Subject: European Union

Official 6 that started it, correct, but we 3 came up with the idea (just not official yet)

Oh I see... someone else would like to share their opinions?

hmmm.. yea, okay, we are not in the EU and are highly developed.. but the EU is all about helping the less developed countries to develop faster. And Switzerland is one of the countries that does not come to EU mostly because they want to keep their money for themselves. And this is a bit sad, I think.

The problem about the EU is, that they do not really know what to know with the money.. Yes, like you said, some countries get much money and half of it just goes to the rich people in the country or is used for not so important things instead of really help the countries develop.

Ok.

I do think we should work together in Europe - even though it is dificult sometimes.

IMO the biggest problem in the EU is the agricultural subsidicies (spelling?).
More the 50% of the budget is paid to farmers and that is so stupid.
We pay a lot of money for expensive sugar produced in Denmark in stead of buying the sugar where it is cheapest and thereby helping the 3rd world.
I blame the french, that we still pay out so much to the farmers - but the agricultural commisionaire is danish and she is to weak (and stupid).

I do think the EU is roling in the right direction but not fast enough.

Your example with sugar is pretty good idea.

In my opinion EU isn't going in the right direction. Many things should be change to make it go in the right direction.

when you have 20 countries all wanting sovreignty and defending their own interests ahead of the good of the collective / world, you often end up with fudge-factor politics...it's just a bigger scale than you see within countries where politicians within each country do just the same...It's human nature.

I work thanks to financing from the EU, so I cannot afford to be as pessimistic as you are.
I think we have to come back to the roots of the EU, which was to create a common area in order to avoid wars in the future. I think the situation is normalized, which was utopy 50 years ago. I think just for that, the EU is worth it.
Jagafan90 :They (members of Europarliament) only sit and talk and nothing results from that
On that I disagree. Please just check the number of laws/regulations/decisions that have been implemented in all EU countries because of the Europarliament work. Of course some of them are useless/inadapted but let's not throw the baby with the bathwater.
In my opinion, it is too much economically focused today, especially because of the lobbies in Bruxelles. I hope someday their influence will be regulated, as it is eg in USA (please correct if I'm wrong).
People's wants should be more listened to of course, but it is pretty hard for Parliament/Council members to meet every single citizen. In France for instance, most of the citizens do not even know how EU works and they blame it for not going in the direction they want. It's a bit crazy and leads to things such as saying no to a constitution which more than half of the population did not even read/could not understand. Anyway, I was looking forward to see some change in EU communication towards citizens or at least a new constitutionnal project because of this "no". Nothing happened yet, and I hope Council members do not wait for French politics to launch an initiative, otherwise we are about to wait for a long time.

I think we realy need bring down funding to agriculture, because money wasting to farmers is destroying another more important funding.

I watched in tv that some Czech farmers had to end with work because some EU limits. I didnt understand it at all, but as example was that we have to bring down sugar production so we losted also our self-reliance in buying and we have to buying sugar from another countries. I dont know much about it it but these rules are realy strange and contraproductive.
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argument for food subsidies - cheaper food for people & ensuring a critical resource is produced within the EU - i.e. not reliant on overseas producers - which can be a horrible issue if things go wrong

Arguments against - waste as much food is produced and chucked away, unfair on developing natioins who cannot compete, unfair on countries in EU that get less of a subsidy than the big farming nations.

Strange: for sure.
Contra-productive, on an individual level, yes, on the European level, may be not (I don't have any idea of what the sugar industry is). As I wrote earlier, the point of EU is to create economic links between countries so strong that nobody (inside or outside EU) would ever think to enter war with a single member. So loosing your self reliance is a way to get more integrated in the intra-European trade [I would like to put a smiley here, but I don't think an EU Commissionner would)
Anyway, I agree on the fact that the money given to agriculture is badly spent. For instance, EU offers money for water expenses, if you use a certain culture. This is why we have in France much corn, while it is inadapted to our climate. Thus, we spend much water and face dry situations in a number of regions every single summer.
This is stupid since we loose the expertise on a number of typically european cultures, and it costs much to the EU when big farms ask for their money.
I'm afraid I get back to the lobbies who have too much power over Bruxelles (since there is no regulation) and can lead to very short sighted politics. Anyway, it is easy to say that about agriculture since it does not appear as noble as other activities, but the scheme is the same, and wasting money is not solely a farmer skill.
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I agree it is unfair to developping nations since there is not much help to prepare the change from the the previous economic model to the EU one.

I might lose my job because of the European Union, so I guess that evens the score.

:(
It does not, because I take their money to run projects as I would take money from other sources.
Would you mind describing the reasons why the EU is the source of the problem? That would be pretty concrete and help prolong the debate.

Free trade and globalization agreements pushed through by the EEA is killing local agriculture and small-scale fishery. Instead of fishing the fish with small boats and delivering it at the nearest city, Spanish trawlers fish the seas empty and all the money goes to one rich dude in A Coruña or whereever.

We face the same situation in France, with many strikes (how surprising?) one year ago.
You are right, the EU just implements the agreements made during the WTO meetings. Well, that's the whole point of our lovely economic system: the more you have, the more you get. If you have a huge institution, you get much money because supposedly doing much for European economy.
Did you (local farmers) do any lobby during last budget vote?

I don't live in the EU, fortunately. There is a large fishery and agricultural lobby in the national delegation in WTO though. If we were EU members we wouldn't even have a WTO delegation.