The first step on the road of European Union was taken in 1950, just five years after the end of WWII, with the creation of The European Coal and Steel Community. The objective as stated by the then French foreign minister, Robert Schuman, was to make, "any war between France and Germany...not only unthinkable but materially impossible." At the time the coal and steel industries were the basis for military power.

Is the Europen Union bringing down its member states with laws that are not sutabel for all.

With the baning of smoking in public places having such an effect on the economy in European countrys as any social venue that you want to go to like pubs clubs resturantes you cant smoke at.

As a smoker if i cant smoke at 1 resturant i will go to another that will allow you to smoke on there premises meaning they have lost a few customers that are smokers. Normaly i have to eat on the teres of these resturantes but it is warm where i live so it doesnt bother me untill its winter and i dont go out to eat then.

I know they baned smoking for the good of the public health for all the non smokers and smokers but in reality it is not a law that will have a bigger positive effect than a negative effect.

Under EU law, selling fruit and veg that doesn’t meet requirements is illegal, and individual employees could be prosecuted. I dont care what shape my banana is curled naturaly or straightend by europe its a tasty fruit.

Under EU seeds marketing directives, seeds must meet minimum quality standards and old varieties fall foul of strict testing criteria.

what do you think about Europe are you proud of what Europe has done for you or your country or is it better that our own countrys goveren them selfs as not all European laws will benift the majority of European members.

The original concept of the EU, that is a free trade area, free movement of labour and the removal of tax barriers was a great idea. Unfortunately however, it has now gone way beyond that, and we now have an army of professional bureaucrats in Brussels who have arrogated huge tranches of what were traditionally National powers to themselves.

This is a bad thing, as being professional bureaucrats, they have no real idea of how the real world operates, and seek to impose a "one size fits all" regime on the very disparate cultures of Europe.

You mention the smoking ban - this has been discussed at length here

Fruit and veg are another area where we don't need unelected jobsworths seeking to impose their perverse notions of "standards" on us.

The CAP is a huge toilet on a permanent "flush" cycle, except that instead of water, it flushes money down the drain.

The whole edifice of the Brussels "government" is a massively expensive gravy train - great if you're part of it, but not so great if your paying for it. It is so endemically corrupt that the EU accounts haven't been signed off for about 13 years Link

All this may make me sound anti-EU, but really I'm not. I love Europe - I love the diversity of culture, cuisine and language. I live in a country which is not my country of origin. I love the freedom of movement that is now available to all Europeans.

But I hate the culture of the Brussels jobsworths, whose only thought is to create rules and regulations whose only purpose is to maintain the positions of the aforsaid jobsworths and their gold-plated pensions.

I could go on...

here here nisakiman.

Yes,
nisakiman you got to the heart of the problem.

Gravy Train, just about sums It up, we were conned into agreeing to a system that's been expanded Into a monster, consuming the European 'Mr Joe Public'.

Just one Instance.

How easy would It have been to designate smoking areas in pubs etc?

Maybe provide extractor fans, but spitefull legislation has prevailed and the closure of previous sucessfull businesses the consequence.

And when a referendum goes against them, they take another, until they get the 'right' decision.

The whole thing stinks, It should either be return to Its original aims, otherwise, the people should speak and this expensive failed experiment be abandoned.

I find this thread a very interesting insight into modern-day Europe. I really know very little about the everyday details of it, living continents away. Thanks for the comments so far.

Maybe I could give my insight as one from afar. I always assumed the uniting of Europe was to create a new super-power. I figured local European governments relinquished their sovereignty in order to get a piece of the greater pie of a strong united Europe. I always have loved Europe with its old ways and diverse languages and cultures, only matched by Asia in some ways. Uniting Europe meant a loss of this diversity. I figured that loss of national identity was part of the price of being a super-power, just like what happened in the United States and their "melting pot".

I am not in favor of any super-power, but I believe the EU is the base for the largest super-power yet, that will eventually englobe most of the world. Those who fight the bureaucrats today like yourselves, will in the future grow greatly in number and surround the world as we all merrily join into this great idea of a united world, lead by Europe's great ideas on unity.

Welcome to a one-world government!

Politics and bureaucracy do not work, nor have they, nor will they. The majority think they do, albeit is a long and drawn out process, but, no, they do not.

Don't worry, what you see, now, is on the verge of falling apart. All things must come to an end, no exceptions.

For the european's recent past and present might not be such a good idea but the world is due to globalization sooner or later.National identity and culture will be just a old memory in a museum.We already speak and write in an almost universal language that we were forced to learn in order to communicate.Look at this forum,ppl from all around the world with different cultures and languages,using english to communicate.Change is inevitable and i believe compromising one's national identity for progress and development is not as big price to pay.In the end we r all humans no matter where we live or what language we speak.

So as a final conclusion,what started as a economical super-power,as a response to the US and other conglomerates is the beginning of the globalization,and we like it or not that is the future...

The Eurpean Union is unbalanced in my opinion. They tell a country that they may only produce so much catle etc. while the whole country depends on agriculture. So they send that country to hell. A other country depends on fishing they put a quota on that too a other country gone to hell. Every country has to pay a certain amount of money to the European Parliament. One country more then the other. It just doesn't make any sense! They even put in standarts that can be completly diffrent to others. And they love putting their noses in to others their buisnesses.

Nope i don't like it. Every country should controle it's own country and not some burocrat in Brussels.

