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COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
#1

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
Is this the existential crisis that will finally tear the EU apart? Well maybe but probably not just yet, but what the last few days have proven is that the EU is completely incapable of controlling rouge member States. In the BREXIT thread I've already pointed that out before - now it comes at a time when member state's can't agree to follow the EU's open-borders policy.

A few days ago Europea Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen was instructing member states not to implement travel bans, this was based on the (flawed) WHO advice. Well 21 out of the 26 Schengen Countries refused to comply and went ahead with completely unprecedented travel bans anyway. This included Denmark, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and even France and Germany. Somewhat ironically, a week ago the EU was protesting against the US travel ban imposed on them! Also quite ironically, taking back control of their borders was a key reason for the UK deciding to leave the EU. And now the EU has been forced to officially close their borders to everyone outside of the EU for 30 days!

Facepalm

As noted here: "This crisis puts an age-old truth in stark relief: border controls exist for good reasons."

It's not all about reducing the spread of infection. Some countries are worried about foreigners bulk-buying food and other essentials and taking them back to their home countries. Europe does not produce enough food to feed itself, and the effect of people hoarding and freezing food at home could lead to real supply problems. How can you reassure the population you're going to have enough food if you're allowing foreigners to bulk-buy food and take it out of the country? Also it's not just food and medicine either, there are also a lot of European countries who's hospitals are at or past breaking point, and those that aren't don't want foreigners travelling to use up limited-supply healthcare resources and take hospital beds from their citizens and residents that need them. Some countries in Europe have run out of the necessarily medical equipment to manage a pandemic, that includes the UK. The UK is actually passed crisis point, that's why they've had to close their schools but we haven't in Australia. So the value that sealing up your borders during a global pandemic has in both reassuring the public/calming the panic as well as protecting your hospitals from potential overload is something that money can't buy. The fact that the EU could not appreciate this value speaks volumes. Yes it's partly because of contemporary inexperience dealing with a pandemic, but it's more than that. They had a policy based on the best evidence of containment/prevention of a disease outbreak: sealing up the borders won't do anything. Yes that's true. However closing the borders is a societal decision not a health one. You protect society by ensuring your essential supplies of water, food, medicine, and hospitals/medical facilities are protected and secure and open borders does not achieve that.

"it does demonstrate that open borders are at best only useful in the absence of crisis and when the relative economics across those borders are generally equal. Fortifying borders is a common-sense reaction to pandemics, and only our relative inexperience at dealing with these crises kept us from seeing that."

But you know we learn from failures (not successes!!) If anything what this teaches us is that the EU should not try and manage a future crisis like this, and should leave it up to the member States to make their own decisions.

"Finally, this points up something else worth noting about super-national governmental bodies. Those also work mainly in relatively normal times, to the extent they function well at all. When crises emerge, member nations will always act to defend their own interests and do so with much greater alacrity than multilateral organizations. That’s why the Common Market was a brilliant idea, but the EU less so. Now that France and Germany are acting to repudiate it and Brussels is only able to catch up to it, one has to wonder whether Schengen and the EU will ever really return in their previous forms."
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#2

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
Using a pandemic to further drive your stupid political agenda by trying to spread more propaganda?

FUCK YOU
R.I.P. Hannes
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#3

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
Pretty sure panic-buying is a local thing, rather than people going out-of-state to poach goods. Open borders are another issue, it seems to this American. I did hear that Luxembourg got cleaned out of duchies, though.
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#4

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-19-2020, 06:24 AM)Deesse23 Wrote: Using a pandemic to further drive your stupid political agenda by trying to spread more propaganda?

FUCK YOU

Jesus calm down, I'm criticising the EU not the member states. I'm not spreading any propaganda.

(03-19-2020, 06:38 AM)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Pretty sure panic-buying is a local thing, rather than people going out-of-state to poach goods. Open borders are another issue, it seems to this American. I did hear that Luxembourg got cleaned out of duchies, though.

