This is such a fascinating referendum. The population is at 9.1m, and at 9.5m it appears they'll stall asylum and family reunification, and at 10m they'll execute a Swexit - Switzerland isn't in the EU but it allows freedom of movement to EU nationals. Boy it is interesting to see what's going on in the world right now. There were so many things that I saw growing up as relatively solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of European unity and American primacy. I thought that even Brexit was a one-off event, but perhaps it is the other way around and European unity is a temporary thing that fragments easily. An interesting age, in the Austen Chamberlain sense.
I think that immigration actually is an ecology/sustainability issue. There are economic and cultural effects to immigration as well, and that's what people tend to focus on, but they aren't the only issues to consider. I think every country that has their shit together should be giving serious thought to immigration and sustainability, especially knowing that a massive number of climate refugees are coming in the near future. Preparing for that now would go a long way to keeping quality of life up while still helping out.
This specific policy may not be well intentioned, it may even be a means to avoid taking in those refugees when the time comes, but this is the kind of thing that nations should be thinking about right now.
Im sure the ecology is much improved by letting people stay where they are and be poorer. In fact we should start to remove people from all rich places so the can live in sustainable poverty.
The answer to immigration, for those that view it as a problem, is to make the places people are leaving more desirable to stay: social welfare, sustainable energy, affordable food and housing, and security - both physical and financial. The US has been trying hard to make itself undesirable for immigrants (suddenly, after decades of turning a blind eye in exchange for cheap labor), instead of focusing on helping to make the living situation in south America more tenable.
It’s kind of what we get for completely wrecking the global south tbh - the number of democracies we overthrew, the drug cartels we propped up, the damage we did is finally coming to bear fruit and it’s just as sour as the soil we tilled.
Leaving those climate refugees where they are wouldn't mean they were poor, it would mean they were dead. There are all kinds of irrational extreme positions that would maximize environmental protection. Certainly the best thing we could do for the environment would be to kill ourselves off, but very few people would argue for that. Instead it's better to go for something more balanced and limiting the number of people coming in your country to an amount the land can sustainably support seems pretty reasonable.
> to an amount the land can sustainably support seems pretty reasonable
Is the land in refugees home countries better able to sustainably support the populations on average, whether moving because of climate, lack of a way to support the people, etc?
Border control is not equivalent to racism. The people pushing for it loudly just tend to be doing it for blatantly racist reasons. Unsurprisingly, those people tend to abuse any ounce of power given to them. When they're granted extraordinary government powers, they make up official sounding reason to achieve their racist agenda. Hence the general consensus that any talk of border control is racism. The non-racist-driven border control agenda just controls the border, and shut the fuck up about it. They don't boast about arrests, they don't make up stories about crime or eating cats and dogs, they don't send in the military to schools to grab kids out of class, they don't shoot people in the face when they look at them wrong.
You think people who support border controls are simply prejudiced based on skin color? Like, their problem with Little Mogadishu or Little Bangladesh is that people in those places don't need sunscreen? Do you think that, if Ilhan Omar was Albanian, people would love her?
That's literally not what he said. He's saying the majority of people supporting border controls are not racist, but the vocal minority are the ones who "boast about arrests" / "make up stories about crime or eating cats and dogs"
This seems like a sarcastic/unserious comment, but based on my interactions with people who are supposedly anti-immigration - yes, it's entirely based on skin colour.
Someone from India, China etc whose family immigrated in the 1800s to work in gold mines/railroads etc and probably has deeper roots in the country than the person criticising them = immigrant, bad, shouldn't be here. Somehow simultaneously taking all the jobs and living off the state and not contributing.
Someone from Europe/America/Canada with white skin who either came here as a child or was born here to immigrant parents = not a problem at all, they "don't count" for some reason.
I agree the people who lump children of Chinese railroad workers in with illegal immigrants are racist. But it’s the pro-immigration folks that do that pervasively, under the label “people of color.” Meanwhile, you have to look at pretty fringy parts of the right to find that.
>Do you think that, if Ilhan Omar was Albanian, people would love her?
You do realize who a great deal of the "southern Italians" in certain parts of New York and New Orleans actually are, right? Or is your point solely about religion?
Europeans, with some exceptions (the UK, Germany, maybe Sweden), generally care way, way less about accusations of bigotry than Americans do, and the Swiss are one of the most DGAF nations in this regard.
You don't have to jump right to one child per household (which is a bad idea anyway) but maintaining sustainable population levels should extend beyond just border control. It should include things like building out infrastructure in underdeveloped areas and encouraging (or perhaps even requiring) people to move in the new spaces, enabling and encouraging remote work to free up unnecessary office space and concentration of workers to city centers, and the promotion of sex ed, family planning, and birth control so that the children being born are going to parents who want and are ready for them.
If Swiss population growth were entirely attributable to the children of existing Swiss residents, then this initiative would be pointless because it wouldn't change anything, and we would not be having this conversation.
So yes, it absolutely is about immigration, regardless of the wording.
Apparently you are unable to understand that if people who have been crying about immigration for 20 years that now push this things does not mean they have changed their mind. They just try to hide what's obvious to confuse uniformed voters (like old people who just see big number and remember the 1970s).
> There were so many things that I saw growing up as relatively solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of European unity and American primacy
European unity works well in a world of mostly-stable populations. Having mass migrations from large, relatively empty countries, to pretty full ones, is going to make the full ones increasingly expensive to make housing for, to power, and to water.
