Talk:European Union/Archive 3

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
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Archive 3
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Contents

Currencies in the union?

I don't see why we should list all currencies from member states, as the European Union internaly uses the euro (bugdets, for instance). How about this? "Currency: The euro (in 12 member states and used by the institutions). Countries that are not inside the eurozone are intended to join the single currency at some point, but use their national currencies at the moment.

  • The fact that the UK, Sweden and Denmark have chosen not to use to Euro does not make them lesser members of the EU. It would be POV to ignore their currencies. Dmn 12:01, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The fact remains that the Euro is the currency of the EU (hey, its even designed to be the currency of Europe - the Euro). So I don't agree that the currencies used by non-Eurozone States should be listed in the 'EU' table. Certainly note the facts elsewhere, in a section about the Euro or whatever.
Zoney 22:54, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Officially all those currencies are 'Community Currencies', see here, so it's probably best to include all of them. --EuroTom 11:13, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Use €

Be sure to use the € (€) code from the wikipedia, for compatibility. 80.58.50.44

This isn't really necessary. The English wikipedia uses UTF-8. There's no problem with using it if you want to, of course. Mr. Jones 12:36, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, it isn't UTF-8, its still ISO-8859-1. Morwen 12:07, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

That's interesting. Do you know where it has been discussed? There was some talk on the mailing list a couple of months back. Anyone have a reference? Mr. Jones 14:00, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Timezones

I presume the French territories is only including those that fall into the category that's most important (french overseas department?) Anyways, it should be the ones on the Euro banknotes included only, French Guiana, Martinique, Guadalope and Réunion. Is this correct then, UTC -4 to +4, including only the above French territories? (there's more, but I think they're more independant or something) Zoney 23:01, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Another question about timezones: Greece, for instance, is as the moment in UTC+3. Should daylight saving times not be listed as well? Sinuhe 08:21, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It'd be nice to avoid getting too complicated!!!
  • What's the standard for other places - e.g. US/Russia - when people refer the timezones in those places do they ignore DST?
  • In Ireland too we're not GMT at the minute, but BST (British Summer Time, UTC+1). Does Portugal have daylight savings with it being further south? If so does this mean the EU is UTC+1 to UTC+3 at the moment?
  • Where do the Azores fit in - are they UTC or what? They are part of the EU - being part of Portugal.
  • Finally, what do we update this to after this coming Saturday 1st May? Are the Central European countries all CET? What about the Baltics? What about Cyprus?
There's a bit of thinking to be done before midnight tonight!!!
Zoney 11:27, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Treaties

Under =structure= I added a section about the treaty history. The reason for this is that it is the only way to understand why the structure of the EU is so complicated. I thought it would be interesting to have maybe a one-line summary of what each treaty changed, but I found that I didn't even know what half of the treaties did.

The section is too long as it stands, so if it grows any larger (and it should as it is developed) it should be moved into its own article Treaties of the European Union, which surprisingly doesn't exist. There is a nice list of treaties in the list of European Union topics, but that is not enough. — Miguel 15:15, 2004 Apr 26 (UTC)

ONE LINE? Away you go! They're hideously complicated - such that even some European leaders (admittedly Ireland is my basis) have confessed to not even fully knowing themselves what the treaties do! I guess we can try for 2/3 lines of the 'jist' of the treaty!
On another note, I've commented out the RFCs (reqs for comment) just to tidy up the page. At least the timeline / names of treaties are there.
Zoney 11:36, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I didn't want to say ONE PARAGRAPH because then, at one paragraph per treaty, this minor section would soon dwarf the rest of the article 8-D
If you have been a member of any organization you will know that hardly anyone even bothers to read the by-laws, so I guess you can excuse politicians for not knowing the treaties they support or oppose. That's what aides, talking points and flash cards are for.  ;-)
Anyway, where does Schengen fit into all this? It is not a "treaty" but an "agreement". It is part of the "free movement of persons", and influences the "common security policy". Having spent 4 years out of the EU I am a little unsure about its current status, and then I am not exectly sure where to add a reference to it.
Another important thing about Schengen is that it is a model for "asymmetric Union", "variable geometry Europe" or

"Europe at several speeds", or whatever people call these things in English.