As mentioned here the UK for one does not have enough PPE for healthcare workers, and that's in addition to the problems of supply of food and medication from panic buying.

Secondly it has been reported that it was one reason for closing borders, for example here:

[Image: gf3Dqt4.png]

Notice how they say they were particularly concerned about supermarkets near their borders.

Whether they're saying it publicly or not healthcare capacity is also a reason in a number of European countries for closing up their borders. For example Italy: their hospital system is almost overwhelmed, and their official policy is when they reach the tipping point to turn away elderly healthcare clients (80+ years) who are in poor health. The countries which are bordering Italy probably don't want sick Italians coming to them and taking up their hospital beds (as cruel as that may sound), they want to prioritise their hospitals for their own residents. In other words, they're all acting out of their own national interests - which frankly is what you'd expect for them to be doing.
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#5

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-19-2020, 07:37 AM)Aractus Wrote: Secondly it has been reported that it was one reason for closing borders, for example here:

[Image: gf3Dqt4.png]

Notice how they say they were particularly concerned about supermarkets near their borders.

Is it that big a problem? Are there any numbers on this?
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#6

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
I think it's more the case they need to secure their food supplies now rather than wait. Europe isn't like Australia or the US, they don't have enough domestic food production for self-sustainability. We do. In Australia we produce enough food to feed a population of 75-80 million. And that's not even taking into account food wastage. If panic buying gets bad enough, then what could happen is the nation state governments conscript the military to ration the food supply. Obviously they want to prevent that at all costs, but also they have to prepare now just in case it gets that bad (you have to prepare for the worst case scenarios). In Australia people have been mass buying freezers - one retailer reported selling as much as their entire year's sales last year over just a week or two.

What's quite concerning really is that Covid 19 isn't even all that deadly. It's a rather mild illness as far as pandemics go, and yet look at just how unprepared nations have been.

Oh also, let me just reiterate that it's actually a GOOD THING in my opinion that EU member states are acting independently out of their own self-interest. I mentioned that none of them would relish the thought of providing out-sourced healthcare to their neighbours - however what that also means is that they realise they can't out-source healthcare to the other member states for their own citizens and residents, and therefore have to manage the epidemics independently. That might seem a little counter-intuitive, but what it does mean is that all of them realise they need to put in policies to ease the pressure on their primary care facilities as a matter of urgency.
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#7

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
BILD is the german equivalent of the "Sun", they even make up the weather. In Germany its also known as "BLÖD" (stupid).

tl;dr
When Aractus isnt making up shit himself, his source of inforation are the most fact-less tabloids you can possibly get. Not saying that BILDs claims are wrong, but i would like to have a credible source.
It clearly shows his bias, he is looking for informations hat fit his preconceived notions. He didnt bother to check his source.

If you were german, everyone would have laughed you out of the room when you cite BILD as your source Facepalm
R.I.P. Hannes
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#8

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
Well regardless of what's allegedly happening in Germany, it IS happening in Australia:



Yes that's a right wing news organisation, but it's not at all "racist" or otherwise prejudiced to say that the Chinese mass buy up our baby formula every year around the Chinese new year and send it to China - that has been an ongoing problem for YEARS. Here's an ABC article (ABC is left-leaning and the public broadcaster). In response we have retail limits imposed every year in January and February on the stuff, and manufacturers make more to keep up with the artificial demand created by Chinese buyers sending it to China. Now they're doing it in MARCH!! A full month after the Chinese new year, we haven't anticipated it or manufactured extra baby formula to cope with this. So this is just one example of how a single cohort can disrupt the supply of essential food items for everyone. It wouldn't be so bad if they were just sending it to friends and family as gifts - but the vast majority is sold to Chinese customers. So a person of Chinese ethnicity here will purchase formula tins and sell them at a profit to buyers in China - usually those buyers are purchasing them as gifts, such as in Chinese new year gifts hence the glut in January-February.
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#9

