Brexit 2019 and Poland

@Bratwurst Boy

How will the EU cope without the UK's nett financial contribution?
Are French and German taxpayers prepared to pay more to make up the shortfall?
Or will the EU give less money to countries like Poland?
Whichever way they deal with it some people are going to be very unhappy.
And how will German car makers and French food producers react if the UK imposes tariffs on their goods?
Poland and Hungary are falling out with the EU and Italy and Greece continue to struggle economicaly.
France has problems and even the mighty German economy is struggling.
All I see is problems.

Less integration in areas that there's no broad citizen demand

Turn the euro into a real (transfer) union instead of the loan shark scheme that it is now...

Reduce the European Parliament radically (200 MPs is more than enough) and have it sit in _one_ place rather than moving to Strasbourg once a month

Assume national competence: If the EU thinks that a country is mature enough to join then assume it is mature enough to see to most domestic issues by itself...

Yeah well...and now go start a petition or something! :)


You know what? Nothing could be a bigger problem than to bring arch enemies together on the same table to create a union! In a continent still reeling from the last war, with the smoke and ashes still hanging in the air...making countries which killed their youth just a few years back working together, cooperating in mutual friendship!

THAT had been problems...and they overcame it...now it's budget problems...how to distribute the billions....sorry....but that doesn't compare!

Are you really suggesting that without the EU Germany would start another war?

That was in the 1950s.... the EU has some great accomplishments and did a lot of good but in 2008 sided with international finance against EU solidarity and turned into an instrument of neoliberal stratification and impoverishment.

Politics is all "What have you done for me lately?" and for many Europeans the EU hasn't done anything positive for them for a long time...

Unthinkable, isn't it? After so many decades of peace between it's EU members....and it's not only about Germany!

Just think back about the outside world....Ukraine...the Balkan Wars....the world is neither peaceful nor stable outside of our ivory tower...you get a whiff of it whenever these poor wretches knock on our door....so war and destruction is possible and probable without a Union. It's what we Europeans have always done.


Well...that's always the matter when people take the things for granted...like peace and stability, democracy...I don't!
You will miss it when it's gone!

PS: Apropos reforms...it seems the new budget discussions could pave the way for some reforms:

"...Today, some of the EU's richest Member States get reductions from their contributions to the EU budget - also known as rebates - and as a result pay least compared to their gross national income per capita (see Annex). The departure of the United Kingdom - because of which the system of rebates was introduced back in 1984 - gives an opportunity to reform the revenue side of the EU budget and address a system that has become opaque and distorted. Leaders should make use of this opportunity and endorse a fairer way to finance the EU budget...."

ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_6039

The Brexit brought on already a few important changes, like that the Veto has been disposed off for many kinds of decisions....why stop here? :)

In fact, Ireland on entering the EU officially declared Irish as the country's language knowing that English was being declared by the UK.The same applies to Malta which declared Maltese. The result is that no EU country has English as officially declared language after the Brexit. Technically speaking, English has been now kicked out of the EU.


This is a too far-fetched conclusion. The parallel between the EU and the Soviet Union is completely inaccurate. People like BB and myself who were raised in the realities of Soviet-style communism will know what I am talking about, whereas people who grew up in the so-called 'rotten West' will not.

It was not me who drew that parallel.

Good point. I think that we too often forget the history of our continent.

Besides, we have to remember that Brexiters based their campaign on manipulation, half-truths and sometimes outright lies (i.e. NHS money).

Was recently in a lecture that mentioned this... and once a language is added it stays (unless measures are taken to remove it). Brexit doesn't change English being an official EU language

...and one nice thing we could start the budget negotiations with is denying Farage his EU pension! :)


Not quite....the meaning of "official language" is that it's the language of one member state. When, as Ziemowit said, neither Ireland nor anybody else claims that English is this country's official language then of course it can't be an official language of the EU!

What? He hasn't given up the tyrannical EU pension himself already? ;)

"Money doesn't stink!"

