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GaussianCopula posted:Interesting graph from the WSJ which shows that reforms can have pretty significant impact on unemployment. Just wanted to post it as a follow up to my post in the old thread a few days ago. Labour market reform is very much overrated as a solution to economic problems. Since 2012, we've had Draghi's promise to do 'whatever it takes' to save the euro effectively putting an end to the euro debt crisis, lower interest rates, QE, a falling euro, and lower oil prices, In Spain, there's been a a bailout of the banking sector and an easing of the rate of austerity. Moreover, the unemployment rate doesn't tell the whole story; there are now ~18 million people employed in Spain as compared to ~20 million in 2008, so the fall in unemployment is also in part explained by a reduction in the size of the labour force and migration. There's an exhaustive analysis here (.pdf) which I'm just going to quote because I'm lazy: quote:Spain is no poster child for fiscal austerity and structural reforms. The country’s recent growth performance itself is less impressive than it appears at first sight, and owes a lot to an easing of fiscal and monetary policies and a (temporary) boost to consumption from lower inflation. There is little to suggest that structural reforms are prompting companies to move up the value-chain. Spain’s relatively strong export performance largely reflects cost suppression and a strong rise in exports of fuels, raw materials and food, some which will be reversed as domestic demand picks up. And the flipside of cost suppression has been stagnant nominal GDP and hence little deleveraging: Spain remains a highly indebted economy. The country faces the daunting challenge of trying to improve productivity in a climate of persistently low inflation, high levels of domestic and external debt, restrictive macroeconomic policies and serious demographic problems. That's not to say that there isn't a whole lot of reform necessary, but that reform (depending on the country) should involve investments in education (particularly vocational education) as well as the public employment services, as well as more reliable unemployment benefits for flexible or marginally attached workers to promote mobility and prevent poverty. Simply focusing on more flexibilization doesn't help anyone in the long run, because in the best case it just creates lovely jobs that will be lost the moment the next recession hits.
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Mar 8, 2016 12:15
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Dawncloack posted:So essentially you are saying that when it is extremely easy to fire people, and companies know that come next economic trouble lots of people are going to be unemployed, consumption is going to crater and the work orders are going to evaporate, they hire less? They hire less people on relatively expensive permanent contracts. This is actually the flipside of employment protection legislation (EPL), because when a crisis comes companies fire fewer people than they would in a more flexible labour market. So while strong protections can hold down employment they also dampen unemployment. Companies are also more likely to invest in training for their employees when they are on permanent contracts (this effect may not apply to the public sector), and employees in turn will be more loyal. There is no strong evidence that EPL increases unemployment rates in general. What is however a bit more certain is that employment is slower to recover from crises in countries with strong EPL, and also that it shuts young people out of the labour market. Of course in a country like Spain (or in any of the Mediterranean countries really), you have a large degree of segmentation in the labour market where a majority is well-protected in their jobs and the minority on temporary contracts have no security whatsoever. And the latter are always the first to lose their jobs in a recession. But you're probably not going to solve that problem simply by reducing employment security for everyone else too.
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Mar 9, 2016 18:14
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Dawncloack posted:I agree but I see no other policy proposed either from Brussels or the PP. 'Brussels' is actually proposing tons of policies to help (at least, that's the intention) the Spanish economy and labour market, and subsidizing them too. There's a whole framework of coordination of member state economic policies, the European Semester which for instance issued recommendation for Spain to improve the quality and effectiveness of job search assistance and counselling, to improve the coverage of the regional minimum income schemes, and a bunch of other things. But it is rather toothless in actually getting the member states to comply with the regulations and it doesn't get a lot of press attention either (also, the associated documents function really well as sleeping aids). The liberalization obviously gets more attention because it's the most contentious part and affects the most people directly. Also, of course, without Brussels there might very well not be a Spanish banking system anymore. No argument on the PP though.
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Mar 10, 2016 00:31
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It's really rather amusing how, in the years prior to the euro crisis, the ECB held interest rates low to stimulate the German economy and thus fuelled the credit bubble in the GIIPS, and people are screaming bloody murder now that the situation is the reverse. It's almost as if the euro was a really bad idea.