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-19-2020, 07:37 AM)Aractus Wrote: Secondly it has been reported that it was one reason for closing borders, for example here:

[Image: gf3Dqt4.png]

Notice how they say they were particularly concerned about supermarkets near their borders.
Here is a little quiz for the ignorant/dishonest:

Guess which is the area with the highest infection rate in France?
...
..
.
*drumroll*
Alsace-Lorraine
...and that borders
...
..
.
*drumroll*
...well, certainly not Spain  Dodgy

As for suggesting that EU countries will close their borders to prevent other countries from sending their sick: Fuck you again, asshole, for making such outrageous claims without a shred of evidence. As long as they can, countries will support their neighbours. Fuck you for suggesting that europeans have somewhat less empathy than every other group of people on ths planet.
R.I.P. Hannes
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#10

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-19-2020, 12:36 PM)Deesse23 Wrote: Here is a little quiz for the ignorant/dishonest:

Guess which is the area with the highest infection rate in France?
...
..
.
*drumroll*
Alsace-Lorraine
...and that borders
...
..
.
*drumroll*
...well, certainly not Spain  Dodgy

As for suggesting that EU countries will close their borders to prevent other countries from sending their sick: Fuck you again, asshole, for making such outrageous claims without a shred of evidence. As long as they can, countries will support their neighbours. Fuck you for suggesting that europeans have somewhat less empathy than every other group of people on ths planet.

I can see you're emotional, I'd rather you cut the personal insults.

What I said is fact. I posted this video in another topic (I've provided a transcript for the main bit there too):



What does Dr. Swan say? "The main game here is in fact to de-load our hospitals so that people who can be treated get treated and we don't get unnecessary deaths because people are left at home to die."

We do not have a shortage of PPE (personal protective equipment) here - in Europe, or at least in parts, they do. Also note what the UK "whistle-blower" doctor says: "We're totally fucked over here". That one sentence speaks volumes. It's not just about supply shortages, it's about the front-line doctors themselves demanding control - saying "lock it up".

Now I'm not suggesting Germany has any of those shortages. Perhaps they do, perhaps they don't - assuming they don't it will be in the national government's interest to prevent it happening.

At the end of the day I can tell you two things for sure, which I promise you. We have never been properly prepared for a pandemic in Australia. Ever. We're just fucking lucky we have plenty of local PPE suppliers that can scale up demand. Hell the army sent soldiers to a face mask manufacturer in Victoria to help boost production while they advertise for new employees! The second thing is we're fucking glad we have control over our borders.
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#11

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
The long trajectory of human history is towards unity and cooperation.
The EU will survive in one form or another.
Britain will rejoin eventually.
The old stupid boundaries are breached by news, cell phones, communication, businesses, academics, the arts, etc etc etc.
The past is gone forever.
Test
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#12

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-20-2020, 02:33 AM)Bucky Ball Wrote: Britain will rejoin eventually.

Ha, no they won't and it's a miracle they ever joined in the first place.
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#13

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-20-2020, 04:29 AM)Aractus Wrote:
(03-20-2020, 02:33 AM)Bucky Ball Wrote: Britain will rejoin eventually.

Ha, no they won't and it's a miracle they ever joined in the first place.

Well, in the long term pretty much everybody will federate. It's simply tyranical, cumbersome and impractical to maintain an anarcho-capitalist system on the international stage.
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#14

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-19-2020, 12:59 PM)Aractus Wrote:
(03-19-2020, 12:36 PM)Deesse23 Wrote: Here is a little quiz for the ignorant/dishonest...

I can see you're emotional, I'd rather you cut the personal insults.

Much LOLs...     this from the bloke who called me "a stupid cunt".   Hypocrite.     Angry
I'm a creationist;   I believe that man created God.
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#15

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-19-2020, 12:59 PM)Aractus Wrote:
(03-19-2020, 12:36 PM)Deesse23 Wrote: Here is a little quiz for the ignorant/dishonest...