Working age population is decreasing in Europe. It's only really major cities that suffer under development, and even among them it's just some, not the majority.
And despite all the bitching, even extra-EU immigrants are a huge resource for most European countries. In Italy e.g. extra-EU immigrants contribute to 14% of taxes and receive less than 2% of benefits, as many of them come here as young adults and leave before qualifying for pension anyway so the bulk of social services (school and healthcare) is essentially largely subsidized by immigrants.
In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net contributors to welfare state too.
Yes, many among them stay poor, don't integrate and tend to fall for minor, petty and some for violent crime.
What you hear little about are the insane dangers of organized crime like Italians and Albanians on the other hand, because they move hundreds of billions and are a drag to the economy in most of Europe.
> In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net contributors to welfare state too.
Interesting. By what cost does this measure loss of freedom due to increased surveillance, decreased freedom of movement especially for women.
Also increased cost and decreasing quality of police, law, education, or even street cleaning…
Extra-EU immigrants are not uniform group. E.g. in Denmark non-western migrants at some point are (weakly) positive net contributors to public finances, but MENAPT immigrants are on avg. net negative their entire life. https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=8...
But this paper is not about extra EU migrants but all migrants.
And even then if we control for age they say they are contributing less than natives.
I think it would be very odd that less educated people on average contribute more than natives, especially if they are at risk of being discriminated when looking for a job.
"Full countries" is a lie. You hear it often here in the Netherlands.
What they don't want you to hear is that 54% of the land in the country is owned by agricultural companies[0], benefitting a tiny fraction of the population.
If they're exporting crops that's about feeding somebody. People who would have to try to get their food elsewhere and have to worry about the standards/quality of those new sources. It's even perfectly fine for people to grow and sell flowers. There may be ways to make it more efficient, and maybe the government should be encouraging that so they can buy up some of the saved land, but I'd bet there are ecological consequences to paving over flower farms too.
Economically it would make more sense to import food from France, Spain etc. it would reduce the cost of living for the overwhelming majority of people with limited negative economic impact.
The Netherlands is completely tiny compared to many of the countries people are coming from, and the land is allocated. You can't replace the farms with suburbs throughout the country, and even if you did, then what? Is it allowed to be full then? Or should people still leave their much more land-rich origins to come anyway?
Does EU have the USA problem where most farmers are basically sharecroppers where they are mandated where they can buy their seed, buy their fertilizers, where they buy their chicks/sows/calfs, what equipment they can buy, how they can repair their equipment, where they can sell their crops, and at what specific prices all from a single undemocratic corporation?
In the USA it's basically corporations that run everything and drive the farmers into poverty where said corporations can then buy their land and rely on undocumented workers to keep the abuse going.
From the outside EU farmers seem to have better labor relations, but don't know.
Swiss here, living in a small town quite close to farmers. I would expect if it was the case here, I would have heard about it, given my proximity. I'm aware of this "arrangement" in the US, never heard of it happening anywhere in the EU - I haven't done a comprehensive study though, maybe someone with more knowledge can say more.
Considering EU farmers tend to riot with their tractors in the capitals of countries which try to control them I doubt it.
AFAIK Norwegian farmers fear of things like this was what kept Norway out of EU even with two referendums (or at least one of the distinguishing factors).
And literally all the limits on those things are artificial. Its the same right wing idiots that want this referendum that prevent smart transportation infrastructure in cities, that delay important transportation investments, that prevent bike infrastructure, that had the brilliant plan of buying cheap energy from France and Germany and so on.
France is mostly empty by Europe's population density standard though, so even though it was likely not the intent of GP, it kind of works in that context.
Which is so weird! France has large amounts of good farmland, some of the most modern (and unified, unlike Germany) government in Europe for a long time etc... no obvious reason to have just half the population density of Germany.
France used to be “the China of Europe” (which is why we kept being at war with the whole continent at once). Had France followed their neighbors' demographic, it would be home to more than 200 million people today.
The demographic collapse of France in the 19th century, while Germany kept growing, alone explains the French defeat in 1870 (and then the two world wars).
> no obvious reason to have just half the population density of Germany.
France was historically always focused on Paris, because that was where the Emperor was. If you were not a farmer, there was little reason to live anywhere but Paris or other large cities.
In contrast, Germany historically consisted of thousands of small fiefdoms that each held some sort of local importance and each held authority of some sort. The Kaiser was pretty far away and only mattered in practice when the Kaiserreich was involved in some sort of conflict.
> France was historically always focused on Paris, because that was where the Emperor was.
So much misconception in such a short sentence…
First of all France only had an “Emperor” for a few decades (10 years for Napoléon 1er, 17 for Napoléon III).
Then, Paris wasn't even the King's main residence for a good part of French Monarchy (the Loire valley (hence the list of famous castles here) and Versailles both aren't Paris).
Centralization around Paris built up progressively, but it's really the French revolution (which came with the suppression of the old regional Parliaments) which made modern France the way it is. And the US is the only place where you can claim that 200 years of history counts as “always”.
As I said in a comment sibling to yours, this has nothing to do with political organization, it's a consequence of demography: French people just stopped having babies one century before other European countries (and two centuries before the rest of the world).
That's a tough question, really. AFAIK the causes of the demographic transition in general are heavily debated among specialists and if we cannot exactly pinpoint what's driving the decline of birthrates happening right now, it's going to be even harder to pinpoint the causes for something that happened more than two centuries ago.