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Mar 11, 2016 16:03
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GaussianCopula posted:A) Doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. Exactly my point. GaussianCopula posted:B) The situation is not reversed. The ECB is continuing to stimulate the German economy, or to be more precise, it's financing the refugee crisis/Wolfi's Schwarze Null. They just had to expand the types of debt they are allowed to buy under QE because there is too little German debt available. The German economy really doesn't need any further stimulus or lower financing costs for the government. That cheap money has to go somewhere, and it's more likely to be in financial assets or housing if government debt is unavailable. Maybe Germany has sufficiently strong macroprudential policies that it can contain bubbles, but that's not likely to be the case everywhere. GaussianCopula posted:C) Southern Europe lacks the economic infrastructure that can be stimulated. Certainly not monetarily, as is becoming clear. But the issue is that we've heard so much about Southern European irresponsibility that people forget just how much the ECB-fuelled credit bubble set the GIIPS up for the crisis. Also, this action by the ECB isn't about GIIPS government finances, but about getting banks lending again. Outside of Greece govt financing is not an immediate issue and government spending is anyway constrained by the stronger governance of member state finances and economic policies introduced after the crisis.
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Mar 11, 2016 17:42
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Dominionix posted:There also seem to be a lot of statistics suggesting that the cost of contributions made by the UK far outweigh the economic benefits, though I struggle to identify if this is just "out" campaigns dressing up statistics to suit their own argument. What are your thoughts on the claims that Britain could simply go on to foster their own trade agreements with China / Australia / Russia et al? The US for one has said that it is not interested in negotiating trade agreements with individual countries. This is not just because they want to avoid Brexit, but also because negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) is a very complex and time-consuming affair (the average trade agreement IIRC takes around three years to negotiate). There are real concerns whether the British bureaucracy is capable of negotiating an exit from the EU, let alone take on the additional task of negotiating all these individual FTAs. In fact, Cameron's office earlier this month released a report suggesting that negotiating an exit within the treaty-specified deadline of two years might not even be feasible. Even supposing that the UK could negotiate FTAs by itself, the question is whether the terms of these agreements would be as good as those achievable by and within the EU. The EU obviously has a lot more bargaining power than the UK.
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Mar 14, 2016 19:16
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OwlFancier posted:I mean the total area of germany (which apparently increased by 30m2 in 2011??) My German isn't great, but apparently it has something to do with the move to an electronic mapping system for the cadastre. Anyway, please don't build a moat around Germany. I like being able to cycle over there and buy drugstore supplies at a third of the price you pay in the Netherlands  .
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Mar 15, 2016 14:59
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GaussianCopula posted:Can someone explain to me why this chart looks the way it does? Why was the Global Financial Crisis and Euro crisis only a hiccup for Germany while most other European nations seem to have a lot of trouble dealing with it? You may be interested in this study of the German labour market response (.pdf). In short, firms had a lot of internal flexibility: employees took saved-up working-time reductions, took shorter working hours, and firms kept people aboard (hoarded their labour) by accepting lower productivity. Additionally, and somewhat luckily for Germany, the firms hardest hit by the crisis were the ones that previously were struggling to fill vacancies. As a result, they did not need to lay off workers; they just lost the need to hire more. Additionally, it seems that while Germany kept creating new jobs, more of these were in the service sector and fall under the category of 'atypical employment', i.e. agency/ part-time work with poorer wages and working conditions (another study (.pdf) which makes this point). And while the effect of strong employment protections against layoffs is disputed, it can't have hurt (in Spain for instance the initial explosion in the unemployment rate affected almost entirely people with temporary contracts, and not those with protected ones). There was also an important role for the government in compensating employees with as much as 67% of the foregone net wages due to shorter working hours through the Kurzarbeit scheme, which saved ~400,000 jobs. The Netherlands had a similar scheme which lasted until mid-2011, and also helped keep unemployment down in that period. So the German labour market worked better than elsewhere. Unfortunately, the German model is not so easy to replicate, since labour market institutions tend to be based on historic developments, on the kinds of industries a country has, on the education level of the available workers, etc. usw. (all this in addition to what Chainsaw Charlie said)
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Mar 17, 2016 20:20
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The Kurzarbeit scheme was a fiscal stimulus (costing ~$16 billion in 2009 according to the link - while it may have existed before, the scale of support was larger than anything previous). EU leaders also decided on a fiscal stimulus plan late in 2008 to the tune of 1.5% of GDP. This worked, at least until the debt panic broke out. The subsequent austerity policies in the periphery essentially amounted to an elimination of automatic stabilizers. So no, Germany isn't proof of anything like that. But the articles I posted don't discuss automatic stabilizers anyway, they discuss labour market institutions. Pluskut Tukker fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Mar 17, 2016 |
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Mar 17, 2016 20:58
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GreyjoyBastard posted:This but unironically [the EU legislative process]. Where would you like to start (also, how bored are you prepared to get) ? The EU has a pretty good guide explaining the institutions and procedures. But the actual politics and policy-making are far more involved in practice, as are the interaction between the member states and the EU institutions, not to mention the role of subnational and transnational actors.