I can see you're emotional, I'd rather you cut the personal insults.

My emotions dont matter.
Your dishonesty, failure to admit errors, unreliable sources to support a preconceived notion, and your fearmongering in face of a pandemic, they fucking do. Big Grin
R.I.P. Hannes
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#16

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-20-2020, 04:29 AM)Aractus Wrote:
(03-20-2020, 02:33 AM)Bucky Ball Wrote: Britain will rejoin eventually.

Ha, no they won't and it's a miracle they ever joined in the first place.

LMAO. 
67 % is not exactly a "miracle". They REPEATEDLY asked to join. 
It's hilarious how history gets changed by revisionists who think they can make up history to suit their whims. 
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/fact-figures/when-...ean-union/
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#17

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-21-2020, 02:41 AM)Bucky Ball Wrote: LMAO. 
67 % is not exactly a "miracle". They REPEATEDLY asked to join. 
It's hilarious how history gets changed by revisionists who think they can make up history to suit their whims. 
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/fact-figures/when-...ean-union/

HA, no they didn't. They asked to join the EEC, not the EU.

UK electoral guru John Curtice said BREXIT was inevitable. You can hardly claim he is a biased source.

Now to put it very, very, oh so very simply - BREXIT when it all comes down to it is a disagreement between the opinion of those who wanted out and those who wanted in over what it meant to have national sovereignty. That's really what it all boils down to. The people of different nation states have different ideas and standards as to what they believe they must have control over to have national sovereignty - and if they see that control slowly eroded overtime by international treaties that's when they start to question why they signed up to them in the first place. The most obvious example I can give is the common fisheries policy: that's why Greenland voted in a referendum to leave the EEC (or according to you, the EU since you seem to conflate them as being one and the same!) It's why Norway and Iceland have refused to join the EU. And when you look at how fucking terrible their fishing practises are: in Australia European super-trawlers are banned in legislation, I'm sure it's the same in the US and Canada too. If we let in foreign fishing ships, they must adhere to our standards - and not being an environment destroying industry. And in the EU they have countries like Austria that have a veto over any proposals (because it's rule by unanimity) as well as having full input into policy. Austria. A country that has no coast. That has no marine environment in a sea or ocean. A country wholly motivated by the self-interest of their fishermen. So that's just one extremely easy problem to illustrate.

What's hilarious Bucky balls is that either you are the revisionist, or you're so out of touch with reality that you believe your own rhetoric. So which is it? I'm going to be charitable and think you're just uninformed, perhaps even misinformed, but nevertheless well-meaning. Yet that doesn't explain to me why you think you can make the claim the UK asked to join the EU. They asked to join the EU's predecessor... but surely you don't actually think the EEC and EU are materialistically the same? The EU was created by treaty in 1993. No one "asked" to join in 1993.

Anyway seriously I'd love an answer - no insults intended - why you claimed they asked to join EU when they didn't?
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#18

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
In the first referendum in 1975, continued membership of what was then the European Communities
(which included the European Economic Community, often referred to as the Common Market in the UK)
was approved by 67.2% of voters, while in its second referendum in 2016 voters voted by 51.9% to
leave the European Union.
I'm a creationist;   I believe that man created God.
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#19

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-21-2020, 11:05 AM)SYZ Wrote: In the first referendum in 1975, continued membership of what was then the European Communities (which included the European Economic Community, often referred to as the Common Market in the UK) was approved by 67.2% of voters, while in its second referendum in 2016 voters voted by 51.9% to leave the European Union.

Yes they voted in to the EEC and out of the EU. How much more simply can anyone put it?

Somewhat more to the point is national sovereignty. There's a reason we do not let in European supertrawlers into our waters. We have laws against them. Would you like to give up that sovereignty and let, let's say, China make up the rules of our fishing waters? Or would you prefer we have serenity?