— Miguel 14:27, 2004 Apr 30 (UTC)

Amusingly enough, I ended up doing myself what I had balked at!!! I suggest that if anyone sees inaccuracies to fix them, but perhaps they shouldn't be expanded further? (e.g. if a section omits minor details about a treaty) Perhaps create a seperate page to do this? Anyways, please review / comment!!!
Zoney 15:39, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

right to reside (post 2004)

Pre-2004 posts on this topic archived here. Zoney 23:22, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

The right of abode and work and freedom of movement are two different issues. EU citizens have the right to settle and work in any EU country as long as they're not public charges, that's one thing. Whether they have to show passports/ID when crossing borders is another. David.Monniaux 13:45, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The right to settle would be liberalised somewhat by the commission's proposed directive COM(2001) 257 (http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/printversion/en/lvb/l33152.htm). The EU Parliament voted in favour of it in early 2003, with various proposed amendments, including that the date of introduction is delayed until 1 July 2004. See http://www2.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade2?L=EN&OBJID=10629&LEVEL=3&MODE=SIP&NAV=X&LSTDOC=N for the parliament's report. Hans Zarkov 11:50, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Gibraltar

Pre-2004 posts on this topic archived here. Zoney 23:54, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

Be sure to check "special territores and their relations with the EU".

80.58.50.44

Gibralter is most definately in the EU, as they <will> vote in European Parliament elections. The reason I know this is that there was a bit of a hullaballoo recently - with the finite no. of MEPs stretched further most constituencies in the EU have been redrawn. A consequence is that Gibralter no longer will get an MEP of its own and there was a bit of a fuss because it is being included with the south-western bit of England! (I don't think Spain were happy!)

Some of the particulars may be imprecise, but essentially they are in EU as they will be/have been voting in the European Parliament elections!

Zoney 17:55, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Yep, didn't quite get it right above. Its certainly controversial - because they haven't ever voted in the European Parliament before apparently - and will be this year as part of England!
Zoney 22:57, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Gibraltar.gov.gi says "In 1973 Gibraltar entered the European Economic Community, as a dependent territory in Europe, under Article 277(4) of the Treaty of Rome but was excluded, at the request of the Government of Gibraltar, from the common external tariff, the common agricultural policy and value added tax. 1973 also saw Gibraltar’s re-inclusion in the Scheduled Territories of the Sterling Area.". Gibraltar now votes for Euro Parliament because it is one of their human rights. having cake and eating it? garryq 01:32, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Media:Image:Europeanunion 25.png

Would this image be better without the rivers? Dmn 02:16, 1 May 2004 (UTC)


Likely :-) . The rivers are present since it is a derivation from the original EU-15 map shown before.

New map uploaded. Post your coments in the Europeanunion25.png image discusion. thewikipedian

Cyprus

the whole island of Cyprus is coloured as part of the union because the wiki states: "Negotiations have been ongoing for years to reunify the island, but have not as yet seen substantial success. A United Nations plan, announced on March 31, 2004 following talks in Switzerland, was put to both sides in separate referenda on April 24. It was favoured by the Turkish side by a majority of 2 to 1, but was rejected by the Greek side by a 3 to 1 margin. As a result, while officially the whole of Cyprus entered the European Union on May 1, 2004, the de facto EU border runs along the Green Line, dividing the country between the Greek and Turkish parts. EU law is currently not applied in the Turkish controlled north. See: Annan Plan, 2004 referendum."

