how bad is your reading comprehension? even after i explicitly told you that i'm in favour of brexit, you're still arguing that silly little strawman of yours. oh, and nice dodge concerning the completely moronic 'not negotiating a trade deal with the EU' part. guess you realised how stupid that was...

oh, and yes, please show me a post in which you demonstrated even basic understanding of economic principles and eu politics in the past. i honestly don't remember ever reading one, and your post in this thread clearly suggests otherwise, but maybe they do exist, so please, surprise me...

This post was edited by fender on Feb 1 2020 06:38am

If you think I take back butthurt EU you're wrong. I'm not impressed by your rant. And we will see if the British will negotiate with others or not. If you think they will hand the Eu their heads on a silver platter you are the one being stupid here. Before the union they were doing fine, they will be fine now.
Negotiating with others is exactly what they will do if Eu screws them over.

I don't feel the need to surprise. I mentioned previous posts so you can do the digging if you please.

hahaha, another dodge, just like i thought. not at all surprised to learn there really are no posts that demonstrate even basic understanding of the issue.

also, by trying to save face, you further demonstrated how hilariously flawed your grasp on economic concepts is: they will be, and they already ARE negotiating with other partners, like china, the US, india... just like the EU is and always has, that's one of its major benefits. the really stupid part was you suggesting that they could just ignore the EU (their largest trading partner by far) and only focus on the rest - and you actually doubled down on that. hilarious.

That's exactly like I said moron, ofcourse the Brits are going to negotiate with others. You're really the forum clown eh?

You think I'm going to serve by going through my own posts? Nice clown. You know very well how to do that so go ahead. If you don't you're the dodge

cya forum clown

This argument has been brought up all the time in various threads and forums discussing Brexit, including this one. On top, during last spring's campaign for the EU parliamentary elections, plenty of politicians from pro-EU parties said "the EU has brought peace to our continent", which implies that there would have been war without the EU or its predecessors. So no, my argument is not a straw man, it's the logical implication of the slogan the pro-EU parties campaigned on in the most recent EU election.


Fine, I'll concede that the project always had a political component. Just like trade between different nations always has some political component. You're missing the key point, however: before the Maastricht treaty, and definitely when the UK joined in 1973, the ECSC and later the EEC were predominantly trade unions, the focus was on economic integration, not on political fusion. When the Maastricht treaty modified the priorities of the European project and put the political integration on the forefront (which necessarily comes with a loss of national sovereignty in the long run), the British people were not asked whether they like this change. Also note how close the ratification of the Maastricht treaty by the British parliament was. So when Farage is saying that the EU in its current form is not what the Brits have signed up for in 1973, he's definitely right.



In most member states, it was only the elites/the political leadership that voted in favor of European integration. In the few occasions where the electorate was allowed to vote on this process, they rejected it most of the time: the Danes rejected the first version of the Masstricht treaty, the French approved it by a razor-thin margin, resistance was also very strong in the British parliament. The German chancellor Helmut Kohl quite literally admitted that he "was a little dictator when it came to the replacement of the Deutschmark with the Euro, because he knew that the German people would never approve this step if they were asked in a referendum; so he rammed it through against the will of his people".

The treaty about the establishment of a European constitution from 2004 didnt find the necessary majority in a referendum in Belgium, so the Belgian parliament ratified it instead. Two referendums in France and then the Netherlands rejected the proposed constitution by healthy margins, which brought the process to a halt.

After the attempts at establishing a European constitution had failed between 2004 and 2007, a new attempt was made in 2007 with the treaty of Lisbon. This time, neither France nor Belgium or the Netherlands held a referendum, the treaty was ratified by their parliaments. When Ireland held a constitutionally mandated referendum on the treaty, it was rejected. After an initial shock, the pro-EU forces initiated a second referendum in Ireland, threw a lot of money and effort into it and finally got their approval.



Also note that the treaty of Lisbon has led to a big shift of power away from the European Commission towards the European Parliament, and to the European Council. However, the EU parliament is still not fully democratic, and it's still relatively powerless. For example, it does not possess a proper right of legislative initiative - all it can do is ask the Commission to draft a bill, but they cant initiate bills of their own. On the other hand, the shift of power to the European Council, the body of the heads of state and goverment of the member states, meant a shift of power towards the political elites.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 1 2020 08:01am

One more thing: when I wrote

on the last page, fender accused me of believing in far-right conspiracy theories, of believing that "shady actors are nefariously injecting their aganda into the european project".

To this, I reply with several quotes by Jean-Claude Juncker, who has been a central actor in European politics for the past 30+ years, and who was the President of the European Commission from 2014-2019.