This is what Brexit all comes down to. Not that one issue, but people that were upset at how much control over *something* had been lost by international treaty.
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#20

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-21-2020, 08:49 AM)Aractus Wrote:
(03-21-2020, 02:41 AM)Bucky Ball Wrote: LMAO. 
67 % is not exactly a "miracle". They REPEATEDLY asked to join. 
It's hilarious how history gets changed by revisionists who think they can make up history to suit their whims. 
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/fact-figures/when-...ean-union/

HA, no they didn't. They asked to join the EEC, not the EU.

UK electoral guru John Curtice said BREXIT was inevitable. You can hardly claim he is a biased source.

Now to put it very, very, oh so very simply - BREXIT when it all comes down to it is a disagreement between the opinion of those who wanted out and those who wanted in over what it meant to have national sovereignty. That's really what it all boils down to. The people of different nation states have different ideas and standards as to what they believe they must have control over to have national sovereignty - and if they see that control slowly eroded overtime by international treaties that's when they start to question why they signed up to them in the first place. The most obvious example I can give is the common fisheries policy: that's why Greenland voted in a referendum to leave the EEC (or according to you, the EU since you seem to conflate them as being one and the same!) It's why Norway and Iceland have refused to join the EU. And when you look at how fucking terrible their fishing practises are: in Australia European super-trawlers are banned in legislation, I'm sure it's the same in the US and Canada too. If we let in foreign fishing ships, they must adhere to our standards - and not being an environment destroying industry. And in the EU they have countries like Austria that have a veto over any proposals (because it's rule by unanimity) as well as having full input into policy. Austria. A country that has no coast. That has no marine environment in a sea or ocean. A country wholly motivated by the self-interest of their fishermen. So that's just one extremely easy problem to illustrate.

What's hilarious Bucky balls is that either you are the revisionist, or you're so out of touch with reality that you believe your own rhetoric. So which is it? I'm going to be charitable and think you're just uninformed, perhaps even misinformed, but nevertheless well-meaning. Yet that doesn't explain to me why you think you can make the claim the UK asked to join the EU. They asked to join the EU's predecessor... but surely you don't actually think the EEC and EU are materialistically the same? The EU was created by treaty in 1993. No one "asked" to join in 1993.

Anyway seriously I'd love an answer - no insults intended - why you claimed they asked to join EU when they didn't?


So it was all about fishing policies. 
LOL
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-51268688

Quote:Ha, no they won't and it's a miracle they ever joined in the first place.

.... he asserted with not one reason to support his OPINION.
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#21

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-21-2020, 01:40 PM)Bucky Ball Wrote: So it was all about fishing policies. 
LOL
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-51268688

No that was just an example. I literally said that above: "This is what Brexit all comes down to. Not that one issue, but people that were upset at how much control over *something* had been lost by international treaty."

Again let me repeat this since it seems like a difficult concept for you to wrap your mind around: different people in different nations have different ideas about what they must have control over to have national sovereignty. They have different ideas about *what* they can share with other nations before they feel a loss of sovereignty. This is why Vote Leave's key campaign slogan was "take back control" - that spoke to many different people who wanted the UK to have more control over something where control had been eroded. There's lots of examples I can give you: the free movement of EU nationals into the UK for example, for a lot of people that represented a loss of sovereignty. They want the UK to have complete control to decide who comes into the UK, they don't want to share that decision with Brussels. Another good example would be taxation - VAT is an unfair regressive tax, and the EU sets the minimum at 15% - well many people I'm sure would prefer the UK government has sovereignty to decide for themselves what rate they want, as well as what goods and services they can exempt. Trade agreements is another example - plenty of people don't want to share that with the EU and want the UK to be able to make their own trade agreements with nations around the world. Political alignment is another - lots of Brits don't want to be tied to political unity with Europe.

