A bit off-top drift to EU internal politics & Brexit, but trust me I'll wrap it up with Ukraine and War
exogenesis wrote: ↑Thu, 30. Jun 22, 09:42
Without the EU, the UK can actually get shit done
Fixed that for you
It might be my subjective opinion, but ever since the Brexit, EU seem to act somewhat faster, somewhat more effective and somewhat more sane - it really looks like UK was an odd man out.
Cpt.Jericho wrote: ↑Wed, 29. Jun 22, 23:26
At least parts of it. Though I'd prefer both to stay out. There's enough troublesome countries in EU as it is. Both were not really peaceful in the last decade.
I think the Ukraine war kinda proved who is a real troublemaker out of the two:
- Hungary and Orbán in the end become the last blocker
- Poland negotiated and evetually made a deal, like in old-school EU. People constantly say EU politics is principially about making a deal and the best deal is when both sides are slightly dissapointed. Well, both Morawiecki and von Der Leyen received critique in their respective parliments, but in the end the deal was made. This is also connected to Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth history, where we had really bad experince with veto power. Therefore, we're kinda hesitant to abuse EU veto power (and statistically Poland doesn't veto any more than other EU countries).
Now, how does this connect to Ukraine and Turkey?
Well, first, it's an obvious that single-country veto power must go away, coz on principle, it was made for much smaller union (like 12 countries?).
There is simply a country count, above which there will always be somebody to veto anything.
Given the recent records, I'd say we're there already and any further EU expansion, would require veto reform.
There is a nice idea to make, that veto would require 1/3 of countries with total population of at least 30% of EU. That might actually improve cohesion as it would limit veto abuse and would require coalition building.
The war in Ukraine kinda prove two things:
- 1 country veto sux
- sole Germano-Franco leadership sux as well
Now, without 1 country veto, but without proper veto reform, EU automatically become Germano-Franco domain. That's where new countries come in to ballance the things out.
Turkey - Turkey would totally break North-South ballance as in current fiscal condition, Turkey is basically Greece x10. In adition, if you complain about Hungary, Orbán and Fides party, then they looks like the nice guys, comparing to their Turkey counterparts. Turkey already extorted EU several times and casually threatens Greece as well.
Ukraine - size and mentality wise, they are basically another Poland, thus adding them would ballance the West-East divide of EU, boosting Eastern Europe voice (and recently Sweden and Finland seems to be counted in Eastern camp as well). Given the war dammage, Ukraine would be even more keen to settlements and negotiations. It's economy and population is much smaller than Turkey, so it would be much more viable to bring them back to shape in 5-10 years of admission timeframe.
I rather doubt Turkey can improve back to normal in that timeframe, both politically and economically.
Last, but not least, Ukraine would be huge investment opprtunity for Germany and France, kinda as consolation price for loosing Russian market.
However, long term, recovered Ukraine might make average Russians question how the things are going IN RUSSIA.it would open an oportunity and example to reform Russia as well.
I'm 100% sure Germany and France would prefere sane Russia, the entire Eastern Europe would like this as well.
Sucessful EU accession of Ukraine is rather safe, controlable and profitable WIN-WIN situation for everyone, while Turkey accession is kinda huge wildcard with a lot of red flags.
Don't get me wrong, Turkey in EU is doable, but there is a lot of things that have higher change of going wrong with Turkey in viable future timeframe.
Still, who knows, how the world will look like in 2030.
(we 've just "misunderstood" the intentions of those dirt bags, apparently .. 
is that right ?!)