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Mar 22, 2016 23:38
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GreyjoyBastard posted:I do love goon summaries, but thanks for the easy link (which may be useful to other folks, which is part of why I asked instead of googling). I'm doing a master's in European Studies myself, so I think it's rather fascinating, but reasonable people can differ on that point  . Unfortunately, where and how and under what procedures decisions are taken or laws made may differ per policy area. And even when decisions are taken or directives adopted, member states are not guaranteed to comply with them in full. Also, not everything the EU does falls under the category of hard law or regulations; there is a great deal of cooperation and 'soft'policy coordination and influencing which does not have formal powers of law. So I'm afraid writing a good summary is entirely beyond me (also, the Europol threads so far didn't make me feel it was worth it to try), but I can comment on particular policy fields, mostly the economic ones.
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Mar 23, 2016 00:33
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As a Dutchman I'm getting a strong sense of déja vu here (the mortgage interest deduction was pretty much the third rail of Dutch politics - touch it and you die). Although at least there have been some measures, such as capping the deduction, limiting the size of the mortgage, ending the frankly insane deduction for redemption-free mortgages and limiting the deduction for interest on mortgages to 30 years. Our government still seems to be hellbent on murdering the social housing market though . I don't think anyone really knows how to pop a housing bubble without having a major crash - around a third of mortgages are now under water and housing prices dropped by at least 15% since 2008. Pluskut Tukker fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Mar 25, 2016 |
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Mar 25, 2016 13:03
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GaussianCopula posted:Maybe you could just copy the German labour law instead, as yours seems to be hosed up beyond repair. French and German labour laws really are not that different in substance, though German law allows for longer use of temporary contracts. However, there's really is no strong evidence for the idea that the problem of unemployment can be fixed by reforming your labour laws. Countries are as likely to see higher unemployment after a flexibilization of labour laws (because previously protected workers can now be laid off) as they are to see raises in employment. The only difference labour market rigidity seems to make in who becomes/stays unemployed: higher rigidity appears to be correlated with higher youth unemployment. However, by OECD rankings Germany has a higher degree of rigidity than France, and lower youth unemployment, so even there the difference may be explained by the state of the economy, the effectiveness of the education system, or what level of minimum wages you have for youth. In short, putting the German labour code under the copy machine would solve precisely nothing.
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Apr 1, 2016 11:58
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GaussianCopula posted:I'm not sure that the OECD ranking is really the best method to compare Germany to France. Looking at the reports for Germany http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/Germany.pdf and France http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/France.pdf you can see that a lot of differences aren't even influencing the overall score. Have a look at item 5. The metric isn't the greatest, but given the complexity of labour market legislation in general it isn't a bad place place to start. The interesting thing though is that South European countries (Spain in particular) now have far looser regulation for the flexible side of the labour market than Germany does, and it hasn't helped them at all. Anyway, my post was really based on the academic literature I've read on labour market regulations and less on the OECD's metric. Also, the point remains that it is really rather difficult to transfer public policies and regulations from one country to another.
