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Full Version: E.U. : pro or against political union?
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This question was sparked cause i live in Greece. Given the current situation i was thinking that a politically unified Europe would be the best thing for most countries. What do i mean? European wide parties with members from all countries, one president, one government etc. of course countries would keep individual governments, but with way less authority, much like germany or the USA. I think that would reduce corruption as in greece for example the clientel relations between voters and political parties would have lesser effect.
There are some things to be considered before answering this question. EU is already slowly moving towards becoming a political union. The potential problem with political union is how would the interests of all the member countries be represented. For example, according to the Lisbon treaty EU Council will have less members and they will represent the interests of the major countries more. Lobbying is already taking place at EU level and there are more and more directives coming from EU through that way. And that affects all member states.



On one hand a EU centralised government could be more effective in fighting with corruption for instance because the main decisions will be coming from a mixed (nationality wise) government. On the other hand it's easier to affect one government than 27 separate governments if we speak about the interests of major companies for example.



In general I'd say I'm pro further EU integration but it's hard to make a definite answer without the specific details.
I was also thinking about voting. Germany has 82 mil population while lithuania for example has 3. The german candidate would always be ahead of competition. That could be equalized if 1 german vote would count as 1 vote and 1 lithuanian for 26. Then both votes would be equally strong. That would be useful for a period of adjustment until a mentality is created to not vote your countryman , but actually the person who you think is more capable regardless the nationality. just a thought
The problem is that big countries will never accept such system where their vote is equal to any other country's vote. Demographically that wouldn't be fair as every vote would represent a population of a different size. Also it would put big countries in a situation where they would have a minority of votes. Because of these and other issues I can't see equal voting being put in place ever. There were already great battles regarding the votes counting when Poland joined EU. Several mathematical formulas were suggested by various countries to count the votes.



Another issue by voting for foreign politician is that normally such politician is only known in his own country or in small number of countries. And because of that people wouldn't really know who are they voting for, of course with the exception of the most famous politicians.



We can discuss this of course but each country wants what is best for it. Therefore any major changes are being made very slowly.