Will the small nations survive the new EU orders?

EU is an Union of many different countries with both cultural and economical differences. The Backbone of the Union consists of the three major economies – Germany, France and Great Britain. There are other important economies as Italy and Spain but these nations have difficulties, which gives them a secondary status economical wise. The remaining 22 countries in the union have different strength and abilities to participate in the union of both cultural and economical reasons. There is the;

·         The Euro Zone members,

·         The members south of the alps

·         The northern European members

·         The members, who has a cultural and mutual bond to work together.

·         The economical sound members

·         The members in economical trouble

There is a member mixed, in the various “groups”. Each member can easily hold a position in more than three different groups. This makes the EU union very fragile, as the members are mixed and prefer not to, pull in the same direction. Denmark is one of the members who have a very mixed position in EU:

• Denmark is NOT a Euro zone member
• Denmark is NOT a southern alp country with these traditions of economic
• Denmark is NOT one of the economical troubled countries
• Denmark is belonging to the northern European members
• Denmark is an economical sound country
• Denmark has mutual and cultural existence with the other Nordic countries, UK and partly Germany
• Denmark has worked closely together with the Euro countries, as the currency, is related to the Euro.

If we benchmark one of the other small member countries Greece, with Denmark it is easily to see the difference that appeare in EU. This make an EU difficult to be keept as a united Union.

• Greece is NOT an economical sound country
• Greece is in big financial problems, they are spending more than their BNP allows them.
• Greece is a southern alps country with these economical and cultural traditions
• Greece is a Euro Zone member
• Greece has mutual cultural interests with countries such as Spain, Italy and Portugal
• Greece has felt the dominants of the strong northern European countries.

It is not difficult to understand that the local populations in the northern part of Europe, who have difficulty to understand the Union itself, gets upset over one member who has such a mess in its fiscal budget. It is also obviously that the populations in the other European countries starts to ask the politicians, how are we doing and do we have to bail the economical troubled countries out on behalf of our own welfare. As a member country, you have to ask what have our contribution to the EU gone to and how much more do we have to pay to keep the union intact. As the structure of EU never have had a public appeal and over the years have gained even more power, that have materialised in more bureaucracy, the overall union project is in danger. The fiscal union project which Merkel and Sarkozy have started will properly on the short run keep the Euro Zone together and draw some of the smaller nations outside the Euro Zone to sign up on the project. The fiscal collaboration will continue until the more democratic part of the union members will have to take a national referendum on how to proceed with giving away national sovereignty to the union. The first to fall would be UK where the EU criticism, always have been big as they believe that Germany and France have too much influence. A growing number of left and right wing politicians have started to call out for that their countries should leave the union.  Their argument is that the Union will eventually collapse. The idea of leaving the union seems not realistic, as the world is for collaboration in communities where the EU, is a good project. What has to be done is the union has to be more democratic and we have to have simplicity into the union, as what we have today will collapse, as the complexity of the existing union is fare to big.

Will promises of simplicity keep the smaller members inside the union?

There will be difficulties even here, some of the smaller union members has a difficult economic and will not be able to apply to the new EU order. The next problem will be that there are members who want to proceed into full union membership as the US model where there will not be the same room for individual demands and local differences. The only way to solve this and herby keep the members in the union will be a Europe in different speed mentioned in my earlier blogs. This will be the challenge in the next couple of years and members have to look into what they believe what is right for them.