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Originally posted by Doc H.:
Europe has rejected or gravitated away from Emperors for quite some time. Napoleon comes to mind, but there were others. Bring back borders, currency and cultures. There will never be a Uno-Europe. Skip all the thrashing around from then 'till today, and put the Risk board back to where it was.

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Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
Germany couldn't take UK by force, so they decided Administrative Assault via the "EU" was the next viable option, along with the other 'nations' in Europe.

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Originally posted by chellim1:
A lot of people have suddenly come to realize that Germans can be pretty controlling....

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Originally posted by BansheeOne:
EU rules just set minimum standards which are in turn based upon applicable international law - 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, etc. Member states would still be bound by those without the EU, though obviously in practice they might be more lax on it.

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Originally posted by BBMW:
And wars. Let's not forget those.

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Originally posted by Doc H.:
Europe has rejected or gravitated away from Emperors for quite some time. Napoleon comes to mind, but there were others. Bring back borders, currency and cultures. There will never be a Uno-Europe. Skip all the thrashing around from then 'till today, and put the Risk board back to where it was.

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Originally posted by Doc H.:

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Originally posted by BBMW:
And wars. Let's not forget those.

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Originally posted by Doc H.:
Europe has rejected or gravitated away from Emperors for quite some time. Napoleon comes to mind, but there were others. Bring back borders, currency and cultures. There will never be a Uno-Europe. Skip all the thrashing around from then 'till today, and put the Risk board back to where it was.

Being Uno-Europe wouldn't prevent that, any more than hundreds of treaties, agreements and documents signed over the last thousand years between benevolent, then warring parties. That includes warring kingdoms from the same family. You can't get much more "Uno" than that. The EU does nothing to prevent war between member nations, if the citizens so choose. It's a primary condition of humanity, beneficent and entwined economies, religions or races to the contrary.

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Originally posted by mutedblade:
Under those standards, everyone is a fucking refugee and as such anyone and everyone that is unwilling to fix the problems they themselves created are allowed to freely move into areas that in the past have worked hard at keeping what they worked for, often times through hard fought wars. Add the fact that once received by those "host" countries, the parasitic refugees essentially create a vacuum with regard to public funds like education, welfare and housing that would be better used for those of the host nation. Now, account for the additional crime that comes with the parasites and you can see why several of the EU countries have balked at the idea. Even in your home country of Germany, you have seen an increase in immigrant crimes, most of which gets covered up by the press and local officials, much like here in the US. Whether you care to pay attention or keep your head buried firmly up your ass is your choice and none of us here can do that for you, but a lot of those in European countries (elites excepted) have seen the writing on the wall and will push for the dissolution of the EU.

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Are Greek and EU officials illegally deporting migrants to Turkey?

Why We Wrote This

While reporting in Greece on another story, Monitor correspondent Dominique Soguel heard tales of migrants being beaten and illegally expelled from the EU by border officials. So she investigated.

December 20, 2018

By Dominique Soguel, Correspondent

Athens and Orestiada, Greece

Fadi Jassem is a skinny Syrian man with sorrow etched on his face. He is one of more than a hundred refugee squatters living in a forsaken building in central Athens. The only document he holds is a Syrian identity card, chipped on the top corner. He blames Greek border police and Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, for his plight.

That’s because Mr. Jassem used to be living a relatively happy life in Germany as a recognized refugee with a three-year residency permit. But then he heard his little brother had gone missing hours after crossing from Turkey to Greece with the help of smugglers. The 11-year-old boy had just been ferried across the choppy waters of the Evros River in the middle of winter when he disappeared. “He got lost in the border area, so I went to search for him there,” Jassem told The Christian Science Monitor in October.

That's when it all went wrong for Jassem. “Greek police grabbed me and handed me over to Frontex. They destroyed all my documents. They put eight of us on a boat and pushed us back to Turkey.”

He assumes that the officials responsible were Frontex because they were masked and spoke German rather than Greek. The police officers, he says, beat and insulted him. It took Jassem many months and several attempts to manage to cross back into Greece from Turkey. Now he hopes that Germany will take him back.

Jassem became the victim of forced pushbacks, an illegal tactic of forcibly removing migrants from European soil, usually soon after they’ve crossed over the European Union’s external borders. The phenomenon is difficult to measure, in large part because of the outright denial by authorities that it is taking place. But evidence of its recurrence is growing, and human rights groups are sounding the alarm, concerned by the frequency and patterns of abuse relayed by migrants trying to reach Europe.

Illegal deportations?

Forced pushbacks are in violation of international law. A key principle of the 1951 Refugee Convention in Geneva, which has been signed by 148 states including Greece, is non-refoulement. The charter prohibits refugees being returned to a country where their life or freedom is at risk. Borders may be crossed irregularly and without documents when the intent is to request asylum; people fleeing war rarely have their documents in order, if at all.

The practice, according to humanitarian workers and human rights researchers with long track records in the Evros region, has long been a problem along the Turkey-Greek border. But the growing frequency of these incidents and the range of actors apparently involved has triggered alarm and a new push for accountability.

[...]