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Apr 1, 2016 13:29
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Pizdec posted:Can you provide a source? Sure! Unfortunately this generally requires academic access. A recent overview of the literature on employment protection legislation (EPL) can be found in: Heyes, J. and P. Lewis (2015). "Relied upon for the heavy lifting: can employment protection legislation reforms lead the EU out of the jobs crisis?" Industrial Relations Journal 46(2): 81-99. (the answer, following Betteridge's law of headlines, is no) The literature goes back a long time, but the conclusion by and large is that many other things than labour market structures play a role in unemployment, as argued in Nickell, Stephen (1997). Unemployment and Labor Market Rigidities: Europe versus North America. Journal of Economic Perspectives 11, 3: 55-74. (you can also find this in the Le Monde article I linked to earlier, which shows a very diffuse set of correlations between labour market reforms and unemployment in EU countries. Proper fiscal stimulus may have effects on employment that are at least as strong as any labour market reform). A generally accepted idea is that strong EPL dampens increases in unemployment during recessions, but recovery comes slower afterward, leading to a prolongation of higher unemployment. This is most famously based on: Blanchard, Olivier, and Justin Wolfers (2000),The Roles of Shocks and Institutions in the Rise of European Unemployment: The Aggregate Evidence, Economic Journal. Unfortunately, while most of the EU crisis states are now technically out of recession, their economies remain fundamentally depressed in many ways, and in the GIPS countries there is already an extremely flexible section of the labour market which has so far not contributed to major increases in employment. Thus weakening EPL is as likely to worsen the problems as it is to contribute to recovery of employment. Strong EPL has often been suggested to be at the root of high youth unemployment in Southern Europe, see e.g. de Lange, M., Gesthuizen, M., & Wolbers, M. H. (2014). Youth labour market integration across europe: The impact of cyclical, structural, and institutional characteristics. European Societies, 16(2), 194-212. But even here people have made a good case that the impact of EPL is not necessarily to blame, see Noelke, Clemens (2011). "The consequences of employment protection legislation for the youth labour market." Arbeitspapiere - Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung 144. (I think this one is freely accessible). All of this is not to say that the current states of employment legislation or the labour market structures in many countries are not problematic, but reforms are not a panacea that will fix all of the the unemployment problems. Some further sources: Skedinger, Per (2010). Employment protection legislation: Evolution, effects, winners and losers. Edward Elgar Publishing. Viebrock, E. and J. Clasen (2009). "Flexicurity and welfare reform: a review." Socio-Economic Review 7(2): 305-331.
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Apr 2, 2016 15:58
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Humans Among Us posted:Does anyone know what is in the association treaty with Ukraine? Us dutchies are having a referendum on it but the arguments are all over the place and super vague.. Nobody knows, because the referendum is not fundamentally about what's in the association agreement but really about just how much you hate the EU and distrust elites of all kind. (for the record, the vast majority of it is completely unreadable and highly technical stuff about trade , regulations, and dispute settlement that will be a consequence of Ukraine adopting or approximating the acquis communautaire , while a smaller part of it has to do with assisting the Ukraine in developing more democratic institutions and fighting corruption. It also codifies previous agreements on visa-free travel for Ukrainians in the EU. I'm skeptical about how effective the EU assistance will be but it's probably worth a shot, imho).
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Apr 4, 2016 12:08
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Humans Among Us posted:Thanks, i was hoping you'd show up Aw thanks, that made my day .Humans Among Us posted:I agree with the first part and the geenstijl folks kinda said as much i believe. I'm kind of on the fence on if this will help Ukraine, but after skimming the (humongous) document and reading your reply, I'm going to vote yes on it. I'm not really sure just how much it will help Ukraine either, but to me it is quite clear that Ukrainians on the whole want this agreement, and their elected parliament and president approved it, so that's good enough for me. Voting yes on Wednesday too.
