Sparc said, *The UK originally had some good macroeconomic reasons to stay out of the Euro currency, these reasons are now more or less eroded. *
Careful. In our “Is Europe a common currency area?” thread, you set the UK aside, IIRC. It is by no means clear that a) UK is subject to similar macroeconomic shocks as (say) Germany or that b) Europe has set up sufficient counter-geographical fiscal mechanisms to remedy this problem.
I’m not claiming that you’re wrong, however: I’m merely saying that the issue is a contentious one.
I’ve heard that in heaven they have French cooking, German Cars, British police, Swiss efficiency and Italian lovers and that in hell they have British cooking, French Cars, German police, Italian efficiency and Swiss lovers. Is this true?
How MUCH does the EU government cost? I understand that Brussels is chock full of EU “ministers -of-something-or-other”, but in addition, you have another EU parliament in Strasbourg.I also recall that Brussels is in a building boom, because there are so many EU offices necessary. Sounds like you euros should have confined the EU to a free-trade union-it looks the the government moster you’ve spawned will devour you!
The European Parliament in Strasbourg isn’t part of the EU at all. It’s the legislative part of the Council of Europe. The EU is a strong political body containing most of Western Europe. The CoE, on the other hand, is a comparitively weak partnership of nearly every country in the continent.
Second, why would you call the EU a “government moster” (sic). Why the EU does have a large bureaucracy (and I use that in a literal, not a pejoritive sense), it certainly isn’t as complicated as the United States and a great deal of the offices in Brussels don’t belong to the EU itself, but rather to the NGOs that lobby to them.
The biggest expense in the EU is translation, which accounts for something like 30% of the EU budget. Unfortunately, a few well-placed people in the EU would have the entire machinery of government operating in English to save money, few in the administration have paid attention to language-rights concerns.
Both the Council of Europe and the EU parliament have their seat in Strasbourg. But concerning the EU, part of the sessions take place in Strasbourg, and part of them in Brussels. A lot of EU representants would want the seat of the EU parliament to be installed in only one place, instead of having to regulary move from one place to another. Brussels is more popular, since it’s a larger city, and more convenient transportation-wise (of course the french governement disagree with this idea and a brand new parliament building has been build some years ago).
Try this: because she is a moron? In fact it must be the biggest diplomatic faux pas in German post war politics. In fact it turned Shroeder’s anti]war stance around so that the whole thing looks anti-American. The upside IMHO is that it ruined some of his leeway and forces him to move closer to the rest of the EU leaders and a harsher stance on Iraq. That being said the damage it does to relations with the White House and the US is probably worse.
What we are more or less all asking ourselves over here is why she hasn’t been booted out of the Cabinet already. Saturday announced her retirement. Sunday (election day) her retirement was retracted.
Among the conservatives we were hoping that the incident was the straw that broke the camels back in the elections, but the Social Democrat/Green Party coalition won the election with a slim margin. However, the Herta Daeubler Gmelin debacle is estimated to have eroded the 5% lead that the Social Democrats (SPD) had in polls just days before her idiotic, a-historical, babbling, slur fest in Stuttgart. The SPD ended more or less equal with the Conservative Union (CDS/CDU). The slim margin that the left won with is attributable to that the conservative coalition partner, The Free Liberal Party (centrist) went back with a fraction of a percent, while the Green Party had a slight gain.
The Germans are incredibly embarrassed about Daeubler Gmelin, I can tell you. That’s pretty much general across the political spectrum, it’s almost a topic of conversation on par with the election. Saddly enough; as per the election results we are still waiting for her to resign.
No. That would be out of the immediate operational parliament budget (SW, HW, service staff, office supplies, etc. etc.). Of the EU Budget this accounts for a significantly smaller portion, not even making up close to a single percent.
Strange thing to say right after one has expounded on the whole translation machinery. In fact it is because of language rights that every parliament member, or institution, or citizen with business before the government and government bodies is guaranteed the right to choose to communicate in any of the 11 official EU languages.
Sorry, I should have been more clearer. I meant that few in the EU are looking at ways to save on translation while maintaining language rights. You can see from my SDMB handle that I am a supporter of the movement for the international language Esperanto. World Esperanto Association (a NGO in official relations with the UN and UNESCO) is, incidentally, one of only a couple of organisations in the EU working to maintain language rights, as the impetus to start using English for everything (or English and French like the CoE) is very strong.