sad that populists managed to popularize the image of the bloated unnecessary monster. Even otherwise intellectually capable folks.
How is "single purpose plastic wrapping" a cultural priority? Or how is an agency to collect the fees something that needs recreating?
They manage to do it for 50 states in the US just fine. It isn’t exactly rocket science. It’s just that individual countries in Europe all feel like unique little snowflakes.
I mean you're just looking at this from the wrong lens.
nobody in an EU member state thinks of themselves as a "state" in the EU, they're a country but in the EU
nobody would want the US kind of federalism. not to mention there isn't a single majority language aside from English for those that know it well enough
That’s the most uninformed view I’ve read about this in a VERY long time.
The US / Trump doesn’t even manage to renegotiate a trade agreement with Canada, although you speak the same language and your cultural proximity is about 95% - so maybe it’s time to get off your high horse buddy