The hungarian version however, only colours the southern part. I suggest leaving things like their are for now, and wait for further official clarification from the EU. thewikipedian

Cyprus as a whole is indeed "officially" part of the EU, but just not in practice. Turkish troops are "technically" in occupation of EU soil. Hence the reason the whole issue is messy and it was hoped it could be avoided.
Still, the EU had no problems during the decades where Ireland was a member but claimed the whole island of Ireland.
Zoney 10:45, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

==In The News==

Image:EUInTheNews.png

I presume the expansion will go on In The News section tonight. I made this image for the purpose - Please feel free to improve it.

Does this not count as defacing the flag?
Zoney 10:47, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
That's, really, a POV term (desecration requires the object involved to be 'sacred' or revered) ;-).
James F. (talk) 13:20, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
Note I used the valid term 'defacing' :o) - which incidentally, it is. I rather object to the unauthorised amendment of a flag of any institution I am a part of. Zoney 13:27, 4 May 2004 (UTC)


Who pays for the EU and how?

67.100.45.137: The BBC has a pie chart [1] which shows how the EU will spend 99.7bn euros in 2004 (mostly in agricultural subsidies and regional aid). I couldn't find anything there or here about where this money comes from. Does the EU tax its citizens? Does it get grants from the member governments and if so, where does that money come from? Income tax? VAT? Sales tax? Inquiring minds want to see something about this in the article. Thanks.

It's all horribly complicated, but, IIUIC, all VAT (or 'sales tax', in the lexicon of different states' tax systems) goes to the EU Commission, and they also get a grant each year from each member country based on many things including their populations, economies, &c. There's also the European Parliament and the European Court, both of which are also funded by grant. Where the member governments get the money to pay for the grants is not particularly important (though if they got it through extortion and money laundering, I imagine the EU would have something to say); I assume that for all, or at least most, governments, it's just one of the expenditures of governance, and will come out of general taxation. The EU has no power to levy taxes directly (the UK, amongst others, would be, shall we say, more than just slightly opposed to the idea).
But then, just to make it a little more fun, there are, too, some significant complications to this - the UK gets a 'rebate' of some £2bn or so each year, as negotiated by Margaret Thatcher, though quite what excuse is given for it (the real reason, of course, was that Thatcher saw an opportunity to leverage her veto into getting something the British public would see as a win in return for the progress of the EU overall), I know not.
Of course, the problem with the EU being so significantly funded by VAT is that it is such an anti-progressive tax - the poor generally spend the greatest percentage of their income, and so are most adversly affected, whereas the rich will just invest, and so not pay VAT (well, on service charges and the like, but not on the overall sum).
However, all of this is just off the top of my head, and could well be wrong; I'll go research it a bit before adding it to the article.
James F. (talk) 09:20, 1 May 2004 (UTC)
Ah. Having just typed all that, I clicked on the other tab of the graphic you linked to ([2]), which has some information.
James F. (talk) 09:22, 1 May 2004 (UTC)
68.167.250.28 12:13, 1 May 2004 (UTC): I saw that page but it doesn't answer the question. There are answers buried within the EU website, such as [3]. The short answer is that the EU takes in agricultural duties and more general customs duties, based on imports. Those are easy to understand. More complicated are a VAT paid by the member states, and the GNP-based tax paid by member states in cases where the other sources aren't sufficient to balance the budget. I don't understand it well enough to add something to the article though.
I agree, it's horribly complicated. But what's definitely not the case is that the whole VAT is transfered to the Union (that would be 20% in Austria!!!) - its just a certain fraction. An extensive treatment of the financial resources of the EU delivers chapter 11 of the following pdf: [4] Gugganij 13:44, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
AFAIK, member states have to contribute a certain amount of their budget to the EU budget even if not a net contributor - they will receive back as much from the EU budget as appropriate (more than they gave for a net beneficiary). But of course, EU money coming back is for specific things, projects the govt.s apply for funding for, but at the end of the day, EU money can't be spent any old how.
Hence the reason EU money was great for the West of Ireland - the govt. didn't like to spend Irish budget money on it, but it was easy to find suitable projects for EU money!
It has been suggested that the new member states, despite not having as much EU money as Irl/Portugal/Spain/Greece got, will have a hard time finding suitable projects to spend all the EU money on.
Zoney 10:53, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Freedom to live and work

Does anyone know the status of the right of the new citizens to live and work in the whole EU?