More importantly, education isn't everything. Half the economy runs on work that doesn't need higher education and that locals largely won't do: cleaning, care, hospitality, construction. The Spanish and Portuguese speaking workers doing those jobs are propping up a standard of living for everyone.
Geneva has the highest minimum wage in the world precisely to try and avoid the "working poor".
Also the "consuner spending is increasingly debt" is very US centric view. The situation in Europe is less extreme and totally absent in many countries.
This is never true and just economic denialism. There is a market price for labor. If there is no supply at a given price it is not evidence that a market does not exist, only that the demand is mispriced.
> This is never true and just economic denialism. There is a market price for labor. If there is no supply at a given price it is not evidence that a market does not exist, only that the demand is mispriced.
There can be situations where the market for a particular type of labor does not exist. Populations aren't infinite, and if there are enough good paying, desirable jobs for full employment, then there may be no one available to do a job economically.
For example let's imagine a hypothetical town where only residents of the town are allowed to work in the town, though they can provide services to those outside of the town. Let's say 100 people live in this town, and they are all doctors. There is a hospital in this town that needs 100 doctors to run. There are other jobs to be done in this town - someone needs to pick up trash, someone needs to mow lawns, someone needs to sell food, etc. Now if you pay someone a doctor's salary to pick up trash, they could potentially leave the hospital to do that job instead; but then the hospital is understaffed. Something isn't going to get done; indeed in this scenario where there are a lot more jobs to be done than people to do them, a lot of stuff isn't going to get done, no matter how good the pay is, and the jobs that are done will be insanely expensive.
In this case you would simply allow people from outside the town to work in the town, or get more people to move into town. If you scale up this scenario to cities, provinces, and ultimately nations, it's clear that at some point you must choose between structural unemployment (ie number of workers greater than number of jobs to be done), bullshit jobs (people who would be structurally unemployed are hired to do unnecessary tasks), a managed economy (employment opportunities restricted to ensure necessary work gets done at any population level), or immigration/emigration of labor (labor supply varies to meet demand) regardless of wages. In practice you'll likely get a combination of the above.
The market for anything isn't infinite. When S/D shifts the market price changes to reflect that. The price reflects the relative supply and demand. You seem to be operating under the delusion that prices must be fixed at where you desire them and that no market existing there is a failure. In fact the availability of goods and services in a market is a function of your willingness to pay a market price for them. If you don't objectively value such goods and services they won't exist for you. It's not the responsibility of everyone else to subsidize your lifestyle because you're not willing to pay market prices.
You very clearly did not understand what I wrote, so let's simplify this further.
There is one guy alone on an island. There are two lighthouses on the island. Each lighthouse needs an operator to function. The guy operates one of the lighthouses. How much do wages need to rise to get both lighthouses operating at the same time?
The scenario was not one person on earth, it was one person on an island. There are plenty of other people who could potentially immigrate to the island.
People also tend to give ridiculous answers when they're wrong.
> Geneva has the highest minimum wage in the world
I was surprised when I read this, but I Googled, and it looks true. Minimum wage in Geneva is 24.59 CHF per hour. Wow! With 1.5 working parents, you can definitely live on 1.5 * 2000 * 24.59 CHF = 73,770 CHF (92.5K USD) per year in Geneva. (To be clear: I am not writing this sarcastically. I think 74K CHF per year will definitely not be "working poor" in Geneva.)
C'mon, why parrot this nonsense? There are no "mass migrations" and neither the European countries nor the US are "full". Yes the Europeans screwed up real integration across the board, but nobody is really working on fixing that. Easier to just claim to be full and the immigrants are causing higher crime rates so no more people in but oh demographics, please everybody make more babies!
Xenophobia is on the rise across the board with the rising unequality and an alliance between extreme-right elements of the society and the wealthy class that wants to use them to destroy democratic institutions and take over the power. Rationally with the ageing population we actually need managed mass migration but instead get managed mass hate and unmanaged migration.
Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies' peoples wanted to move to Europe.
Large scale global movement is indicative of failure to uplift the globe from violence, poverty, and climate change. It makes a lot more sense to me for the global powers who don't want mass migration to do something to fix its causes instead of retreating inward and succumbing to nativism.
> Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies' peoples wanted to move to Europe.
What an absurd assertion. Where did you learn that? Read up about Roman border control and immigration policy, and what they required of immigrants into Roman territory.
Elderly people in our village in east Europe used to be super suspicious of the EU project and would say that European countries get along like "a sack of horns." Hopefully they were wrong :-)
How so? Neither Germany nor France wanted to meaningly influence Airbus nor Dassault Aviation in any way to solve internal bickering. There was a ton of political bargaining over subsystems and job guarantees.
Of course, I can go off of what‘s publicly available.
Neither of them could, there was a very slim set of circumstances where their goals might have sufficiently lined up for this to work. They studied it, arrived at the conclusion that it wasn't going to happen.
To frame this as something that should happen is just taking an overly simplistic view on how fighter jet development works. Even if everything went perfectly, it's far from obvious that a Franco-German designed fighter could be better than a purely French one.
>would say that European countries get along like "a sack of horns."
True words of wisdom.
> Hopefully they were wrong :-)
They weren't. EU membership and cooperation is built on favoritism and necessity. You get into the EU if you have something of value the other members need from you (capital, geopolitical, industrial, human or natural resources) done via treaties instead of via war and conquest.
