What are your thoughts on the European Union?

[binary solo]

fory77 said:

binary solo said:

Unless you actually meet certain socio-economic conditions the EU won't ask you to join, and even if you want to join they will tell you to bugger off until you have sorted some things out. So your entire premise is false. The EU never compelled any country to join, every country that's joined has done so because they have all percieved a much greater upside to being in the club than the downsides. And the countries that haven't joined are either unwanted by the EU because they don't pass muster, or they have not liked the downsides so have remained independant (Norway, Switzerland etc), and the EU hasn't done anything to force them into the union. And even with those countries they've had to sign treaties to agree to implement all EU regulations for any goods and services that will be exported to EU members and all interactions with EU members that are subject to any Eu regulations. So in effect their relationship to all other EU countries is no different to if they were full EU members anyway. 

As it stands now though, it's hard to argue the case that it would be particularly beneficial to join the EU formally rather than have a treaty / agreement situation a la Norway and Switzerland.

I-it's just a joke no need to be so mean :C

But then how did we (Bulgaria - a supposed higly corrupted mafia-ruled 3rd world shithole) join?

EU made the mistake of lowering the criteria for the east European countries formerly under the Soviet yoke. The idea being that it's better to have them in the EU and under western influence than potentialy returning to a pseudo client state status of a de-communised Russia.

No problem with doing this hypothetical excercise, but you have to make the premise as realistic as possible and hence you can't start out by saying the EU is trying to force VGC to join.

@97alexk doesn't Sweden have a highly liberal immigration policy all of its own accord? I don't think Swedes can blame the EU for any problems it's experiencing with immigration, especially not any refugeee issues. That's mostly self inflicted AFAIK.