Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

our existing standards in welfare and health care coverage.

So without knowing more specifics, it could also be plausible to say only three times as much.

Incidentally, the EU has pledged €15.6 billion to help fight corona abroad. The US $500 million.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_604
https://www.usaid.gov/coronavirus

given the culture in Southern Europe, they should always get more (and they think they deserve ten times more than they get, no matter how much is given).

Yes, I have also noticed that EU is doing much more to keep immigrants out before they arrive at the borders than USA is doing Sometimes such policies fail, e.g. we failed to keep the wave of Syrians out by attempting to bribe Erdogan (who just took the money and then did not deliver), but yeah, it is a solid part of official policies in EU.

Also wonder what you would do. Send the Wehrmacht?

t Cuba is doing. We don't want to be worse than Cuba,

But you are worse then Cuba

Quote from: Belfrager on 2020-04-15, 12:44:41

But you are worse then Cuba

To be clear, Portugal joined the EU a little over a month before I was born (1986) and Estonia in 2004.

Presidential press conferences are getting even more fun. Today's was an absolute shit-show starting out.

As to the Syrian conflict, I would have liked to see more empowerment for the Kurds. The Kurds were the only ones with the capacity to keep ISIL in line and also the only ones who had the full right to it. That done, it would have been also possible to threaten both the Syrian and Turkish regimes that Kurds would gain their own state at the expense of Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. Instead, EU did everything either weak or wrong in this regard.

EU is bad at wars in general. They allowed the Bosnian war to happen at their doorstep, and they permit ongoing frozen conflict zones in Abkhazia, Tiraspol, now Crimea. They never learn from the past.

As a minimum, I would like to see the kind of humanitarian engagement from EU doctors that Cuba is doing. We don't want to be worse than Cuba, do we?

Nobody is advertising

The EU war ministry is NATO. That won't change even with the US effectively suspended.

The US is leaving the Middle East. That is irreversible, no matter if who will be in power.

But Post-Yugoslavia has been a modest success for the EU.

It is a greater risk to your health to listen to Trump than not to listen to Trump.

The US will forever have its meddlings in the Middle East whenever another opportunity presents itself. If not the US, then Israel, which is the same thing because these two go together.

It is a greater risk to your health to listen to Trump than not to listen to Trump.

We in the periphery get that EU regulations should be harmonised and this has been done. But why the hell is e.g. Google News and Youtube main page in the Baltics suggesting near-exclusively Russian material out of the box? Why cannot we get stuff from Amazon under the same terms as Germans get them? Are we not supposed to be a single economic area among euro-currency countries? Why are border policies imposed on us without any regard to obvious threats such as Russia under Putin or the wave of Syrian immigrants? EU has managed these issues so miserably that even in Estonia we have a Trump-style party in the government right now. Luckily the PM is not of the same party, and not a Trumpite to the least bit, but he is in dire straits.

The EU treats its periphery as remote periphery, not as an organic shelter of its own heart. One can be the member of the euro club and swallow all the directives ahead of due date, but none of it matters when one is a "new member" at the periphery. We are like tiny little colonies to them. We are still treated as more of a stranger than Russia, more of a stranger than Turkey, more of a stranger than UK and USA. Wtf?!

Yeah, I know this will never change, because if there were some such ability, the EU would have learned from some of its egregious past mistakes such as the ones cited. My policy suggestion for my own country is to behave the way Southern Europe is doing: Say yes to everything, accept all the money, ask for even more, but do whatever is appropriate in our own particular interests and be happy with it. The feudal style of governance by EU directly requires a rebel serf style of response at the periphery. Of course this is destructive, but its EU's own destruction. EU never listened when we were absolutely right and never learned from the mistake when they were absolutely wrong, so let's not waste any more good effort in that direction.

but again the power lies with the EU members, not the EU itself.

The real power lied with the nobles, sometimes even their vassals. That is close to my preferred model of the EU, as a treaty organisation, a Hanseatic League if you wish. Such an organisation cannot do what you here ask it to do.

The real EU is slightly more of a supernational organisation, but again the power lies with the EU members, not the EU itself.

Russia and Putin are a threat to us? Typical Western propaganda doing well

Quote from: jax on 2020-04-19, 20:24:48

but again the power lies with the EU members, not the EU itself.

The power lies with some EU members. It is not a one-man (country)-one-vote organization. Smaller, peripheric countries need to be smarter than the central pachyderms.

There had to be, absolutely had to be a common policy and solidarity about how to meet Syrian refugees and now how to deal with the pandemic, to help the countries where the threat is most immediate. Total fail. EU is nothing when it comes to things that matter.