Quote 1, from the time of the Euro crisis: "If push comes to shove, you gotta lie"
(source: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/a-761509.html )

Quote 2, on the way the EU operates: "We decide on something, put the proposals out there. Then, if there are no protests and no riots because most people don't even understand what has been decided, we continue, step by step, until there is no turning back."
(source: https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-15317086.html )

Quote 3, on the French referendum on the EU constitution: "If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'."
(source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1490810/Keep-up-the-pressure-for-a-No-vote-Left-warned.html )

Quote 4, on the Lisbon Treaty: "Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?"
(source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1556400/Dont-tell-British-about-the-EU-treaty.html) )

Quote 5, on transparency of the Eurogroup meetings: "Monetary policy is a serious issue. We should discuss this in secret, in the Eurogroup [...] I'm ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but I want to be serious [...] I am for secret, dark debates."
(source: http://euobserver.com/9/32222 )

Quote 6, at a European forum in 2016: "Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians."
(source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/national-borders-are-the-worst-invention-ever-says-ec-chief-jean-claude-juncker-a7204006.html )




So no, I'm not a right-wing nutjob who believes in baseless conspiracy theories, I am simply a citizen who has paid attention to what the most recent President of the European Commission has been saying over the years and which kind of attitude towards the democratic process he has displayed.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 1 2020 08:52am

that's NOT what you said, here's your hilariously ignorant claim: 'they WILL be negotiating with others IF the EU screws them over'. that's simply stupid and wrong, as i explained in my previous post.

unsurprisingly there isn't a single post of you in any of the EU or brexit related threads that demonstrates even basic understanding of economic or political principles, so you might as well stop lying about it...




acknowledging that economic cooperation resulted in continuing peace in the member states of the EU and its predecessors after 1945 does NOT constitute a positive claim that there would have been war without them. that goes against basic logic, is outright ridiculous, and absolutely a straw man.
you admitted yourself that the prosperity resulting from it, is a great deterrent - so acting like it's giving too much credit, when no one is actually claiming those things you suggested, doesn't make any sense.

as to the rest, you're once again conflating national debate / referendums on certain topics with EU member votes, as well as your personal preference what the EU should be with what it became through those votes. again, your ideals and fantasies are legitimate wishes, but they are largely irrelevant in this context since the EU is clearly much more than "just a trade union", which we now established it never exclusively was.

again, the brits, as one of the larger economies within the union had ample opportunity to shape it according to their supposed ideal, but they were largely content with their role as privileged member, rather than becoming one of its leaders.
i mean, if we're talking personal opinion, i'm sure we'd actually agree on many of your concerns (even though i obviously don't subscribe to your propagandist style exaggerations and conspiratorial innuendos) about the EU's current course, the lack of direct influence by european citizens on major issues, the massive bureaucratic apparatus, and its questionable expansions and monetary policies. but unlike you, i don't want to downplay its benefits either.

regarding your defense for that disgusting grifter and hypocrite farage: of course he's technically right about that - however, that statement is true for literally every single member state: the EU today is not what they originally signed up for - and that's why every member has their votes and representation, and can leave at any given time. i mean, it's not like the brits signed up in '73 and then were forced to go along with everything until they finally voted to leave. so really it's a moot point, dishonestly suggesting the UK had no agency or voice along the way, and somehow was just recently allowed to free itself from those unbearable shackles that no one signed up for...

This post was edited by fender on Feb 1 2020 08:54am

As a £2.6tr economy we have significantly less bargaining power than as a £19tr trading bloc, which will significantly impede our efforts to negotiate trade deals that are better than our current ones. It's actually more likely we will be bullied into accepting worse terms than our current arrangements, especially seeing as there's only an 11 month transition period to negotiate trade deals while operating under the existing EU arrangements.

It should be obvious to everyone in the country we're in big trouble, but it's not because there's a significant minority of the population, especially those in their 50s and older, that adhere to a form of British exceptionalism that's a relic of a bygone era. Not in an outright racist way but rather a warped perception of our country's relative power based on historical achievements.

The country voted to leave and Brexit must happen now, but we can avoid a disaster by extending the transition period to 2022 at the earliest and take our time in the negotiations. Meanwhile in reality, the government want to pass an amended withdrawal agreement to outlaw an extension of the transition period past 31st December 2020. Political chestbeating at its finest.

Again: to facilitate economic cooperation, a political union was not necessary, this part could have been had with the original EEC. So when pro-EU politicians campaign on the claim that "the EU has brought peace to our continent", they clearly mean this is an argument for the EU in its present-day state, i.e. a political union. The argument includes the whole process of the European integration from the early ECSC till the EU, and that this process, including its current endpoint of a political union, is what has brought peace.

Anyway, I have provided ample sources and examples for the lack of democracy and the lack of listening to voter feedback in the recent development of the EU; and for the shady, anti-democratic stances of the dominant figures of EU politics in recent years.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 1 2020 09:21am

you have sufficiently demonstrated that you can't distinguish between simple FACTS and your conspiratorial misrepresentations, based on far right propaganda. you have shown that you don't know the difference between fiction and reality, and you have demonstrated support for grifters making moot points to imply untrue narratives. i hope you're proud.