The last I knew was that all the old members had instituted a 2- to 7-year moratorium, but a few days ago I caught a news report that the Swedish parliament had refused to approve the government's proposal. This means that Sweden will be open to all. [5]

What about the rest of the countries?

— Miguel 14:46, 2004 May 2 (UTC)

Ireland has no restrictions on the right to live and work - there's just a minor point of not being able to claim social welfare benefits until resident for X amount of time. (X is one year?)
Also, there's a referendum planned for the same date as European and Local elections. If passed, this would mean that a child born in Ireland to non-nationals (not from island of Ireland) does not have right of citizenship unless their parents have lived here for the previous 3 years.
At present, any child born in Ireland (including the North) has the automatic right to Irish citizenship.
Zoney 16:17, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
UK did something similar to Ireland. All the other old members (except Sweden, UK, Ireland) have instituted moratoriums. Andris 16:26, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
I found a how the free movement of workers will work in practice in Spanish. There should be an equivalent document in English, but navigating the europa site across languages is not easy. Anyway, here's the gist of it:
The transitional measures only apply to salaried workers. (meaning that students can move freely, and self-employed people can establish themselves anywhere).
For the first two years, the rules depend on each country, and on any bilateral agreements that may be reached. In 2006, the Commission will review the application of the transitional measures.
temporary provisions expire after 5 years, unless a member state requests a 2-year extension.
The treaty of accession is very non-specific. I think the whole mean is in the "safeguard clause", which is vague and applies pretty much anything. This means one would have to go to each country's legislations. For the life of me, I can't find any record of what Spain has done in this respect ;-)
— Miguel 22:51, 2004 May 2 (UTC)
I finally tracked down the Spanish regulations on this issue. Spain will apply a moratorium of 2 years to all new members except Cyprus and Malta, and seems to have no intention to extend the moratorium beyond 2006. — Miguel 04:44, 2004 May 3 (UTC)

GDP per capita

This table extends too far, is boring (yes it's relevant information but who is going to read through the figures?), hard to read, etc.

I propose that I make a nice pretty graph instead (using the figures). After all, it's so people can compare various members' GDP per capita - n'est ce pas?

I'm thinking about a nice colourful bar-graph. Thoughts people?

Zoney 16:09, 5 May 2004 (UTC)


I like the graphs - good work!

However it might be worth sorting the 'by % of EU average' graph in rank order, to differentiate them more. Also giving source details (such as year) in the image would help future updates when new info comes out.

Regardless - definitely big improvement on table -- EuroTom 17:29, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Sorry to disagree, but I think sorting by rank order would differentiate them less. At the moment the disparity is more obvious with peaks/dips rather than a gradual slope.
Since the rank is useful information in itself, a graph that makes rank obvious is more useful than a graph that forces you to count in your head how many bars are larger than the one you're interested in. Moreover, you will find that the 25 countries do not follow a single gradual slope. There will be at least two sharp drops, indicating more than one "kind" of country. Sorting the countries by rank is defnitely better. — Miguel 23:08, 2004 May 6 (UTC)
As regards details, unfortunately I don't have the date or anything - whoever put in the table didn't include it. (Or the source!).
Zoney 17:49, 5 May 2004 (UTC)


I meant to sort one of the two graphs, to distinguish between the graphs rather than between individual entries.
(They currently look very similar as one is a scalar normalisation of the other)
-- EuroTom 18:36, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

The original table seems to come from the CIA Factbook. The conversion to Euro's is probably done just using a recent exchange rate, not sure if that's a good idea (won't have much effect on the comparison, but the acctual values in Euro's may change rather quickly.) Agree that the graph on the right should be sorted, this will give additional information. Even more usefull since the acctual values in the graph on the left may not be accurate anyway. --Voodoo 23:43, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Methods

I didn't really want to completely omit the whole Cyprus / Yugoslav bit or political stuff. I simply couldn't at that moment figure out how to resolve the fact that the Cyprus issue was being discussing in the context of further enlargement. It's already happened! It's past enlargement now!