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Apr 4, 2016 15:51
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Tigey posted:What is overlooked by this argument, is that intra-EU influences exist and can diminish sovereignty - the process of national decision making. Greece's current situation has given greater leverage to Eurozone institutions. Now, it is not a violation of Greek sovereignty to negotiate various conditions as a prerequisite for further support/bailouts, with the alternative being Grexit. However, it is a violation of Greek sovereignty to interfere in internal decision making processes, such as specifying the exact nature of those cuts, penetrating decision making processes by emplacing officials within institutions, dictating Greek economic policy, etc. Attempting to influence the outcomes of its elections by issuing various public statements is also another violation. What I'm wondering though is how much this is really an argument about the EU. The demands that are being made of Greece are, after all, not that different from the kinds of reforms implemented in decades past in any number of countries as part of 'structural adjustment programmes' imposed by the IMF as a condition for funding. It just so happened though that the other EU member states and the ECB also became lenders to Greece rather than just the IMF. Though we now have a framework of EU governance of member state fiscal and economic policies, it is in most cases rather toothless, with Greece being an exception rather than a rule (well, Greece and the other crisis countries). You could make a case that running up unsustainable debts is far more damaging to your sovereignty than being an EU member per se.
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Apr 5, 2016 21:40
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Turnout in the bigger cities was around 12% by 2 pm, though lower than that in Amsterdam. Turnout needs to reach 30% for the referendum to be valid, so whether that will be reached is a crap shoot at this point. I suppose the best thing would be if that goal wasn't met (I'm still going to vote though), since the 'No'-vote has consistently led in the polls over the last few months, and very little of that is based on factual and reasoned arguments about the advantages and disadvantages of the association treaty ). If the government were to adopt a 'No' on the basis of the referendum it's going to be another diplomatic disaster for the Netherlands.
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Apr 6, 2016 15:05
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mobby_6kl posted:Interesting, there could've easily been as many people going to vote after work, which would put it very close to 30%. Or maybe everyone who wanted to vote already did. Apparently there are no results yet as far as I can tell, but there's this: "59% of eligible Dutch voters in Tokyo support treaty while 41% were against" which is nice but probably poorly representative of the home population, but who knows. First exitpoll says 29% turnout, with a margin of +/- 3%. The No vote got 64%, Yes got 36%.
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Apr 6, 2016 20:03
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Dawncloack posted:I find it really funny how the interior minister, Ronald Plasterk, is now saying that yeah, the result is valid but we have to change the law so that this poo poo doesn't happen again. "Instead of a minimum turnout maybe we should adopt a minimum number of votes against to make this kind of referendum valid", quotes El Pais. You have to understand that the people who pushed for the referendum as good as literally used the actual treaty we were voting on for toilet paper. They have gone on the record to say that they never read the association agreement, don't give a poo poo about the contents, and could care less about Ukraine. It just so happened to be the first possible subject of the new referendum law, and they chose it basically because it would be an easy subject to fearmonger about, as a country with a serious corruption problem and which is is at war, which according to them would soon join the EU as a result of the treaty and cost us poor taxpayers a lot of money (neither of which are true). So the referendum, for the opponents of the association agreement, wasn't about the treaty - it was an opportunity to make a statement against the EU. And because the arguments for the treaty are boring, technical, and not very relevant to most people, the no vote was always going to win. And I think the issue is that the referendum law wasn't meant to be used that way. So a lot of people decided not so show up because they didn't want to legitimise this use of the referendum, because this is what we have elected representatives in parliament and government for, or because they thought the people behind the referendum are assholes (or because they don't care about politics at all of course). But if you wanted the 'no' vote to be defeated, you could do that either by voting yes or by strategically abstaining from voting due to the turnout requirement. And so to get rid of the strategic voting/abstaining it would be far better to require a percentage of the voting population to make a positive choice, rather than a percentage of those turning out. In that case, everyone voting would know that their vote mattered. Now I would be far happier with Plasterk if he'd just stayed being a professor rather than a politician, and the lack of support for the yes vote from the parties in government was disgraceful, but he's not entirely wrong here.
