Ukraine, United Kingdom, Norway, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, Moldova, Belarus (once the idiot is dead), Russia (once the idiot is dead)
Ukraine: would be nice but it’d break the current farming subsidies program
United Kingdom: just a matter of time
Norway (and might I add Iceland and Switzerland): I’d love nothing more than this but we both know they won’t for different political reasons. Never gonna happen under the current treaties.
Serbia, Belarus, Russia: fuck no
everyone else: as soon as they respect the Copenhagen criteria, sure
If Serbia, Belarus and Russia switch to proper democratic rule of law, equivalent to Western Europe, why not? Integration is the best way to prevent wars. Just because they’re barbaric dictatorships now doesn’t mean they can’t get better in the future. Just look at Germany im 1940 versus now
True for Serbia and Belarus, but Russia is so big - both in terms of surface as well as population - that it wouldn’t really work with the way the union is currently structured. I’m not even sure if it’s possible to restructure the union in a way that allows Russia joining without them becoming an hegemonic power within the union itself.
I think you underestimated the bloody minded xenophobic national pride that dragged the UK out of the EU. It will be a long time before the political will to even try and rejoin emerges. Even then I suspect it will be hesistent as there’s no way the EU will give us the same deal we had last time.
Maybe I do. But I’ve already seen polls that appeared to be favouring (albeit marginally) the UK rejoining the EU. And this is only after a handful of years.
Please don’t take it as an offense, that’s not how I mean it, but I think Brexit showed that the UK needed the EU more than the EU needed the UK, so I expect those numbers to grow even further as the people realize it.
I don’t understand why Norway isn’t already in the EU.
Serbia, Belarus and Russia are a bad idea as their economies barely exist. We don’t want to be supporting them as they try to climb out of the economic black hole of their own creation.
Short answer: the Norwegians don’t want to. Why? I think it has to do with both their very high GDP per capita (which IIRC would make them pay large membership fees) and more importantly, the fact that they’d have to follow the EU’s common fisheries policy.
With the current arrangement they have to follow most of the EU’s laws but not the fishing ones.
Ukraine, United Kingdom, Norway, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, Moldova, Belarus (once the idiot is dead), Russia (once the idiot is dead)
If Serbia, Belarus and Russia switch to proper democratic rule of law, equivalent to Western Europe, why not? Integration is the best way to prevent wars. Just because they’re barbaric dictatorships now doesn’t mean they can’t get better in the future. Just look at Germany im 1940 versus now
True for Serbia and Belarus, but Russia is so big - both in terms of surface as well as population - that it wouldn’t really work with the way the union is currently structured. I’m not even sure if it’s possible to restructure the union in a way that allows Russia joining without them becoming an hegemonic power within the union itself.
I think you underestimated the bloody minded xenophobic national pride that dragged the UK out of the EU. It will be a long time before the political will to even try and rejoin emerges. Even then I suspect it will be hesistent as there’s no way the EU will give us the same deal we had last time.
Maybe I do. But I’ve already seen polls that appeared to be favouring (albeit marginally) the UK rejoining the EU. And this is only after a handful of years.
Please don’t take it as an offense, that’s not how I mean it, but I think Brexit showed that the UK needed the EU more than the EU needed the UK, so I expect those numbers to grow even further as the people realize it.
48% of us realised at the time :(
I don’t understand why Norway isn’t already in the EU.
Serbia, Belarus and Russia are a bad idea as their economies barely exist. We don’t want to be supporting them as they try to climb out of the economic black hole of their own creation.
Short answer: the Norwegians don’t want to. Why? I think it has to do with both their very high GDP per capita (which IIRC would make them pay large membership fees) and more importantly, the fact that they’d have to follow the EU’s common fisheries policy.
With the current arrangement they have to follow most of the EU’s laws but not the fishing ones.
Agriculture too. We’d have to massively cut tariffs and subsidies and very few farms would survive the transition.
Same reason as Switzerland: they would gain little to nothing but pay stupid amounts of money because they’re very wealthy.