I know its a basic question, but i can’t really find info on the internet on what benefits there are to joining the E.U…
What economic, political, domestic, militaristic, international, etc. benefits are there to joining.
A basic answer would be that the new joiners will tend to have a lower GDP per capita than the EU average. As such, they might expect (and would probably receive) substantial grants.
As you can probably see, I don’t know a whole lot about this. I believe that a substatial part of Ireland’s recent growth has been helped along by grants, but that’s just based on a 1 min news story. Might help you in your searches, though.
See
http://europa.eu.int/index_en.htm
(or, if I wanted to be snarky, I’d say something about them wanting to pay the French farmers to sit on their butts and whine, but I don’t feel like being snarky, so I won’t)
Also, they see it as a way to counter-balance the US domination of the world stage. Right now the US is big enough, and powerful enough that it can pretty much do whatever the hell it wants and there’s not a lot that anyone can do to stop us, short of lobbing nukes (which, outside of a few crazies, no one wants to happen), so if the various nations of Europe can pool themselves together and speak with one voice, they can keep the US from going off in a manner they feel is half-cocked.
Also, there aren’t trade barriers within the EU, but there are between the EU and countries not in it, I believe. So, joining the EU opens you up to all the EU markets.
This was certainly true about the formation of the European Community, but it is certainly not one of the major motivations of the Central and Eastern European countries’ desire to join, which essentially boils down to economic improvement.
Why do countries join the EU?
Because they consider it to be in their national self-interest. As full members they will enjoy free movement of people, goods, services and capital with the other member states, and they expect this to contribute to national prosperity and security.
yes, that’s precisely what they want. i guess they view it as a shortcut to their economic problems, which unfortunately i don’t think it is.
joining the EU can basically mean:
-solving unemployment: E. Europeans can migrate more easily to W. Europe in search for jobs instead of getting stuck in their home countries and creating unemployment
-more trade: less tariffs, less barriers, expected W. Europe to be a potential market for granted for its products, especially agricultural produce
-loans/grants: basically to help the E. European states’ economy get on the right track through financial, technical aid
but that’s all the things that the existing members do not want, so i doubt the expansion of EU is gonna be soon and successful. at best expect Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic to join first because these countries have more stable economies.
Um… may I respectfully suggest that you’re totally misinformed about the timing: yesterday, Ireland ratified the Nice Treaty, which now guarantees entry into the EU by 2004 of the three countries you mentioned, as well as Malta, Cyprus, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Romania and Bulgaria are charted for 2007, with Turkey an applicant, but sidelined due to its poor human rights record.
I guess it’s down to what you mean by “soon”…
yah, saw the Nice Treaty report on the news yesterday. but does this directly lead to a straight admission of the above states at one go? maybe to put it in another way, if it does not, the 3 states i mentioned will probably be considered first.
The ten named states are all expected to have been admitted before the next parliamentary election, which is due in June 2004.