So it ended up as a toxic relationship where members exploit each other to get as much as they can while contributing as little as they can.
@Ukraine, you'll experience this when you get your turn, just ask Romania.
Sometimes members are added just to prevent the EU from working better together, the reason why UK pushed hardest for expansion in 2004/2007. Funny how they'd leave the EU a few years later because of a vote that might've been decided becsuse of the 'polish plumber'.
Banks, energy, telecom, defence, oil & gas companies had to be sold to French, German and Austrian companies for below market value, so those countries would lift their veto.
Same with joining NATO TBF. We had to buy some overpriced shoddy used F-16 from the US with a lot of miles on the clock, for the same price of brand new Swedish Gripens just so the US would accepts us in NATO.
So if history does indeed repeat itself, Ukraine will also have to sell off vital industry and resources to major EU corporations to get in. Like all those new shiny drone startups they have. Safe to assume Rheinmetall or Dassault will want those under German/French flag before Ukraine is allowed in the EU. Same with oil, gas and rare earths.
Basically EU and NATO are two tier institutions. First there's the whales, the big players who are founders and make the rules, or get invited to join, and then there's the scrappy low level players, who need to beg and offer monetary dowry to be allowed to join. In theory everyone is equal, except some dogs are more equal than others.
Because everything in the world is transactional pay-to-win. There's no charity and no handouts. If you're being invited somewhere or given something, it's because something from you is expected in exchange.
@throwaway85825 Yes, except that was non negotiable form the US side. "You buy our overpriced junk or take a hike, I don't care if your poor country can't afford it." Leaked cables between our leaders at the time.
Also food for thought to MAGA who keeps thinking that US acted like a charity for NATO.
Romanian banks were looted by Romanians in the 90s: see Paunesu brothers and BRD. Also see Dacia Felix bank, Bancorex.
Romanian telecom: post communist crash Romanian telecommunications were a disaster. For example two different phone numbers shared the same line (a.k.a. Cuplajul). In late 90s some western telecom companies started investing in Romanian cellular networks- they built all the tower and network infrastructure. I do not understand what you mean when you say the west stole telecoms from Romanian - the west actually built it.
Energy, oil and gas- the heydays of Romanian oil producing days were during the WWII when Romania supplied a lot of the oil used by the Germans. After that Russians took whatever was left over because of war reparations. Since I can remember Romania did not produce oil - it was dependent on Russian imports during communism for example. So there was no oil and gas for the West to steal either.
Re: NATO - in the 90s and early 2000sn Romania wanted to join NATO because that particular generation remembered the Russian all too well. The priceRomania paid was enforcing the embargo on the Serbs during the Kosovo and Bosnian wars.
Re: F16 - romanians are flying some hand me downs from Holland which were purchased at the dizzying price of 1 euro.
I am sorry, but you sound like a Romanian nationalist, one who unfortunately is convincing enough do that the current generation does not know how much better their lives are because of EU and NATO. But who knows, maybe they will get a chance to find out…
If you take everything, direct EU money plus other money from governments, foreign investments by companies, remittances from Romanians working in the EU, other aid money that flows in large amounts, not to mention market access and so on.
Anybody who rationally without nationalistic blinders evaluates that will come to the same conclusion. The idea that a Romania independent of Europe, with its shitty Post-Communist economy and the shitty companies it had could have done massively better is frankly delusional.
The idea that all foreign investment and foreign companies operating in other country is negative and explorative is simply wrong. That is the case both for individual works, company productivity and the countries economy. This has been shown to be true in tons of management studies. Insofar as Romania had issues, it its own internal corruption and other issues that they handled less well then Poland or the Baltic's.
> Why doesn't US, China or Russia want that type of help?
Russia did want the economic integration, foreign investments and so on, they just wanted it less then being an imperial power lead by a dictatorship.
If you think that is a better path for Romania then integration with the EU you are utterly braindead.
As for the US and China. The US already has its own set of alliances and cooperative agreements. It also is geographically very different and its so rich that if it was part of the EU it would be a net contributor.
China is again a dictatorship with like 1 billion people that believe they can build a system like US or the EU has themselves. And they of course did take at least large part of that package when they opened to the US and integrated the economy far more. They had foreign investment, much loser capital markets and so on.
To compare Romania Post-Communist situation with any of these, is laughable. And non of those paths are even remotely even an options.
Romania could be more like Poland, the Baltics or more like Ukraine or maybe like the Post-Soviet 'stans' just with less gas.
And of those options its perfectly clear what the right plan is.
If you have some brilliant alternative plan for Romania please share because apparently you are smarter then literally every other post Communist leader in any of those small countries. Or better yet, try to get elected on that platform. Just be aware that the massive amount of direct money and other benefits will go away, and then go watch how many people will still vote for you.
Realistic best case for that plan is that you become Belarus.
Please don't go on lengthy off-topic rants just to put words in my mouth to disprove things I never claimed.
I never claimed Romania would have been better under Russian than the EU. I just asked you to show me that your claimed "help" they gave to Romania came from a selfless position without any financial strings attached in return for said help, because it wasn't.
