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EU is honestly interested in integrating the Balkans even though it's gonna cost them and take a good while, it's just the price you pay for not having constant trouble brewing in your backyard. Everyone knows that having little states in Balkans that are easily courted and played against each other by outside major powers is bad news for the whole of Europe. See: WW1
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Jul 12, 2021 18:16
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Zedhe Khoja posted:nah just the one that domes women in burqas in their political ads Hey no problem. Manage to call out any of your genocide supporter friends yet or still yelling about that one ad from a decade ago for poser leftist cred? quote:Would Moldova have much support to join in the EU now? The net contributors dont want another hungry mouth and the net recipients dont want to have to cut the pie into smaller sliced. I assume Romania would support them though. Joining EU or Romania is a long term goal but moving the country in the direction of further integration, adopting free press protections, liberalising LGBT rights goes a long way to improve society. Unfortunately Georgia has been a good example before and has recently massively deteriorated (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 12, 2021 18:23
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Latvia was on a major economic upswing (especially in comparison to its neighbors) prior to joining. Hard to say how much of that was actually the EU's doing. In any case the EU allowed major increases in social sector spending to occur back then, which I doubt would be the case for anyone joining now. But the EU thing isn't really the main thing here, I just don't consider it some huge boon, and actively detrimental to building any kind of welfare state. Maia Sandu being a World Bank gargoyle is the more worrisome feature. Even if you consider her personally the least odious of the options to be head of state, her party having full control of the state isn't great. Ideally you'd want whatever slash and burn schemes she has to be moderated, even if only by the self interest of more local oligarchs. It's easier to pry resources and political control out of their hands than the multinationals. Somaen posted:yelling about that one ad from a decade ago for poser leftist cred? Your the one who brought the issue up. I don't know what it being a decade ago has to do with mitigating what he did. Dude was in his midthirties running for a real office with power over people. He wasn't some teenager making a video for his polisci class. Zedhe Khoja fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 18:26
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Baudolino posted:Would Moldova have much support to join in the EU now? The net contributors dont want another hungry mouth and the net recipients dont want to have to cut the pie into smaller sliced. I assume Romania would support them though. It's not about money. Direct contributions are a bit of a red herring. A country like Germany may be paying some money into EU funds, but it benefits economically to an outsized degree. The EU is general in favour of further enlargement, especially towards the Balkans. That project can only really proceed after some EU reforms though. Reluctance right now is about governance specifically in light of Hungary and Poland covering each other as they dismantle themselves. That state can't go on and before it is fixed enlargement is a no go. Afterwards though I'd expect more efforts to get the region integrated. It's just too appealing for many reasons: Geopolitically to ward off Russian and Chinese influence, economically as a source of labour and as a market… And the EU's ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ approach to internal borders has quieted quite a few border issues between EU regions, so it wouldn't surprise me if that's one impetus for further enlargement in eastern Europe.
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Jul 12, 2021 18:40
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In terms of corruption, I don't know if it's JUST the EU, probably not but it made a huge difference. 15 years ago you could straight up offer traffic police some cash to take another look at the infraction, and that's pretty much unthinkable now. There are of course still shady backroom deals being made, politicians employing their family, paying all sorts of "expenses" etc but in terms of day to day perception, it's a huge difference.
