TenuredVulture wrote:It's quite possible that the EU is a failure, one that the ordinary people of Britain have recognized before the elites have. I'm not sure of other European nations had a similar referendum the results wouldn't be similar. I think the recent Dutch rejection of closer links between the EU and Ukraine was understood to reflect deep skepticism with the EU. Same with the Polish election of the Law and Justice party.
except that the current president of the European Council is, y'know, Polish.
I'm not a fan of the EU. The Troika's treatment of Ireland and Greece was fucking terrible, especially from the viewpoint of debt relief (when the IMF are telling you to sort debt relief and ease up on austerity measures, maybe you've overstepped your mark). The democratic accountability and issues of transparancy are big, and the European Unification technocrats are fucking bampots. The Euro has been a costly mistake, and one the technocrats inexplicably don't want to reverse.Nonetheless, the framework does work. Nice big market, free movement, and the ability of any given member to veto actions means that countries have to put stuff to people. The legislation underpinning workers rights is useful too. And although not part of the EU, the European Court of Human Rights complements the whole set up well, and gives us a decent minimum baseline for human rights.
There are a lot of threats, but I don't think it's a failure yet. But the accountability and transparency thing is going to have to be tackled by them, much as Jerz's twitter fella was saying.