Corporations in US, Germany, Austria, France, profited immensely, and still do from their operation in Romania they bought with cents on the Euro/Dollar. In fact, they often make higher profits fleecing consumers and customers in Romania than those in their home countries. EU and NATO accepted Romania because they could profit from them, that's it. I know, I worked for German and Dutch MNCs and saw the numbers coming from their offices across the world. Their offices in Asia and Eastern Europe were bringing in significantly more revenue per worker than those in NL simply because the consumers and workers in those countries get much worse deals than those in NL and Germany. It's basically neocolonialism with extra steps.
That was my point, that EU and NATO orgs are purely business transactional and nothing you get from them ever comes for free, and nothing in your follow-up comments disproved this, you just went on offtopic rants throwing accusations in my direction.
Later edit: also, on the NATO side, many Romanian troops died protecting US interest in Afghanistan, because I guess that's where America's borders are somehow, when they invoked Article 5 after Osama hit NY with two planes. Well in that case, a Russian drone hit us last week. Can US troops now please go die for us by invading Russia? Thanks. No? Well then that's the double standards I was referring to, that we only exist to serve their interests, buy their shit, die for them and that's it. Where is that mythical benevolent "help" you talked about?
> I just asked you to show me that your claimed "help" they gave to Romania came from a selfless position without any financial strings attached in return for said help, because it wasn't.
And I told you that huge parts of the Romanian government budget came from the EU and that has been going on for decades. And what they had to 'pay' for it was to a agree to a set of rules that are beneficial for it as well.
At this point your defense is basically just denial and I can't take you seriously anymore.
Not having Romania would arguably be better for the EU no matter if some companies make ok business in Romania.
And Its also funny how you say 'I never claimed X' when the reality is you claim nothing because if you did you would have to propose an actual alternative, and any alternative you could come up with would be worse. Yes foreign companies are going to make money operating in your country, but that is not neocolonialism other then in your fantasy.
> nothing you get from them ever comes for free
Its almost certain the EU could have received much of the same trade and business benefits without cross-funding such an outrages amount of Romania's government and infrastructure for decades. The EU did that because it is an ideology and not just 'business'. There is a reason people in Germany and Britain were angry at EU, they have been funding much of Eastern European governments for decades. This is a simple fact that is undeniable.
> Later edit:
Romania sent troops to Afghanistan before they were part of NATO.
And NATO Artical 5 does not force you to send troops either. So please stop embracing yourself.
And you can dislike NATO and the American response to a single drone attack, but the US is giving you a nuclear umbrella that many countries would kill to have and many country spend huge parts of their budget on.
The GP provided the examples of free help Romania got from EU. The reason the response is long is because you asked more questions.
Here is something you did not bring up: nobody is forcing Romanians to buy EU goods. Romanians also buy a lot of Chinese and Korean goods. EU companies who make money off Romanian consumers compete with Chinese companies.
The fact that there are very few things made in Romania is not due to EU neo-colonialism- is it due to Romanians. There are one or two bright spots in Romania (Dacia, UIPath) but when the best educated young Romanians still cannot wait to leave the country you will not see local champions. And this is 37 years after the fall of Communism.
maybe you are a Romanian living in Romania. Maybe you will be able to convince Romanians to separate from EU and NATO. If that happens, I can’t wait to see the sequel.
>Romanian banks were looted by Romanians in the 90s: see Paunesu brothers and BRD. Also see Dacia Felix bank, Bancorex.
What does this unrelated thing, have to do with what I was talking about, like banks like BRD being sold to French Groupe Societe Generale and BCR by Austria's Erste Group. Bringing up random whataobutism isn't arguing in good faith.
>Re: F16 - romanians are flying some hand me downs from Holland which were purchased at the dizzying price of 1 euro.
Just do some googling mate before talking:
The U.S. Response: "Not Our Problem"
The leaked WikiLeaks cables from the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest revealed that U.S. diplomats and visiting Pentagon representatives had absolutely zero sympathy for Romania’s economic misery.
The cables showed an incredibly aggressive, transactional approach by the U.S.:
The Ultimatum: U.S. representatives told Bucharest that if Romania chose a cheaper European alternative (like the Swedish Gripen or the Eurofighter), or if they tried to delay the purchase due to their financial crisis, it would severely damage Romania's political standing in Washington.
The "Don't Care" Attitude:
American officials explicitly communicated that Romania's internal economic issues were their own problem. The U.S. objective was to secure the deal for Lockheed Martin, lock Romania into the U.S. defense supply chain, and ensure Romania paid its "dues."
The "Political Insurance" Reality
The cables exposed a deeply cynical dynamic that shocked the Romanian public when WikiLeaks published them:
The U.S. viewed Romania as an easy target: American diplomats noted internally that Romanian politicians were so desperate for a security guarantee against Russia that they could be pressured into buying things they couldn't afford.
The Romanian capitulation: Desperate to keep Washington happy, the Romanian Supreme Council of National Defense (CSAT) bypassed normal public tendering laws in 2010. They officially approved the acquisition of second-hand American F-16s, admitting privately that it was a political decision to appease the U.S., despite the fact that the country was in the middle of severe, painful economic austerity.
> Since I can remember Romania did not produce oil
HEllo?! Austria's OMV buying Romania's oil reserves for the rock bottom price of 600 million Euros in order to lift EU veta? Then pulling the same shit again for lifting the Schengen veto? It's an extortion racket.
>you sound like a Romanian nationalist
Pointing out the crimes of our partners and allies is now "nationalism"?
I'm surprised to read this on HN. Normally I stay away from this crap, but today I'll bite: the Romanian government did very well to sell Romtelecom, BCR and others. And I hope they'll sell more, like Tarom and other money sinks.