Another thing is just having the ability to change laws or regulations, even if you don't intend to - and that's something EU doesn't understand at all. EU officials have been saying "why do you need the ability to scrap environmental laws and lower worker's rights if you don't intend to do so", but for the UK it's about sovereignty and the ability to make their own decisions, even if they know it's something they'll never do. It's a lot like euthanasia where a lot of people get far greater value from the fact they have the choice than they do in actually choosing to make that choice and go through with it.

Now would you like to explain to me why you claimed the UK asked repeatedly to join the EU?

The EU is in an existential crisis and they have been for years. Right now they literally have no way to solve it. The way they're handling Brexit is a prime example of complete incompetence. Hell the Article 50 process was flawed from the very start, that article that the EU made was poorly drafted and not well thought out. That's not me saying that - that's what European legal experts were saying the moment it was put in. You don't allow one side of an international treaty to unilaterally leave, and yet that's what it does. And actually a lot of EU Articles and regulations are also poorly thought out, and that's one of the problems. Another problem is their way of doing things is delay whatever they have to make a decision on, until the deadline comes and they rush through a decision as quickly as possible.

The big elephant in the room, is that the EU has lost its ability to control member states. That is in fact why a lot of EU countries are happy being inside the EU but the UK was not, it's the difference between having a common law system and a civil law system. I've gone over this elsewhere, civil law has its roots in ancient Roman law and is similar to canon law in application, and people under a civil law system believe they have the right to follow whichever law they prefer. Hence for example Roman Catholic priests who think it's okay not to report child sex offences told to them in confession: Australian law says they must, many other countries have laws saying this too, but they somehow think it's appropriate to follow canon law in place of it - they don't always recognise that our laws are sovereign and they must obey them. The UK and Ireland are the *only* nations in (or formally in) the EU that are common law nations.

Now how that applies is that the UK supreme court in 2014 found that the EU laws and regulations are supreme over UK law, and must be followed:

“Different attitudes towards the law are fundamental to understanding why Europeans states seem able to handle EU legislation even when it appears not to be in the national interest, while the UK – government as well as eurosceptics – claims to be powerless against its strictures. While Brits tend to think that EU legislation is set in stone – however ‘undemocratic’ it may seem – Europeans are used to working out ways to circumvent it or, at any rate, to avoid some of its unwelcome consequences. A Spanish phrase summarises the approach: ‘La ley se acata pero no se cumple.’ – the law is respected but not (necessarily) obeyed. This particular formulation arises from the Spanish colonial period when edicts from Madrid were dutifully acknowledged in the distant colonies of Latin America and thereafter ignored as ‘impractical’; but it is an inbuilt cultural characteristic of countries that have inherited the Catholic-Napoleonic tradition.”


This is why the EU is so unable to actually control member states - whether that's Greece and Italy spending more money than the EU says they're allowed to, or Greece refusing to ban indoor smoking despite the EU's health regulations saying they must do so (they actually do have anti-smoking laws they just refuse to enforce them), Germany France and others giving certain industries subsidies way above what the EU allows, and so on. The UK followed the EU's rules - but over in Europe there was much less rule-taking actually going on. To the UK of course that felt unfair - why should they be forced to enforce unpopular EU regulations when other member states get away with avoiding them? If all of the EU regulations were actually applied equally throughout all member nations, I don't think Brexit would have happened, at least not yet anyway.

Anyway by far the biggest problem with the EU is that they can't control their member states. They are most influential over them when they're in the application phase - like Turkey. Once they become full members, that control that the EU had over them gets eroded and they go rogue. And also free movement disadvantages a lot of central and eastern European EU member state nations that are seeing net migration out of their countries and into the West like Germany, France, and the UK. So it will be interesting to see in 12 or 18 months where they are with this, I have a feeling that a number of countries like Poland where the EU's free movement has been a disadvantage for many years will quite like the migration control they have put in place in response to Covid 19.

