Will the EU Fall Apart?

With Brexit already in the rear view mirror, all eyes are focused on French elections in May where the election of Marine le Pen could cause a striking blow to the EU. An article on cnbc highlights some of the details:


"It's difficult to imagine how the European Union could function should such a Euroskeptic (as Le Pen) be at the helm of one if its major economies … It would likely precede its fracturing," Michael Hessel, political economist at Absolute Strategy Research, told CNBC via telephone.

Le Pen has promised to renegotiate the terms of France's membership of the European Union if elected president in May. However, her chances of victory appear to be limited.

While this is unlikely to happen, following the U.S. Election and Brexit anything seems possible. Do you guys think that the EU could potentially fall apart, or is everyone getting far ahead of themselves?

 
Best Response

If France were to leave the EU there is not even the slightest doubt that the EU would fall instantly. The EU was in essence created to ensure peace between France and Germany and therefore peace on the European continent all together. Don't be fooled, the EU really is about Germany and France more than about any other relationship.

That being said, Le Pen is highly unlikely to get elected in France. Trump and Brexit are not reasons to believe something similar in France will happen. The fact that she is ahead in the polls doesn't matter much as France has a presidential voting system with two rounds. She is likely to come in either first or second in the first round, but in the final round any French person that does not approve of Le Pen (and there are many) will rally behind the other candidate, be that a republican or a socialist.

Now that being said too, I do think the Euro will eventually fall, and that could very well lead to a demise of the EU. The Euro is unsustainable because it is a fundamentally flawed instrument. Including countries like Italy and Greece in the same monetary union as Germany, Finland and Holland is just insanity. At one point or another, Italy will go bankrupt and leave the Euro, after which a depression will hit Europe and anything could happen. In my opinion, the EU is threatened more by the Euro than it is by populism.

 
PatrickStar120:

At this point I really don't see them going for much more integration than there already is. Maybe they should aim for less integration and move from there. In other news, the greek drama looks like it will return this summer...again.

Greece should have never been allowed into the EU in the first place: It simply did not have have the necessary level of economic development or responsibility.

 

Well, we used to be a lot more integrated (think the first decade of the 21st century) but then the crisis hit. As we all know, when times are hard people generally tend to be angry and that prevents them from thinking logically. That's why we're witnessing this ridiculous rise of populism in Europe. I hope that this is just a dip in the upward integration trend, not a complete reversion of it. When it comes to Greece - it was a mistake to accept them into the Euro zone in the first place. Now we have a massive problem because letting them fail would have catastrophic consequences. In my view the only way out of this situation is a fiscal union but in order to implement it the current populist wave has to come to an end.

 

Us Europeans are getting fewer and fewer and will never re-institute the superiority we once had as empires under the nation state model. We ought to hold hands firmly together because the rest of the world is really out there to get us. Asians, Indians and sooner or later Africa want a piece of us. As time goes by it will become clearer to everyone that the divisionist waves will cause a lot of damage and leave us exposed and, worse, to the mercy of foreign powers. The prize is Europe and the usefull idiots for that are the euroskeptic parties. Hopefully the old-saying, you don't know what you have until it's gone, doesn't materialize. What I'm hoping for is luck; that the EU stays afloat because a couple of generations down the line things will be clearer and the mission will resonate better with a vaster majority of Europeans. Europeans have more things in common and the colourful plurality of this contintent is what makes it beautiful, though never a cause of separation. Would support a European Nationalist movement, if not the development of a new European identity

Colourful TV, colourless Life.
 

First of all, what's the joke? Is Poland the name of a drink or type of tea in Germany or Russia?

Also, this bringing up Hitler is an implied non-sequitur:

Nation-State Diplomacy wherein countries provide their own military will likely result in a stronger military in aggregate across Europe (especially after Trump rips up NATO) and does not preclude the construction of militiariy pacts.

Furthermore, the EU and related Eurozone is doing terrible things for international trade in Europe. The Economic welfare of Europe could be increased by returning to a nation-state model, wherein fiscal and monetary policy are aligned.

Finally, It's been a while since "real" Europe has been attacked from the outside. Maybe you guys aught to think about the frequent domestic Islam attacks and its relation to the EU before you go write off nation-state diplomacy as an impediment to European Security.

 

Europe has become way too large for their purpose. To start with: they are not an optimal currency area - labour does not flow as freely as capital because of cultural differences, making crises hit even harder when they come. Also; we expaneded way too quickly towards Russias border without considering the consequences of adding "weak" countries.

Fixing the EU is never going to happen. It's a weird bureaucratic institution with people making insane amounts of money for not showing up when they have to vote on issues. People that decide on issues who will never be impacted themselves (politicians who want to open the floodgates for refugees, as long there is no refugee center in their own hometown for instance). The only way to fix the EU is to let it the whole project fail and start over again - and if we want to make it work - smaller, more agile and more intergrated. Have things worked out and solid before we start expanding our borders again.

 

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