But yeah...it's ridiculous...imagine the EU falls apart, where will the money for his old age come from then? ;)

About the future of English in the EU....I found that interesting:

"....What status for the English language after Brexit?

Of course, this option is considered as unrealistic by some politicians, particularly in Ireland and Malta. Two main alternatives have come up:

Ireland claims that English is its official language just like Gaelic, and suggests that it can remain an official language of the EU according to the Article 1 of the Regulation 1/1958. European institutions might support this proposal, but it would have to be unanimously voted for by the European Council. Accepting that Ireland or Malta could register two official languages would open the possibility for other languages - Catalan for example - to become official languages too. France and Germany might vote against this solution.

Another option is that Malta or Ireland registers English as its official language. But this would mean that Gaelic or Maltese would no longer be an official language of the E.U. This decision could be difficult to accept for native speakers from these countries..."

mastertcloc.unistra.fr/english-in-the-eu-after-brexit/

To be clear (since so many here have problems understanding metaphors and analogies....) the only parallel I drew (or would ever draw) between the EU and the CCCP is that when/if the EU implodes, I believe it will be relatively sudden and unexpected and probably brought on by a misguided attempt to maintain the status quo...

In June 1991 there was no reason to believe the USSR wouldn't last for decades.... and by the end of the year it was gone.

I predict something similar for the EU (unless it changes itself in ways that it shows no inclination of doing).

People that claim that the current EU is operationally similar to the USSR are, of course, idiots.

I'd argue otherwise, as an amateur Sovietologist. The signs were already there in the late 80's when the Baltics started to do their own thing without any real response from Moscow, and Yeltsin's victory in the March 1990 elections was a clear sign that things were extremely unstable. Gorbachev had lost control - he tried everything to stop Yeltsin from becoming the de facto President of Russia then, but they ignored him. He'd already spent the late 80's attacking Gorbachev and demanding reforms, and he was popular with the Russian people, but not in other republics. From what I remember, this was the start of open feuding between the Soviet power structures and the Russian ones too.

Once Yeltsin won the election for the Presidency of the Russian SFSR in June 1991, it was just a matter of time. He clearly wanted control over Russia, and I suspect he would have embraced Serb-style nationalism if the Soviet leadership didn't eat themselves first.

Maybe a better example would be Czechoslovakia? They were squabbling and not cooperating well, but most observers at the beginning of 1992 would have seen confederation as the way out, not divorce.

From my point of view, it's pretty obvious now that the richer members have had enough of funnelling money into the poorer ones, only to get abused in return for it (Poland, Hungary...). I suspect that they will get their way, and funding will be tied to politics - effectively do as they say, or get nothing. While people like Ironside will proclaim "let's walk away" - the truth is that for PiS, the CAP is of absolutely vital importance. Even one year without payments would devastate Polish farming, especially as many of them rely on low-value produce.

With this I would agree. This was some sort of a "black swan", was't it?


It is, but they won't say so in public. What PiS is building their strategy on is that the European Commission will be passing resolutions etc, but in the end will do nothing real about the problem.

CAP is absolutely vital since PiS won the election in 2015 by taking away the peasant vote from PSL. Ironside doesn't feel the true pulse of Polish politics - he only believes what the nationalists' propaganda tells him

Ireland won't. It took years to get Irish fully recognized as an official EU language and the final stages of that process won't be completed until 2022. I can't see them changing to English now. Besides it's a politically sensitive issue in Ireland, Anyway, I think the EU will find a way round it.

In retrospect it seems more obvious than at the time... for most of 1991 people assumed the USSR might lose the baltic states (quite rightly!) and just maybe Ukraine (to the extent that people knew about Ukraine) but everyone assumed that it would continue in some form, like China - it's daily reality now is a million miles from the 1970s but it's still the same state. It wasn't until well after the coup attempt that the idea of it simply no longer existing became real....


IIRC polls indicated a majority in both halves wanted to stay together... that was driven almost entirely by a couple of ambitious politicians (including the awful Soviet-minded Meciar).


