Austria’s interior minister Gerhard Karner recently stated that the government he is part of still believes that the Schengen area is “not functioning,” which is why they do not agree to expand it with the addition of Romania and Bulgaria. During a meeting with the Romanian interior...
  • federalreverse-old@feddit.deEnglish
    141·
    10 months ago

    Push in or push out, they can’t do either because the EU is explicitly structured so that Eastern counties are less powerful

    It’s structured in such a way that smaller countries have less influence. Gain a couple dozen million additional citizens, gain weight.

    Also, you may remember quite a few decisions where Poland/Hungary were blocking decisions that needed to be taken unanimously.

    I did always find the semi-cozy UK/FR/DE circles (now just FR/DE) a little off, because indeed they did indicate that the EU mattered less than the trialogue (now dialogue). Half point for you, I guess.

    The EU and the United States took advantage of the fall of communism (and also had a hand in bringing it about) so that they now for all intents and purposes rule over the region.

    Pretty sure (parts of) Central/Eastern Europe could have stuck to the SU/RF. Did any of those countries want that? I can only answer from my slightly GDR-tinged perspective that people really did want to be part of “the golden West”. (Later duckups throughout the 90s not withstanding.)

    As long as resources are being extracted, it makes no difference if Orban loves or hates trans people.

    Sure, companies just love to lower their costs by outsourcing. If it was legal to go to North Korea and they could be sure their investment wouldn’t just vanish one day, they’d set up call centers there. It’s capitalism (and to a degree, human nature). I wish it didn’t work like this, but it always does.

    However, with HU and the EU, this certainly is not a one-way street and Orban’s Hungary in particular has been adept at extracting public money from the EU and funneling it into corrupt structures. All the while demolishing the media landscape, justice system and propagating xeno|homo|transphobic ideas. Much of this goes directly against contracts with EU that Hungary voluntarily signed.

    The crux here is that the Germans, the Austrians, and the Dutch never believed that Eastern Europe is capable of self-governance. For centuries, their explicit goal was to control the region and plunder its resources.

    Is there any recent mainstream/influential politician in any of these countries who said any of that? At least in the German political landscape, I have never seen anyone articulate this kind of contempt.

    Hitler’s idea to make Lebensraum[…]

    You might want to remind yourself that the EU is not even close to being the second coming of Nazi Germany.

    • AccountMaker@slrpnk.netEnglish
      71·
      10 months ago

      While I applaud your honest attempt at a discussion, I should tell you that your words fall on deaf ears. This is a very common view in Serbia that the “west” is, and always has been, against us and that the evil west literally doesn’t do anything besides thinking up new ways to subjugate eastern europeans. If you say that nobody cares, they’ll point to events from 100+ years ago, if you say that some states are voluntarily cooperating with the rest of the world and happy with it, they’ll say that they’re slaves. If you say that absolutely everyone around Russia wants to stay the hell away from if, they’ll say how at least under Russian influence we won’t “biologically dissapear”.

      You can’t reason with unreasonable views. I don’t know how to deal with these people, but spare yourself the frustration and at least don’t hope that you’ll change their oppinions with reasonable arguments.

    • zaphod@feddit.deEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      The EU is structured so that smaller countries have more influence. They have the same rights, get the same representation in the councils and more seats per population in the parliament.