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Are you pro or anti-EU ?
The European Union has just turned 60, and has never been so close to its end.
In March 1957, the Treaty of Rome was signed, establishing the European Economic Community (EEC). Its founding Fathers (Schuman, Spaak, Adenauer etc...), representing 6 Western European countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany), still cared about WW2 and its atrocities. In a world splitted in two antagonistic camps because of the Cold War, the European continent risked at every moment to become a new battleground, with the permanent threat represented by the nuclear fire.
A common market for coal and steel was the first step to prevent an arms race and a new large-scale conflict in Europe. But it was also the beginning of an integration project which final aim was the creation of a free trade zone and the progressive access of new members to a federal and pacified social Europe.
Thanks to the Common Agricultural Policy, Europe, which farms were small-sized (7 hectares on average against 200 for America) ceased to depend on American agricultural imports and achieved food self-sufficiency. Agriculture techniques in southern Italy, which were rudimentary and had remained unchanged for centuries, were modernized thanks to EEC funding programmes.
The EEC guaranteed the free movement of goods, capital, services and people in a ever-growing Europe without customs barrier, a federal entity progressively including new members.
The Schengen Area abolished passport and border controls.
Next step of integration was 1997, 40 years after the Treaty of Rome, when the Treaty of Maastricht was signed. It was the birth of the European Union and the Stability and Growth Pact. Europe decided to set sail in a new direction: the regulated free market.
Euro, the common European currency, was created, under the strict control of the ECB and German financial policy. That's when things took a bad turn, with an extreme bureaucratization of the European institutions, the unending debate on Turkey's accession to the EU, the Euro debt crisis affecting the Southern European economies, the migrant crisis leading to Brexit and the rise of anti-EU populist movements.
The 6 most Europhile EU-members are respectively Romania, the Republic of Ireland, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Poland and Luxembourg, the 3 most Euro-skeptical being Cyprus, Greece and Austria.
For my own part, as a Euromutt (and proud to be), I've always believed in a border-free, federal and united Europe. To be honest, I feel more European than French. It's a major component of my identity.
Moreover, I think that countries like France or Germany would be unsignificant outside the European Union, in a world dominated by long-established or emerging superpowers like the USA, China, Russia, India or Brazil...The United Kingdom may soon realize its mistake.
I'm fully aware that the EU is very sick, but dismantling it would lead us into a dead-end. What the EU needs is a deep reformation and find back the original spirit of peace and cooperation, not greed and competition, among peoples, as dreamt by the Founding Fathers.
What's your opinion, do you still believe in the future of the EU?
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Originally Posted by Guindé
Latin America
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