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...
    • tal@kbin.social
      19·
      1 year ago

      a nightmare of “equal but inferior” relationships between the west and east…Germany

      Pretty sure that this is Austria doing it and for domestic political reasons.

      And while I agree that attempts by countries to leverage their “inside before others” position to block other members is obnoxious, there have been vetoes from any number of countries. A while back, Greece was threatening to veto things to shift positions on Cyprus, for example.

        • federalreverse-old@feddit.deEnglish
          14·
          1 year ago

          Yeah shoot. I actually wanted to correct “push on” to “push in”. But hitting me with racism stick because I said Visegrad stands for illiberalism is lame.

            • federalreverse-old@feddit.deEnglish
              141·
              1 year 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·
                1 year 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·
                1 year 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.

            • Elchi@feddit.deEnglish
              10·
              1 year ago

              Thats so horrible that they where annexed by the EU. But why are they not as brave as the britisch and leave the EU?

    • tal@kbin.social
      13·
      1 year ago

      If the eastern countries were not run by prostitutes they’d split and form their own block.

      checks comment profile

      Well, you’re Serbian, yes? You are not in the EU. And you do have CEFTA. And you’ve got that Open Balkan thing.

      But you don’t want just that, because it’s small, yes? Same thing applies to the EU at a larger scale.

      Thing is – something that I usually point out to people from Germanic EU musing about how cool it would be if they could go break off into their own bloc – is that none of the Germanic/Latin/Slavic blocs are all that large on their own. Individually, you’ve got something like the population of a Brazil.

      I’m in the US, and we’re expected to bypass the EU in population this century, and we’re a lot more-politically-integrated. Even with that, we’re the shrimp among the largest powers – as China and India develop, they’re gonna get a lot beefier in terms of clout than they are today, even if today they’re poor, because they can leverage that population.

      So if the EU says “okay, not only am I gonna stay somewhat politically-not-integrated at the bloc level, but I’m gonna split into a couple of blocs” and on top of that have a smaller population than anyone else even before the bloc pie starts getting cut up, it’s gonna be tough to get enough population to have a lot of clout, I think.

      I mean, that’s an option, but I’m saying that it’s inevitably going to impact the EU’s position in the world.

      • zaphod@feddit.deEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Germany has neuter pronouns in German, and feminine pronouns in at least French.

        • there1snospoon@ttrpg.networkEnglish
          10·
          1 year ago

          You people amaze me with your hand waving of a tyrant despot who has legitimately shown he is willing to burn countries to the ground to expand his sphere of influence.

          But yes, magic indeed.

                • there1snospoon@ttrpg.networkEnglish
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  It isn’t that they must be. It’s that the larger powers around them will by default control the surrounding area, unless they suffer severe collapse.

                  The Roman Empire spanned all the way from the British Isles to the Egyptian desert once, and they held strong trade influence on the areas outside their direct control. It is the same here; the only question is who you would prefer to align with. The West, and the US/EU, or the East, Russia/China. That is simply the truth of geopolitics.