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Apr 7, 2016 14:24
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Dawncloack posted:But here's my point: In the EU, whenever a democratic consultation doesn't go the way the European Institutions would desires, it is invalidated, one way or the other. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised; Dutch politicians would be well in their rights to do so, because the referendum is consultative, not binding. In principle, this leaves our government and parliament completely free to ratify the treaty after all and to accept any electoral price they would pay for that. That would be well within the law. Dutch politicians generally aren't that brave though (and we have elections next year), so they will try to find some kind of fudge to say that the demands of the voters have been met. But how can you satisfy the demands of no voters when the no voters either don't care about the actual topic of the referendum or when their complaints about it are not based on any concern that is grounded in reality? Also, should you grant a complete veto to whichever part of the electorate that shows up over legislation that has been passed by a broad majority in our parliament? Sure, our government could decide not to ratify the association agreement. But we share this European Union with 27 other member states. Is it, in that sense, democratic for a distinct minority to block the signing of a treaty that all the other elected governments of the EU signed, and that in fact our own parliament also approved last year before the voters that turned up yesterday said should not be ratified? I don't have good answers to any of this.
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Apr 7, 2016 16:54
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Friendly Humour posted:please stfu about guns punakone nobody gives a gently caress Still a more substantive contribution to this thread than the "discussion" about the treatment of Roma preceding it. LemonDrizzle posted:Here we go again, round 2 in a series of ?????: http://www.wsj.com/articles/greek-government-to-submit-pension-income-tax-legislation-next-week-1460483618 I googled the article to get around the paywall, and look what popped up: IMF says Greek debt 'highly unsustainable', debt relief 'essential'Greek deb - draft memorandum: quote:"Despite generous concessional official financing and further reform plans ... debt dynamics are projected to remain highly unsustainable," the IMF draft said. "To restore debt sustainability, in addition to our reform efforts, decisive action by our European partners to grant further official debt relief will be essential." We're going to be discussing this forever . I'd take the judgment of the IMF over that of the EU institutions any day though.
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Apr 12, 2016 20:18
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Ligur posted:Uhhh. The Swiss are about to post armoured vehicles on the border No they're not, because that would be insane. The forces sent to the border are infantry, and their job is not just to help guard the border, but also to take care of the arriving refugees. Ligur posted:#2 What was the fantasy part (stats were provided by http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/country.php?id=105) From this link: The UNHCR posted:The vast majority of those attempting this dangerous crossing are in need of international protection, fleeing war, violence and persecution in their country of origin.
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Apr 16, 2016 13:50
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Ligur posted:So just mechanised infantry (which deploy armour if not main battle tanks) and riflemen instead of Leopard battalions I take it you don't read German, and got your link to this story from Breitbart instead? The article says: "Von Panzern war nie die Rede. Von Kampfpanzern schon gar nicht. Wohl aber von Panzergrenadieren. Und das ist ein Unterschied". I'll translate for you: "There was never any question of armoured vehicles being used. And definitely not tanks. 'Panzergrenadiere' would, however, be deployed. And that's a difference." Because, like I said, it would be insane to use armoured vehicles for border control. What are you going to use them for, shoot people? Ligur posted:Yes indeed, there are hundreds of millions if not billions of people who face violence, persecution, poverty and so on in their countries and who would have it better in Sweden. There are by far and wide more people in Africa living in failed or semi-failed states than there are Europeans living in poverty. If we take in 100 million - a year - about the same number will increase the next year due birth. I don't want to make any other implications than pointing out that your links either suck (tabloids like the Daily Express and the Kronezeitung, seriously??) or don't support your argument.
