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pampango

(24,692 posts)
Wed Apr 24, 2013, 04:13 PM Apr 2013

How do France and Germany view the UK's possible departure from the EU

From France: Don't they realise? Europe is Britain

Why the hell do they want to leave? We know that originality is all part of the British DNA. But to take this character trait as far as quitting the EU? This is a move that French people struggle to understand. For a very simple reason: Europe is Britain (a fact that obviously escapes Ukip and those in the Tory party who want to leave the union).

To gauge just how successful this British performance has been, think for a moment of the Europe that the French dream of. It's the direct opposite. Paris imagined a Europe that would exist as a single force on the international scene, alongside the US, Russia and China. As well as a free trade area, that Europe would have a joint foreign and defence policy. London didn't want this. And London has won: with more than 20 members in the EU, there is no joint policy (apart from the single market, of course).

From Germany: Britain is not indispensible

There may be one policy area where Germany and Britain really could co-operate: EU treaty change. Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has recently argued that a full banking union would require such a change. Given that there is widespread resistance to such a change in Europe, Germany may need Britain's support. In theory, that is. In practice it is hard to imagine how the British desire to loosen ties (between EU countries) would square with the German drive for closer union. And at any rate: until after the German elections in September the issue of treaty change will remain a political taboo. Time for plenty more delusions and disillusions until then.

The future of Europe will be decided on the continent, not in Britain. It is true that Merkel or her successor would be interested in seeking an agreement with Britain. But such an agreement would be optional, unlike that with France, which will be essential. If there's a internal debate in Berlin, it's over whether the time has already come to break the news to the Brits.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/24/british-exit-from-eu-france-germany

It looks like many on the continent are preparing to go on without the UK, if Cameron's conservatives and the even-further-right, UIKP, stumble into separating the UK from the EU.
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How do France and Germany view the UK's possible departure from the EU (Original Post) pampango Apr 2013 OP
Crisis for Europe as trust hits record low dipsydoodle Apr 2013 #1

dipsydoodle

(42,239 posts)
1. Crisis for Europe as trust hits record low
Wed Apr 24, 2013, 06:43 PM
Apr 2013

Public confidence in the European Union has fallen to historically low levels in the six biggest EU countries, raising fundamental questions about its democratic legitimacy more than three years into the union's worst ever crisis, new data shows.

After financial, currency and debt crises, wrenching budget and spending cuts, rich nations' bailouts of the poor, and surrenders of sovereign powers over policymaking to international technocrats, Euroscepticism is soaring to a degree that is likely to feed populist anti-EU politics and frustrate European leaders' efforts to arrest the collapse in support for their project.

Figures from Eurobarometer, the EU's polling organisation, analysed by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a thinktank, show a vertiginous decline in trust in the EU in countries such as Spain, Germany and Italy that are historically very pro-European.

The six countries surveyed – Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Poland – are the EU's biggest, jointly making up more than two out of three EU citizens or around 350 million of the EU's 500 million population.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/24/trust-eu-falls-record-low

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