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Jul 12, 2021 18:55
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Zedhe Khoja posted:Latvia was on a major economic upswing (especially in comparison to its neighbors) prior to joining. Hard to say how much of that was actually the EU's doing. In any case the EU allowed major increases in social sector spending to occur back then, which I doubt would be the case for anyone joining now. It is true that for the 1999-2007 period our president was incredibly efficient at achieving her public governance goals - Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga makes almost every other Latvian president look like an Eton freshman good for nothing but speeches or grift. However, you should keep in mind that Latvia did apply to join EU in October 1995, and spent 7 years designing and implementing reforms recommended for accession. That is not to devalue the trade agreements and other domestic policy changes happening concurrently, but it would not be a particularly far stretch to say that Latvia was rebuilt from rubble with the express goal of an EU membership, meaning that it’s not trivial to do a before/after comparison. You’d have to go back before Ulmanis regime for that. As for major increases in social spending, I just disagree with that - the carrot of dealing out money to spend on fixing “objectively” broken parts is essentially the price EU “buys” countries for, the idea being that there’s a predictable timescale for that expenditure to become a net benefit to everyone. Sure, it doesn’t always work out like that, but to the tired “but Greece” we have “but shared ‘rona debt” now - EU may very well be eager to spend more. The fate of that rests in the €250bn secured by Draghi for Italy. If they deliver, it’s going to be spending time in Europe. mobby_6kl posted:In terms of corruption, I don't know if it's JUST the EU, probably not but it made a huge difference. 15 years ago you could straight up offer traffic police some cash to take another look at the infraction, and that's pretty much unthinkable now. There are of course still shady backroom deals being made, politicians employing their family, paying all sorts of "expenses" etc but in terms of day to day perception, it's a huge difference. This was very much my lived experience. I remember myself bribing my GP to get useful prescription meds instead of generic lowest common denominator stuff. I also remember traffic police shaking you down for a bribe on the road, threatening full car inspections and whatnot otherwise. Or stuff like my dad’s car getting bombed a few days after an important job promotion transpiring without a police investigation. Or stuff like having to bribe police for them to investigate a burglary. Or university degrees being bought for the price of a new washing machine. Or countless other examples of petty, low-level corruption that have been well within realm of science fiction for 5-10 years now. We still have corruption, and in fact we’re quite good at it - just look at all the Russian, Iranian, or North Korean money laundered by Latvian non-resident banks. What is important, however, is that neither that nor low-level poo poo is no longer accepted as a way of doing things, or even as much as tolerated by the broader society - in fact, corruption routinely encountered by ordinary citizens is increasingly extinct, and hides in more quaint subjects like envelope salaries. And with risks ever higher, the deals that make it worth it are large enough to often attract sufficient attention from Brussels or Washington, to make our politicians think twice about if that’s something they want to let happen under the umbrella of their liability. cinci zoo sniper fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 19:04
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Good Latvia Post We'll see, if the EU becomes some driver of leftist projects (or just apathetic to it) in Europe I'll be happy, but leftist Euroscepticism didn't exactly arise a priori. My suspicion is that the pandemic measures are just that, measures to combat an immediate crisis.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:20
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I agree with you that the risks are clearly there with this being a one-off stimulus as intended. I’m an optimist about those things, but it’s illogical to ignore austerity sabre rattling by the Netherlands or the Nordics either, and German election has plenty of time for curveballs to be thrown. Only time will tell, but with Eurovision and Eurofootball in the bag it would only be fitting thematically for Italy to hat-trick a more open European fiscal policy as a consequence of this year.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:34
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Corruption is one thing but even 10 years ago after the crisis the average salary in the Baltics were on par with Russia and you had pretty strong leave-EU sentiments encouraging to be more friendly with Russia to get cheap gas. Now though it's clear that the long term strategy of building up strong institutions and an independent judiciary wins out as companies want to be in a stable and legally predictable environment which is also something that attracts skilled immigrants. And we still have healthcare and welfare despite the scare stories about the Neolibs Coming For Everything Zedhe Khoja posted:Your the one who brought the issue up. I don't know what it being a decade ago has to do with mitigating what he did. Dude was in his midthirties running for a real office with power over people. He wasn't some teenager making a video for his polisci class. So no, still encouraging actual ongoing ethnic cleansing of Muslims by china while screeching about demons and gargoyles about to genocide Muslims based on an ad from a decade ago. Keep going bud, all Muslims are very proud, and thankful, and applauding your everyday posting bravery right out of frame Somaen fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 00:15
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Well, now that Poland seems to be on a fast track to piss of both the USA and the EU maybe they will offer our spot to someone, who knows 
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Jul 13, 2021 13:41
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…what have they done this time?