Actually, not really. The northern part of the island hasn't joined, and this prolongues the ongoing lousy state of Greco-Turkish relations, which is something the EU wishes to resolve. One could even argue that the problem has been escalated because the EU has taken both Greece and the Greek part of Cyprus, and isn't taking neither Turkey nor the Turkish part of Cyprus. --Shallot 11:17, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
It's more complicated. Officially/theoretically the whole island IS a member! (The 'Greek' Cypriot govt. is still recognised as legitimate authority for whole island by EU and internationally) My point is that the issue isn't going to be a feature of further enlargement - it's now an EU issue. Also referring to further enlargement hoping to solve the Cyprus problem - how? I mean yes it affects Turkey's membership and so on - but how is this part of solving the problem? I don't think EU membership of Cyprus becoming a reality for Northern Cyprus (as opposed to the current theoretical status) counts as further enlargement. It's effectively enlargement yes, but not technically. (Similar to East Germany only effectively being enlargement?)
You've actually touched the explanation yourself with the the third sentence there. The problems like those between Greece and Turkey, or those between Croatia and Serbia, can't be solved by imposing a solution or something like that. They can be truely solved once the pair of countries adjusts and starts following the EU standards, and this also means not having lingering border disputes etc. The EU enlargement is a process of working to solve actual problems, not engaging in semantic nitpicking. --Shallot 15:47, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, I apologise if my reasoning is hard to follow. Essentially this section needs careful wording - the statement I amended could be seen as / was inaccurate. (I'm not saying my replacement was/is wholly appropriate either mind you!)
Zoney 14:49, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
I have just read through my replacement again - I'm now going to say that I think it seems to cover the issue reasonably well, avoiding the need to sort out the above convolutions/conundrums. Zoney 14:53, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
The new verbiage is too involved with Cyprus and less with the actual methods applied there, as is the title of the section. And it's not just the consequences of the Yugoslav wars that will be resolved, it's similar wars that could be anticipated in the future that will be detered by the EU expansion. --Shallot 15:47, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
Good point. I've re-edited and tried to focus on the "methods" as you say. Is it clearer? Is this what your point originally was? (I don't think I quite got it before - but then, I did feel it was unclear). Zoney 17:04, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
Also, this will be an obstacle to Turkey's accession negotiations since Cyprus is now a member. — Miguel 13:54, 2004 May 7 (UTC)

The Yugoslav bit is fine, fits in with the ambitions of e.g. Croatia and Macedonia/FYROM joining.

I replaced the 'not nearly ready' with something like 'not viewed as currently suitable' - after all, it's sounding like Croatia and Macedonia might even be in next enlargement. Romania and Bulgaria are further east, yet the latter in particular seems like it will be joining soon. In any case the former phrase seemed a bit harsh.

Zoney 23:25, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

I was actually referring to the more eastern states as not nearly ready -- Bosnia, Serbia, R. Macedonia to an extent; Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus. That's also why I added an explicit "long-term" notion in the updated text.
Macedonia seems to be being considered more out of pragmatic, political reasons rather than economic reasons, and the latter will hold it back for a fair few years probably. That goes under "medium-term".
Croatia, as it happens, is not really that far from being ready because it has a stronger economy even than some states that joined in the 2004 round, but is held back because of its political and organizational legacy (without implying that those reasons are any less important, of course). It's not unreasonable to assume that its accession is a done deal after Romania completes the process. Also "medium-term". --Shallot 11:17, 7 May 2004 (UTC)