Unfortunately, I can't find a link to it, but recently on TV, I saw a couple Dutch researchers display a map of Europe that had the country-borders drawn up according to existing nationalistic movements: it was a patched blanket of little mini-states. Countries are always artificial, so I don't see how a unified approach in Europe would be different to the unified approach that already exists in most European countries. I certainly don't feel threatened by the idea that I could also be a "European", on top of all my local groupings.

Some of the unified regulations might conflict with 'cultural' things, like unified food-standards making certain local cheeses illegal to produce (or something like that), but I think the gain is bigger than the loss overall if you consider that countries can't undercut eachother by gambling with lower foodquality standards to go cheaper.

The way some of the standards are composed to make sure a certain country's particular industry isn't hurt by it (i.e. the automaking industry, ...), is perhaps a bit questionable, but that's down to negotiation, and a country's success at that depends on the folks they've voted into representing them.

That the organisation is still hopelessly squandering money is a seperate problem, imo -- it has little to do with the effects of the organisation, like being much better at resisting an economic crisis than we would have as individual countries. The stability it brings is worth the loss of a cultural bacteria-ridden cake or whatever product is supposed to signify our identity. The factories that made 'em, have long ago been forced to consolidate and globalize anyway, so the local artisan level is being diminished by economic factors rather than politicial, imo.

(interesting article by Paul Krugman: Learning From Europe)

I do have mixed feelings about Europe somethings they have done things i think are for the good of the European Union and there citezens like these. I was in a glass half full mood today thats why the positive post lol

1. The end of war between European nations

2. Democracy is flourishing in 27 countries

3. Once poor countries like Ireland, Greece and Portugal prospering

4. The creation of the world's largest internal trading market

5. Shopping without frontiers has given consumers more power

6. Co-operation on continent-wide immigration policy

7. Crime-busting co-operation, through Europol

8. Cleaner beaches and rivers throughout Europe

9. No death penalty (incompatible with EU membership)

10. Competition means cheaper phone calls

11. Minority languages, like Irish, Welsh, Gaelic and Catalan recognised and protected

12. Making the French eat British beef again This is one of the best things that Europe has done for Brittin. lol

13. Europe is helping to save the planet with regulatory cuts in CO2

14. One currency for Europe (but not Britain)

15. Strict ban on animal testing for the cosmetic industry

16. Greater protection for Europe's wildlife

17. European driving licences recognised

I lost the page where these came from but there some of the best things i think Europe has done if i can find the page again i will past the link to it it has in more details on these.

its all part of the "bilderberg group" plan

http://www.jeremiahproject.com/newworldorder/nworder04.html
I just added 1 of many links.....................look around...............make up your own mind!!!

im with you man! in 2002 i went to spain and for the first time i didnt have to change currency. just for that i was excited. i crossed the continent in my car at least twice, lots of 'frontiers' passed without any useless stops or checkpoints! despite all the bad things that they re trying to do in bruxelles (bloody lisbon treaty!) i still think that europe is something incredible in the history of our continent. we just need not to screw it up

Yes and No!!

But you can never have a perfect system!

A System that tries to obtain perfection is all we can hope for!

Ah yes, but the problem is that one man's perfection is another man's anathaema.

And who will adjudicate on that?

It's a thorny issue...

True,
A system that try's to ensure the most basic of human right's is good-EU

A system that ban's the use of religous icon's in school's (Cathloic/muslim/antichrist/DSRG) even if these school's are run by stated religon's is bad-EU

One point, looking at it financially from outside the EU, many countries are glad to dump some dollars and keep a stash of Euros, that are certainly faring better.

Alot of the posts so far are venting on the failings of the EU government and I would like to ask for some clarity here, more to nisakiman than most.
Is your problem with the idea of the EU or the implementation of the idea, as even the best ideas can be screwed up when mismanaged?
If its with the implementation then those issues can be fixed. If the whole scheme isn't working that's a different story.
I only ask because I am a supporter of the idea of a North American Union.

The EU, in it's original incarnation was called "the Common Market", and the concept was to create a Europe-wide trade area and a harmonisation of tarriffs so as to enable European countries to act as a collective entity on the global economic stage. This naturally meant relaxing border controls within the participating countries, thus making pan-European business much easier.

This was a great concept, and one which benefited all those in the "club".

Unfortunately, there was necessarily a bureaucracy which had to be created to manage and oversee the workings of this trade association, and it was decided that the headquarters should be in Brussels. Once the management structure had been set up, that's when "mission creep" set in, and the targets this commission set itself became ever more grandiose. They have gradually arrogated more and more power to themselves, until we now have a situation where many EU laws take precedence over national laws.

Thus it is neither the idea of the EU or it's implementation that concerns me. It's the fact that it has morphed into a totally different beast to the original. It has become a many tentacled monster, reaching into the very depths of our private lives.

There is really no comparison to North America. America is a relatively young country, and the different states weren't so dissimilar in that they had a pretty much common thread running through them, like the language, the legal system and the culture. Europe is another animal altogether.

When I say North American Union I mean expanding NAFTA until it is basically what you describe the original EU/ common market to be. But also to enact one Government to end Corruption and abject poverty in Mexico and the other Hispanic countries of North America. Pool all of our resources and give equal opportunity to all. So many of our jobs have went to Mexico because they only have to pay labour pennies on the dollar and no benefits, its not right for them or us My worry is that his Central Government would become the exact kind of monster you describe.