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Apr 16, 2016 15:37
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Cat Mattress posted:Not surprising; see also the recently voted trade secret directive; which officially is about preventing industrial spying but really is all about preventing more Luxleaks and Panama Papers from happening. Germany, for one, would never let anything happens that would really try to put a stop to industrial espionage, since they're all about helping the NSA spy on Airbus on behalf of Boeing. You're saying that Luxemburg's prosecution of the whistleblowers is in line with the EU trade secrets directive, which has been passed to grant firms stronger protection against industrial espionage and has been criticised for failing to grant sufficient protection to whistleblowers, and which was broadly approved by the EU Council which includes Germany. But then again, Germany in turn doesn't really want to protect against espionage but helped pass the directive anyway to benefit Boeing, even though Germany effectively owns 11% of the shares in Airbus. I'm really confused now.
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Apr 25, 2016 12:07
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Vote Leave has discovered the best trick for Eurosceptics everywhere: raise the spectre of Turkey joining the EU. quote:Iain Duncan Smith, the former work and pensions secretary, has issued a statement on behalf of Vote Leave saying Theresa May’s speech confirmed the threat posed to the UK by the prospect of countries like Turkey joining the EU. He said: This worked like a charm in the Dutch referendum on the European Constitution in 2005, it will probably do its magic now, and ten years from now, someone will probably invoke this argument in some other EU debate in Germany or Denmark or the like, and Turkey still won't be an EU member.
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Apr 25, 2016 15:30
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Is Turkey even anywhere near being able to join the EU? I mean, just according to the rules, ignoring the rightful and not so rightful opposition to their ascension within EU members. The overview of its progress in implementing the EU acquis on Wikipedia suggests no. And at this point it's not even clear whether Turkey wants to join anymore. A Buttery Pastry posted:I assume that point was made to subtly undermine the Leave campaign? Haha, no. Pluskut Tukker fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Apr 25, 2016 |
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Apr 25, 2016 15:55
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Are you telling me a person in favor of the UK leaving decided not to use Switzerland and Norway as examples, and instead went for a bunch of post-Communist countries? Yes. quote:Britain will move outside the EU’s single market and instead join “Bosnia, Serbia, Albania and Ukraine” in a European free-trade zone if voters choose Brexit in June’s referendum, according to a vision outlined on Tuesday by Michael Gove. (I'd already forgotten about this until LemonDrizzle reminded me - too much craziness from Vote Leave to remember)
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Apr 25, 2016 16:35
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Cat Mattress posted:Yes, "prosecution of whistleblowers" is consistent with "failing to protect whistleblowers", I'm glad you realized that denying defense is a sort of offense. The point is that approving stronger protections for trade secrets, with the stated goal of defending against industrial espionage, is not on its face reconcilable with conducting industrial espionage. Also, governments are not unitary actors in all contexts. Finally, the whole trade secrets directive clearly wasn't necessary for the Luxemburgians to be able to go after whistleblowers; Luxemburg being a financial centre ensured that that would happen anyway, just like Switzerland went after Hervé Falciani. (edit: to be clear, I'm all for the abolition of Luxemburg, seeing as its very creation was a historical accident that could be rectified in very short order ).
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Apr 25, 2016 16:49
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Riso posted:Do you prefer to give it back to the Netherlands or would you rather split it between Germany and France? Why not give it to Belgium? Then they can deal with the impossible dialect they speak there. Plus the reason why Luxemburg became a separate country and not a part of Belgium (the need for the Prussians to garrison its citadel against the French) is not really relevant anymore. Pluskut Tukker fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Apr 25, 2016 |
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Apr 25, 2016 18:16
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Dawncloack posted:The tretaies didn't and don't allow anyone to be kicked out (though there are partial suspensions that have never been applied). Getting out though, is allowed with the Lisbon treaty, article 50 Also, suspension of membership rights is only possible in case of violation of fundamental rights, not in response to member state budgetary policies - those can at worst lead to fines being applied. But much though Spain or Italy or the other crisis countries might benefit from having their own currency again, none of them would benefit from the costs of adopting one, most importantly, the capital flight and financial crisis that would likely result from leaving the euro.