Purchase price in jet deals is never straightforward because every deal is different. Variables could include: training (school + flight hours), weapons, contracted maintenance, spares, airfield infrastructure upgrades, engine overhaul etc. The only real way to compare is cost per flight hour.
Yes, by doing the poorly paid hard labor jobs the locals didn't want because they can chill on welfare, you know, the whole "muh labor shortage" bit.
It's not like Germans, Dutch etc or the "new europeans" they imported, were rushing to wiping the asses of their elders in their own care homes or picking fruit all day in the sun on their own farms.
What was left to send home after that wasn't "significant" by any stretch, after paying taxes, rent and CoL to further boost the local economy and the wealth of the local asset owners.
It wouldn’t be full Chexit. Just renegotiating and then rejecting the Schengen chapter. It would then be up to the EU to execute its Guillotine clause.
> It would then be up to the EU to execute its Guillotine clause.
These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of attitudes and suggestions are precisely why so many folks have come to be anti-EU. Nevermind the actual other real day-to-day issues with the organization.
I'm sure you're also staunchly against Scotland and any referendum to join the EU, and against Catalonia becoming independent as well? Why should Taiwan be an exception and not part of China? Seems many of the EU are of the opinion that "We support sovereignty when it conveniently aligns with my chosen organization".
The default and perhaps what is best for democracy is to have many smaller nation states, city states, and the other various confederations and the like. The super-organization of nations into these unwieldy states is in many respects anti-democratic and perhaps only temporary as these large nations and alliances were built precisely to fight other, large nation states.
>These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of attitudes
This is a strange framing that itself usually comes from a standpoint of moral superiority. When you sign agreements with a governing body, like the EU on freedom of movement, and you break that agreement then there's consequences. And I don't mean that in an underhanded agressive way, but just literally you've broken the terms you had negotiated.
The superiority complex really often seems to come from countries like Switzerland or the UK in the Brexit situation. Countries that already have often privileged deals and then decide to forfeit them, which they are allowed to do, it's not an attack on their sovereignty, the EU is not mainland China and Switzerland or the UK were not Taiwan, they're free to do what they want, they just can't have their cake and eat it too.
> This is a strange framing that itself usually comes from a standpoint of moral superiority. When you sign agreements with a governing body, like the EU on freedom of movement, and you break that agreement then there's consequences. And I don't mean that in an underhanded agressive way, but just literally you've broken the terms you had negotiated.
I don't think so. Even in the case where the Swiss or UK are breaking agreements or demanding changes to those agreements, it isn't something that's uncommon as countries and nations and companies and all sorts of entities break or renegotiate agreements or contracts all the time. In the case of Switzerland let's say they no longer feel the EU's freedom of movement policy works with the existing agreement because the EU has failed to protect its borders. You're painting a breaking of the agreement in the sense that nothing has changed in the agreement, but that may not be true and so breaking the agreement by the Swiss would have actually been because of a break in the agreement by the EU.
These interactions taking place and then now all of a sudden the Swiss are to be the recipient of some draconian action "we'll show them" is not really that strange given it's relatively straightforward to see how these two entities can reasonable come to a disagreement which may or may not resolve itself.
>it isn't something that's uncommon as countries and nations and companies and all sorts of entities break or renegotiate agreements or contracts all the time.
what the Swiss are trying to do here is very uncommon, in fact it's so uncommon literally nobody has ever done it before. No country in history has imposed a numerical population cap on its population, and in addition, freedom of movement isn't a detail. It's the very core of the Treaty of Rome and the Schengen agreement that Switzerland is part of. That Europeans can now move freely between countries is the bedrock achievement of virtually all its labored for.
And the EU is not going to do braconian measures, the EU does not bully its smaller neighbors. Britain wasn't intimated, threatened and nobody tried to interfere with it when they wanted to leave. THey decided to do so and did. Swizterland can cap its population and deny freedom of movement, nobody's going to bully them, but they're obviously not going to have the relationship they had with the EU.
To even rhetorically compare the EU to the US (which has threatened to annex an ally's territory) or China (which throws minorities into camps and threatens a democracy with force) is pretty damn absurd. Ask Taiwan if they want to trade places with Switzerland on the world map if they could.
> what the Swiss are trying to do here is very uncommon, in fact it's so uncommon literally nobody has ever done it before. No country in history has imposed a numerical population cap on its population, and in addition, freedom of movement isn't a detail. It's the very core of the Treaty of Rome and the Schengen agreement that Switzerland is part of. That Europeans can now move freely between countries is the bedrock achievement of virtually all its labored for.
I think you are putting this referendum on a pedestal it doesn't need to go on. All countries control population to some extent, whether that's in how they support parental leave or how they support mothers, or through immigration control, quotas, points systems, &c. Switzerland is just adding in another wrinkle. Plus all legislation was at one point new.
Sure it did. Spain just gave 500,000 "undocumented migrants" a residence permit. They can now freely move throughout the continent. That sort of act was never envisioned when the Swiss agreed to FoM with the EU, which for most of its history was used only by a tiny minority of people all of whom had a similar culture.
The EU/Swiss agreements don't have to be negotiated as a whole. The whole guillotine clause schtick exists only to try and transfer as much power to the EU Commission as possible. Nothing stops European countries being reasonable and looking for ways to work with each other on whatever areas they can agree; it's a deliberate ideological choice to refuse.