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Jul 13, 2021 15:21
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Antigravitas posted:…what have they done this time? Their (pis-packed) courts are going to try to answer the question of whether national law has precedence over EU law. Answer: only if you're Germany
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Jul 13, 2021 15:30
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Antigravitas posted:…what have they done this time? Well, against the USA: - there's a new bill of law presented that (if it passes) will deny a renewal of license of a TVN24 and TVN tv stations. Those have mostly the USA financial backing, and the bill says that in order to get a TV license, the station should have mostly EU-based financial backing. But we have a trade agreement with the USA and I've seen opinion from lawyers that it would lead to swift arbitrage case for vast damages, and since Duda already pisses Biden off, well, it does not look good against the EU: - our beloved embryo-loving constitutional tribunal will debate if the EU's law is, in fact, stronger than national law if the two seem to conflict. And, seeing as that is one of the first things a country accepts before joining the EU, if they do deem it so, the conclusion seems fairly simple... Keep in mind that I'm a layman in both fields, maybe even less than that. But it does not look good, I don't think.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:34
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Yeah, PiS is going against the US. They’ve lined up with Trump, who criticized western EU for not paying their share into NATO, and who pointed to Poland as a good partner, because we buy old US gear (F-16s, Blackhawks, Perry-class corvettes) without tenders. PiS used this Polish-American friendship as leverage in their constant fight against the big EU countries, painting it as an alternative to the EU. The problem is Other than buying American rust, nothing ever materialized. The biggest promise was something called Ford Trump - a large US army base in northern Poland, utilizing US troops transferred from Germany, where American soldiers are not wanted and about which Merkel and Trump were feuding. As with most US promises, this never moved beyond the dream stage, before Trump went out and the Polish government refused for weeks to congratulate Biden - they waited until the Giuliani cases all but died in courts. From that point on Biden would refuse meeting Polish politicians, and any talks they’d hold with Duda, the Polish president, would happen in loving corridors between the big boi meetings, which the Polish propaganda hilariously tried to play up. Trump’s ambassador went, but a new one did not surface. There was talk for a hot minute of an openly gay dude taking up the position, but this was quickly dismissed and nothing changed for months. We now know why - the US candidate is one Brzezinski Jr., a Clinton dude and a Democrat to boot. It seems there’s a bit of back and forth behind the scenes over this. Poland recently introduced legislation severely limiting claims on nationalized goods and real estate, aimed at the descendants of Polish jews who might want to sue Poland, who are backed very strongly by the US. On top of that, they’re openly making GBS threads on any western values, including LGBT, but also BLM and lately they moved to ban TVN - one of the larger TV networks that was always more center right or center than the right wing PiS would tolerate. TVN, created in the mid nineties to mimic a US-style TV network, always had foreign financing, but was outright bought by Scripps, who then got bought by Discovery, and thats Warner. Technically, TVN is owned by a Dutch holding company, and PiS is making a case this is breaking the rules and their proposed legislation only clarifies things, but the truth is the law right now is being executed selectively and pretty much all non Polish channels like HBO or other Discovery programmes would have to gently caress right off. But now we know this could also be more fuckery aimed at the US.
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Jul 13, 2021 18:52
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https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1414877329676021778?s=20
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Jul 13, 2021 23:00
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ok thats awesome
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Jul 13, 2021 23:04
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Lol Putin wrote what? Actually I know exactly what it's going to be so
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Jul 14, 2021 00:17
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mobby_6kl posted:Lol Putin wrote what? Actually I know exactly what it's going to be so He did a Sudetenland bit about Ukraine.
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Jul 14, 2021 00:30
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Its actually from 2018, but that doesn't make it any less fantastic.