Well I think that PiS is a giant nest of grifters and hypocrites and absolutely think Poland should do nothing to leave the EU and should express some gratitude for how much it has done - but the typical PiS politician seems to regard any interaction with the EU the way many Polish people deal with bureaucracy - a battle of wills to be won by guile and cunning and intransigence...

If it is, why the Irish people in Ireland don't stop speaking English in the streets and at home and turn to Irish instead?

@Ziemowit,

English has always been the "political" language of Ireland, Erse the historic and cultural tongue of the Irish people!
In Israel, the Hebrew language from the Old Testament up until Herzl and the early Zionists, lay fallow for nearly one-thousand years before being resurrected, literally. Why the Israelis never switched to either German, Yiddish, Russianor English is because Hebrew remained the historical, cultural language which identified them as distinct from their often hostile Arab neighbors.

Because most Irish people can't speak Irish.

You are still playing the same tunes Milo

- we can just have free trade. Which needs common standards and a court to enforce it.
- the EU will fall apart. Starting when ?
- what will German car makers do ? They will make cars and if you want them you will pay a tariff. If you don't then buy a BritIsh car. Same with wine, olives, cheese and everything else.

I see now the UK govt have said that every truck will be stopped and checked and tarriffs imposed. you know who is paying for that ? UK consumers. That is something quite different from what you were told in the last year by May, Boris, Gove.

Still you can give the money tree another shake and build a bridge from Scotland to Ireland. LOL.

I think a lot of observers made the mistake of underestimating Yeltsin's motivations, especially after he was demoted.


Yup, there was no real popular will for it. It's why I think it's the best example to use, because they hurtled towards divorce without anyone really wanting it except politicians who wanted more power for themselves. I'd still argue that it was a mistake, as a combined Czecho-Slovak state would be a fairly serious influence on the European stage, as opposed to the current situation where the Czechs more or less go along with Germany while the Slovaks follow Austria.


It seems to be the same with their foreign relations in general. They just don't seem to understand how to sweet talk potential partners, and there's plenty of examples of them being completely useless in EP committees too. It's striking that the Five Star lot from Italy are getting a lot of praise for how they're behaving in the EP, including being open to everyone's point of view - and so they're winning support for their own populist ideas.

Me too. Oddly the biggest loser is maybe the Slovak language... Slovaks still watch Czech tv and understand (and czech titles are mixed with slovak ones at newstands) but Slovak has all but disappeared in the Czech republic and from what I hear (from Slovaks) comprehension levels have been steeply declining in the CR

Because it is the right tune.
The UK left a sinking ship......
More and more countries are getting fed up with this ridiculous concept of a US of E.
Did you see the poll about how many europeans think the EU will not survive?


Only the older ones.
Youngsters struggle to understand Czech.

I'm happy to bet 5 of your rapidly depreciating pounds that the UK breaks up before any other country votes to leave the EU

The times I've been in Slovakia, czech media is everywhere... I think they resent the marginalization of slovak in the CR and pretend to understand less than they do.

Some used to say the same thing in CS where it was impossible to not understand both...

So they shouldn't object to registering English as Ireland's official language in the EU.


Do they really? Czech and Slovak seem to be strikingly similar to one another ...

Yup, absolutely agreed. I noticed the same in Slovakia with books/magazines, especially foreign titles where they simply don't bother to produce a Slovak version if a Czech version has been created.


From what I can tell, Moravian/Silesian speakers don't really have problems with Slovaks, but those who speak the Czech language that we know from Prague and Bohemia have more problems. There's also an issue that young Czech speakers nowadays don't really have contact with Slovak dialects, especially the Eastern one which is influenced by Polish/Ruthenian.

I can only speak for myself, but I find Slovak to be very easy to follow/understand, but Czech requires a lot more effort once you go into deeper parts of Bohemia.

Our "rapidly depreciating pound" is not happening, so you are wrong there.
As for the second part, you may well be right there, but if Scotland or NI decide to leave that will take a huge burden off England.

But I wouldn't want to bet on it either way.
Grexit?Italexit?