What EU-Switzerland agreement was broken by the EU by this action of Spain? And please do be exact which one and how. Otherwise stop telling lies.
> Nothing stops European countries being reasonable and looking for ways to work with each other on whatever areas they can agree; it's a deliberate ideological choice to refuse.
Yes, and it's the fine and reasonable ideology of protecting your own (in this case EU members') interests against the interests of other countries. Which is why neither the UK nor Switzerland nor other non-members can pick and choose. Makes them understandably unhappy of course, but so what? They are protecting their interests and we are protecting ours.
The treaties don't explicitly say "you may not grant residence en masse to city sized populations of illegal immigrants", because not doing that was considered so obvious it didn't need to be said at the time they were written. Such treaties don't cover a lot of possible but unlikely eventualities, which is why it's bad and wrong to make treat renegotiation artificially difficult.
> it's the fine and reasonable ideology of protecting your own (in this case EU members') interests
It doesn't protect their interests. That's the whole point. If it were about protecting the interests of European countries they could negotiate their each interest individually and independently with each other. The EU construct is deliberately designed to ignore the interests of any specific member state in favour of the interest of a new entity, the European Union, which has an entirely separate set of interests that don't correspond to the interests of the people living in it.
> Which is why neither the UK nor Switzerland nor other non-members can pick and choose
They actually can pick and choose and both have done so successfully. Hence why the EU/Swiss relations aren't governed by membership and why the EU has agreed to work with the UK on various interests without requiring membership (despite denying they'd ever do this at the time).
So no treaty was broken? Why did you write "Sure it did" when you know it wasn't?
> They actually can pick and choose and both have done so successfully.
They didn't. What happened was that some parts of some treaty were renegotiated or amended and agreed by both parties. Which is quite common in any such relationship.
You can use that definition of breaking a treaty if you like. But it's not a good idea. It sends the world a message that negotiating with European countries is dangerous because to avoid getting screwed you'd have to write down all known common sense and social conventions in the text of the treaty, and probably include the contents of a specific dictionary as well, and even then they might just do something crazy you never predicted whilst claiming the agreement was being respected.
Note: this argument was actually used by the pro-Leave faction in the UK. They explicitly argued that any deal Cameron reached with the other EU member states would be worthless because European countries can't be trusted to honor their agreements when it becomes ideologically inconvenient. And that argument landed, which is why Cameron returned with a vaguely worded emergency break deal and then never mentioned it again - nobody took it seriously, and he was forced to campaign on the state of the union as it was, and lost. So these tactics do have a cost.
Treaty law just doesn't work with 'common sense and social conventions' any more than compilers that won't compile your 'common sense and social conventions' text. You have to say exactly what you want, nothing more, nothing less. That's the work of lawyers and negotiators. As my lawyer friends say, well-written agreements make good friends (and vice versa).
But also note that you are the only one against Spain creating a path for a group of people that live there to gain legal status. No one mentioned that as a specific issue worth raising at international level. It's a non-issue.
> But also note that you are the only one against Spain creating a path for a group of people that live there to gain legal status.
Nah I have an issue with it too, conceptually. You're basically rewarding bad actors for breaking rules and laws which is unfair to those who were and are trying to immigrate legally. At a minimum.
Immigration isn't a moral good, it's just a switch we can flip on or off. Too few people? A given society can have more permissive rules. Too many people? Have more restrictive rules. Being an immigrant is just a random status one has by virtue of moving to another country - it's just paperwork.
I'm probably missing something but your last sentence doesn't seem to agree with the rest of the post. If it's just paperwork then surely nothing bad happens not following it (mostly because it's just not possible to immigrate lawfully to most countries in this age).
Note that I'm not defending unlawful immigrants; but once you spend a large amount of life in a country and you did nothing bad I don't see any issue with said country allowing you to stay. It's just acknowledging the status quo. Of course having a safe legal path to residency is obviously much better but too many politicians today as well as in the past are incentivised to disallow that.
> If it's just paperwork then surely nothing bad happens not following it
Well not filling out the paperwork means you'd be in the country without authorization which you know just subjects you to being deported or fined or to face other penalties depending on the laws and regulations of that country. So to your point, nothing really "bad" per-se happens by not following it. You just might be deported or fined and then you have to just accept that reality.
> Note that I'm not defending unlawful immigrants; but once you spend a large amount of life in a country and you did nothing bad I don't see any issue with said country allowing you to stay.
Sure, but conversely if that country decides you're not allowed to stay there's nothing wrong with that. Just being in a country for a long time doesn't retroactively grant you citizenship or anything. Though some countries may from time to time decide that it does, which I find unfortunate especially for those who are pursuing the proper methods. We shouldn't encourage breaking of rules or laws in our societies as a default.
> Of course having a safe legal path to residency
Well in the US at least we do have a safe and legal path to residency. Most other countries around the world are far, far more strict on these requirements.
> It wouldn’t be full Chexit. Just renegotiating and then rejecting the Schengen chapter. It would then be up to the EU to execute its Guillotine clause.
This is pointlessly argumentative, but I'm just going to continue having a conversation using the terminology brought up by the OP and what I interpreted them to mean. It seems to be working just fine for us.
> These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of attitudes and suggestions are precisely why so many folks have come to be anti-EU.
This would be a hilariously dumb reason to be anti-EU when the other major Western power, the US, has had a much bigger "we'll show them", strongarm attitude for much longer.