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Jul 14, 2021 00:32
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CommieGIR posted:Its actually from 2018, but that doesn't make it any less fantastic. it's been done better too, I recall from 2015-2016 one of the units in the donbas perfectly recreated it but with modern gear
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Jul 14, 2021 08:34
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Too good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4lVRC295fo
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Jul 14, 2021 10:08
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https://twitter.com/mediazona_by/status/1415229086797115397 Luka's paranoia is still dialed to 11. quote:The main thing for today HUGE PUBES A PLUS fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Jul 14, 2021 |
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Jul 14, 2021 10:08
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I like them dragging the guy who is already waiting in line to get vaccinated anyway, vaccine hesitant countries should do this, but for real. wisconsingreg fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Jul 14, 2021 |
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Jul 14, 2021 10:28
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Yeah, we’re leaving the eu
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Jul 14, 2021 18:02
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Not without me lobbing a brick through a PiS window we’re not
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Jul 14, 2021 18:18
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Mokotow posted:Not without me lobbing a brick through a PiS window we’re not lobbying for polexit through a PiS stained window
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Jul 15, 2021 05:31
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 Is there gonna be a red tractor rolling around with a sign: "We receive from EU 1.6 billion złoty a week, let's defund our agriculture instead"?
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Jul 15, 2021 08:10
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The penalties we accrue because of the very clever decisions of the constitutional court and pis politics at large can reduce that influx of money.
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Jul 15, 2021 08:15
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Is expelling a country from EU even a thing? Like, genuine question, does EU have such a mechanism andor legislation to do it?
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Jul 15, 2021 08:22
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Erulisse posted:Is expelling a country from EU even a thing? In a word, no. But there are mechanism to suspend some rights. They've used it against Poland and Hungary. But no, you have to leave. The other member states can't force you out.
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Jul 15, 2021 08:29
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I think there's no mechanism to expel a member in direct terms, but there are suspension mechanism to limit a country's access to decision-making, and, much more importantly, funding. They've already suspended the funds from the upcoming recovery plan for Hungary, they might do the same to Poland. And then as the country gets less and less money out of the EU, the government keeps demonizing the EU as the enemy of the Traditional Polish Values, and build up to a Polexit referendum. I don't (yet) think Polexit is a very likely scenario, but I expect that's the preferred direction in some quarters.
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Jul 15, 2021 08:32
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gently caress off Batman posted:
What the hell, BeLux! I know Belgium is a failed state but still it's a a pretty rich one.
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Jul 15, 2021 08:35
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if all of these economically unviable countries leave the EU it will be hilarious until the 2030s start looking like the 1930s.
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Jul 15, 2021 08:37
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mobby_6kl posted:What the hell, BeLux! I know Belgium is a failed state but still it's a a pretty rich one. I suspect this is a balance of payments thing, more money is going into lux because its a strange corporate haven. It's like how most of Russia's FDI is to cyprus.
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Jul 15, 2021 08:38
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Thanks for the answers, got it. Just caught up on what happened in hungary so there were 'sanctions' against and it's just  Why would anyone speedrun corruption, nepotism and bigotry in EU 
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Jul 15, 2021 08:48
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post-soviet trauma? it hosed us up in many long-lasting ways.
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Jul 15, 2021 08:53
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Eastern Europe wasn't ready for "European values." We've been talking about this since they joined. in eastern europe, the racists are less polite and worse dressed
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Jul 15, 2021 09:02
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Bemused Observer posted:They've already suspended the funds from the upcoming recovery plan for Hungary, they might do the same to Poland. That is a purely procedural thing, unrelated to Orban’s dictatorship. quote:Under the rules of the EU’s recovery fund, national spending plans must address “all or a significant subset” of so-called Country Specific Recommendations through reforms and to set in place a monitoring system against “conflicts of interest, corruption and fraud and to avoid double funding.” One of the requests to Hungary is to “reinforce the anti-corruption framework, including by improving prosecutorial efforts and access to public information, and strengthen judicial independence.” Actual rule-of-law proceedings against Poland are slightly moving, and against Hungary are not moving at all yet. LGBT-phobia cases against both countries are in their infancy as well. Either of those things is going to take years to play out.
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Jul 15, 2021 09:45
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Vasukhani posted:if all of these economically unviable countries leave the EU it will be hilarious until the 2030s start looking like the 1930s. "Start"
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Jul 15, 2021 11:49
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mobby_6kl posted:What the hell, BeLux! I know Belgium is a failed state but still it's a a pretty rich one.
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Jul 16, 2021 00:28
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