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May 4, 2016 12:28
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Randler posted:So those EU directives for, e.g. the organisation of working time or annual leave only apply to the citizens of those countries and not immigrants? The Posted Workers Directive and the Working Time directive apply everywhere, but member states may opt out of the maximum defined in the Working Time Directive 'as long as the individual workers agree' (it's mostly the UK to blame for this as far as I can tell). Obviously this opt-out almost guarantees abuse, particularly when most member states do not have the resources to properly enforce labour law anyway, see e.g. this horrifying story in The Guardian. The European Commission and the Western member states think that the Posted Workers directive is too weak to protect workers and want to strengthen it, and it's here that most Eastern European member states pulled the yellow card.
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May 17, 2016 22:45
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Lagotto posted:I'd have to check what the status is on the report for Germany, but I am quite sure France and Italy are being threatened with fines as well. I don't see any evidence that Spain or Portugal are being singled out. That doesn't mean we shouldn't just get rid of the EMU of course. Italy isn't in the Excessive Deficit Procedure so is at no risk of being sanctioned for now. Germany, as always, was told to invest more domestically to bring down its current account surplus France was given a deadline of next year to bring its deficit down below the required 3% so it's more like them getting singled out for leniency (you can find all the national recommendations here). . Portugal's program ended midway through 2014 and seems to have stopped reforming afterwards, and Spain last year posted a deficit that was a full percentage point higher than agreed with the Commission. So the Commission is within its rights to threaten fines, but I'd be surprised if the Council didn't find some excuse to shoot those down.
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May 18, 2016 15:15
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Tesseraction posted:I'm voting Leave because I don't agree with the organisational structure of the EU and overall lack of the unifying vision that it was founded on. When the EU was founded the great European project was fantastic and a great example of how Europe could work while united. And Brexit would solve that how exactly?
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May 23, 2016 15:18
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Tesseraction posted:Tangentially at best. At least outside of it my idiot countrymen can't blame the European bogeyman for their self-imposed misfortunes. Why couldn't they ? It's not like a solid argument is generally required as a basis for blame assignment (besides, the exit negotiations will probably give plenty of opportunities for casting blame on the EU). Pluskut Tukker fucked around with this message at 15:29 on May 23, 2016 |
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May 23, 2016 15:27
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Greece gets some money, some prospect of debt relief after all important upcoming elections will have safely passed by:Reuters posted:The euro zone gave Greece its firmest offer yet of debt relief in what finance ministers called a breakthrough deal that won a provisional commitment from the IMF to return to taking part in the bailout for Athens, heartening investors. The IMF approval is important since its analysis of the sustainability of Greek debt released yesterday (.pdf) shows to anyone with a remote sense of realism that it is not sustainable in any way, shape, or form, which would preclude the IMF from putting up any further money for loans. So the debt needs to be reduced or written off somehow, and at least officially that is what is going to happen ( spoiler alert: it won't be by enough).
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May 25, 2016 09:57
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GaussianCopula posted:The fact that the legislators would be risking their jobs if they actually stopped this law only underscores the fact that the majority of voters do not support their position. No, it underscores that the French government is really unpopular. Close to three quarters of Frenchmen are opposed to the law. Kassad posted:The CGT leader even has a Stalinesque moustache, c'mon: It does seem kind of appropriate that thanks to mr. Stalinesque moustache, the only newspaper you could buy in French kiosks yesterday was the communist one.
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May 27, 2016 13:24
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mobby_6kl posted:Does anyone know what's the status of the Ukraine visa agreement? All I can find is months old and no indication where it is in the pipeline. Apparently both France and Germany want to hold off on new visa agreements until some sort of 'snap-back mechanism' is in force, where visa-free travel can be suspended in case of some crisis (say if hundreds of thousands of refugees arrive). The Dutch government will probably also be happy with a delay since otherwise they would have to take responsibility for it, given that the Netherlands holds the rotating presidency of the Council. So Ukrainians will have to waitt.
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May 31, 2016 16:19
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boom boom boom posted:Would a return to monarchies really be a bad thing for Europe? Perhaps it wouldn't, if you're talking about constitutional monarchies where the kings and queens are pure figureheads whose main function is to serve as a non-partisan, unifying symbol. But I don't think the Greek monarchy has ever functioned that way.
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Jun 2, 2016 08:41
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