You are mistaken. I am pro-Scotland independence and EU admission but anti Catalonia independence. Simply because the former will expand and strengthen the EU and the latter will divide and weaken it, especially since it's supported by Russia.
I don't think it would be - you're focusing on the actions of the territory (for lack of a better term) and ignoring the parent organization.
It's a bit of a stretch to be upset at Switzerland who would be serving in a role similar to Scotland or Greenland here for voting to take an action and then being ok with it in other instances. There isn't any consistency in this position in how you are picking and choosing what sovereignty you respect and what sovereignty you don't respect. Well, you can be consistent if you are in favor of the EU as an imperial organization that seeks to enlarge itself and punish member states, but I'm not sure if that's your belief.
> You’re muddling wildly different situations with wildly different levels of sympathy.
I'm not sure they're really that different at a high level. The population of Spain would vote against Catalonia leaving. The population of the UK would vote against Scotland leaving. How can these groups (Scotland and Catalonia) self-determine to leave?
The UK government let Scotland vote, it didn't allow the entire nation of the United Kingdom to vote on it. And they allowed it because they know it will fail and the smart thing to do if your aim is to keep the UK together (much to Russia's dismay of course) would be to let these referendums proceed when you know they don't have the votes and then they'll sort of fizzle out over time. You did support Brexit though, right? I mean they voted on it after all.
> Greenland is a proposed military invasion and unilateral annexation.
I don't think that is/was the only option on the table nor do I think it was a serious threat albeit it did have the intended effect which was to help scare the EU straight on spending a lot more on defense in Greenland.
But let's say the US pulls together some package deal for Greenland, say, hey everyone who lives in Greenland if they vote yes to join the United Stats they get a million dollars and American citizenship (it could be something else, just a random example) and if they do so of course Denmark and the EU would be against it, but why? It's morally no different than dangling EU membership and billions of Euros in eventual aid to Scotland if it were to leave the UK.
> The UK government represents the UK. Everything doesn’t need to be a referendum.
> Irrelevant. They allowed it.
Respectfully I just don't agree with your framing here. Another wrinkle could be Northern Ireland if we want to go into this further with the UK specifically.
> But it was on the table. That makes it distinct from the other examples.
It was on the table but it seems that it was on the table as a bargaining chip for a different aim which was to scare the EU straight on spending the money necessary to secure Greenland and these arctic routes. While I agree that the situation itself is distinct, that's true of basically all separatists movements, whether that's Scotland, Taiwan, or Catalonia.
Setting aside American "threats", we can look at tools the United States could use, similar to tools the EU can use with respect to Scotland, to achieve a popular vote in favor of secession that would be detrimental to the organizing entity (UK/Denmark). At what point is such a thing hostile, and at what point is it simply a population exercising what we consider to be a fundamental right? Is Spain being undemocratic by not even permitting Catalonia a vote on independence?
How do you feel about the separatists movement in Alberta? Would you fully support that as well if they decide on a referendum in Alberta to leave Canada? What about Quebec? Genuinely curious.
Directly, no, but it's very relevant to our discussion about secessionist movements that sprung up.
Don't you find it interesting? I would think you would support it, or do you not?
Strategically the government of Canada should do as the UK has done and permit the referendum precisely because it's very likely to fail and to not permit it gives secessionists ammo for further action and debate.
Those "guillotine clauses" mostly exist because member states didn't want to cede their sovereignty to the EU. If a treaty covers areas where member states have shared or full responsibility, it must be ratified unanimously by every member state. (Which in some case requires ratification by regional parliaments.) Any changes to such treaties must also be ratified, which means there will be 30+ parties negotiating and trying to win new concessions.
Well there's anyway going to be a referendum about the bilateral. (which is why I find the initiative somewhat stupid, you can vote on the real deal in a few years, about whether people want or do not want to have agreements with the EU, instead of hiding it behind a fake/emotional reason)
For Switzerland it would be significantly worse since they are surrounded by Germany, France, Italy, and Austria. So all trucks would be stopped at border. Food prices are already super expensive and this would make it worse.
They think it's a failure because their political class refused to use the new powers to implement the will of the people on immigration, not due to economics (which, again, were not affected).
Brexit was a referendum on immigration. It was the number one issue. Yet, successive governments since Brexit have turned immigration up to 11. No wonder they think it's a failure, the will of the people was ignored (and it's having real political blowback, with both major parties about to get reduced to dust according to polling).
That seems like an unreasonable interpretation of what I said, which was just pointing out the futility of the Swiss position. EU can impose its will at essentially zero cost no matter what the Swiss do.
Nothing lasts forever. Good times will come and go and so would bad times.
I think as humans we are used to small time frames which are proportional to our own lifetime.
But the world: say climate, population, geology etc. moves at a much different cycle, if at all you can call it a cycle since none of the iterations are exactly the same.
So the lesson is this: change is coming. Change will always be coming. Embrace it.
If you like something, you have to struggle to preserve it as much as you can, for as long as you can, but you can never make it permanent.
> we shouldn't stop insisting that things change for the better
I never said we shouldn't.
What I meant by "Change will always be coming. Embrace it.", is to accept it as a reality, be ready for it and prepare for it. That means, be ready to resist negative change and accept positive change.
Even after successfully resisting negative change, the end state may still be different than before. This is what we have to accept and be ready for, mentally.