Also the article you linked to, although it is by John Curtice, is pretty useless when it comes to answering the question "do Britons agree with leaving". You can't, and shouldn't, try to answer that question mid-process. Remember that the direction the EU has been going in - greater political unity, possible federation - those are things that the UK is dead-set against. Also newspaper polls are not that great, no matter how much Curtice may love them, it's the internal party polling that are the valuable polls.
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#22

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-19-2020, 07:37 AM)Aractus Wrote: Whether they're saying it publicly or not healthcare capacity is also a reason in a number of European countries for closing up their borders. For example Italy: their hospital system is almost overwhelmed, and their official policy is when they reach the tipping point to turn away elderly healthcare clients (80+ years) who are in poor health. The countries which are bordering Italy probably don't want sick Italians coming to them and taking up their hospital beds (as cruel as that may sound), they want to prioritise their hospitals for their own residents. In other words, they're all acting out of their own national interests - which frankly is what you'd expect for them to be doing.

Interesting opinion. Deadpan Coffee Drinker
However the facts are: 2 italian patients in critical condition have landed in Leipzig to be treated.
Okok, Germany does not border Italy directly. Winking
R.I.P. Hannes
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#23

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-24-2020, 12:27 PM)Deesse23 Wrote: Okok, Germany does not border Italy directly.  Winking

Correct, but I could have been a little clearer about what I meant. They want to prioritise their resources for their own citizens and residents.

Meanwhile Hungary is going full NAZI.

“The country’s parliament is set to adopt a new law that will give the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban a legal mandate to rule by decree, without any sunset clause and without parliamentary oversight. The government initially sought to fast-track the legislation and adopt it already on March 24, but it lacked the supermajority needed to accelerate the proceedings. The party, however, does not lack the votes to ensure that the legislation is passed through the normal legislative process a few days later.

“The brazenness of Orban’s power grab is without any parallel in recent European history.”


Dalibor Rohac, Washington Post.

The new bill extends the existing state of emergency indefinitely, will suspend Hungary's parliament for the (indefinite) duration of the SoE, give Prime Minister Orban the power to rule by decree, suspends all elections and referendums (none can be held until SoE declared over). Those powers allow Orban to suspend the enforcement of any law, suspend any regulations, and "implement additional extraordinary measures by decree". The bill also defines new criminal offences, including (a.) spreading falsehoods about a public emergency being a crime punishable by three years in prison, and (b.) spreading any false news or rumours that may be capable of "obstructing" something is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. That's right, freedom of the press and freedom of speech will now both be illegal once the bill is signed into law.

This is what full authoritarianism looks like, and shows us exactly the difference between harsh draconian measures taken democratically with parliamentary oversight, and establishing outright authoritarian rule. The severity of this must not be underestimated: "A government-run news outlet has already called for the prosecution of opposition politicians under the new statute — simply for pointing out the lack of readiness of the country’s public health system." (WP).

The EU is furious, with this act clearly showing they cannot control their member states any more.
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#24

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
The sheer stupidity to read anything into closed borders just baffles me. From a guy, sitting in a country, that has no land borders, no less. Of course everyone is closing borders. It's a measure to keep that shit from spreading on an international level. Among other measures that happen on national as well as EU levels. Planes are virtually grounded, travellers have to undergo a 14 days quarantine upon their return, shops and restaurants have closed and many countries have introduced a curfew to lower the infection rate.

(03-26-2020, 11:29 AM)Aractus Wrote: The EU is furious, with this act clearly showing they cannot control their member states any more.

This deserves special honors in the stupidity department and an honorable mention for complete and utter ignorance. Pray tell, who ist the EU? Blofeld or some other super villain? I tell you for free, it's the sum of the will of the governments of the member states. There is no independent body being called EU.
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#25

COVID 19 exposes EU disunity
(03-26-2020, 11:29 AM)Aractus Wrote:
(03-24-2020, 12:27 PM)Deesse23 Wrote: Okok, Germany does not border Italy directly.  Winking

Correct, but I could have been a little clearer about what I meant. They want to prioritise their resources for their own citizens and residents.
I call it "backpedaling".
R.I.P. Hannes
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