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Now all it awaits is Royal Assent and approval by the European Parliament next week…”

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Forget staying close to EU after Brexit, chancellor tells business

Sajid Javid sets out his vision for UK economy in interview with the FT

January 17, 2020 9:27 pm by Roula Khalaf , George Parker and Chris Giles in London

Sajid Javid, the UK chancellor, has delivered a tough message to business leaders to end their campaign for Britain to stay in lock-step with Brussels rules after Brexit, telling them they have already had three years to prepare for a new trading relationship.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Javid quashed any prospect of the Treasury lending its support to big manufacturing sectors — which include cars, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and food and drink — that favour alignment with EU regulations.

“There will not be alignment, we will not be a ruletaker, we will not be in the single market and we will not be in the customs union — and we will do this by the end of the year,” Mr Javid said, urging companies to “adjust” to the new reality.

Speaking in a sandwich bar near the Treasury, the chancellor nevertheless gave an upbeat assessment of Britain’s prospects outside the EU, insisting that British companies would flourish and that his guiding mantra for the post-Brexit economy would be “human capitalism”.

He vowed to pump more money into “skills, skills, skills” and backing infrastructure schemes in the midlands and north, even if they did not offer as much “bang for the buck” as those in London.

He added that he wanted to boost growth rates to between 2.7 and 2.8 per cent a year — the average for 50 years after the second world war. Last week, Mark Carney, Bank of England governor, told the FT he thought Britain’s trend growth rate was much lower at between 1 and 1.5 per cent.

[...]

Philip Hammond, the previous chancellor, fought to maintain alignment with the EU but Mr Javid made it clear that the Treasury was now under new management. He suggested being comfortable with some companies suffering from Brexit.

“There will be an impact on business one way or the other, some will benefit, some won’t,” he added. But Mr Javid said the important thing was that companies had certainty and should get on with preparing for the new trading relationship.

“Once we’ve got this agreement in place with our European friends, we will continue to be one of the most successful economies on Earth,” he said, adding that the UK had continued be a highly popular destination for inward investment.

Asked how regulatory divergence might impact industries such as automotive and pharmaceuticals with intricate supply chains spanning Europe, Mr Javid said: “Japan sells cars to the EU but they don’t follow EU rules.”

He added: “We’re also talking about companies that have known since 2016 that we are leaving the EU. Admittedly, they didn’t know the exact terms.”

Mr Javid declined to say which EU rules he wanted to ditch. He said he wanted financial services to trade with the EU on the basis of “outcome-based” equivalence of rules: it is far from clear if Brussels will agree.

The chancellor is the only cabinet minister publicly assured by Mr Johnson that he or she will still be in their job after a February reshuffle.

[...]

Mr Javid’s big plan to reinvigorate growth is to raise capital spending by around 50 per cent over the next few years, spreading prosperity and raising the productive potential in constituencies which may have just voted Conservative for the first time.

The new budgetary rules he set out before the election allow public sector net investment to rise from 2 per cent of national income to a limit of 3 per cent, justified by historically low interest rates which he said would be “low for long”.

“I think it’s almost a signal to me from the market — from investors — that here’s the cash, use it to do something productive,” the chancellor said.

There was no doubt that it would be weaker parts of the country that would have first call on the new cash, even if the returns were low. “That is how we spread opportunity,” the chancellor said. “And that doesn’t mean always that when you make the investment decision it goes to the highest bang for the buck. We have to take a different approach.”

The Treasury’s “green book”, which sets the rules for project appraisal across government, will be rewritten: it has traditionally favoured investments where the returns were greatest, removing bottlenecks in areas of already strong economic performance. Mr Javid says this has helped to “entrench” inequality.

“One of the reasons to rewrite the rules is to have that flexibility to promote human capitalism,” the chancellor said, while refusing to accept this meant sacrificing national economic performance for better regional performance.

[...]

Aiming to promote lifetime learning and reskilling in areas where the traditional industrial mix has changed, Mr Javid highlighted education colleges, in which he wanted to instil a sense of pride, starting with repairing the dilapidated fabric of many such institutions.

Mr Javid, who grew up in a working class district in Bristol and saw his life prospects transformed at an FE college, said: “I like FE colleges, right. But when you go around the country looking at FE colleges, they don’t look good,” he said.

He accepted, however, that money for FE colleges was generally not capital spending, where he has significant scope to borrow under his new budgetary rules, but rather day-to-day spending. With this he has precious little scope to increase budgets.

This has raised speculation that the chancellor will use his first Budget to raise taxes in addition to the pledge in the manifesto to reverse the planned corporation tax cut rate in April from 19 per cent to 17 per cent.

The chancellor hinted at more tax rises to come in either of the upcoming Budgets, saying he was determined to take the “hard decisions you need to sometimes [take], especially at the start of a new government”.

Asked specifically about taxation, he said “you’ll have to wait for the Budget” but his allies say more money will have to be found to tackle the crisis in social care. Tackling climate change will also be a priority.

[...]

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a rather different approach to re-uniting the country - in essence, raise taxes and spend more money on public institutions and development of disadvantaged regions.

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Originally posted by BansheeOne:
<snip>
The Brexit Agreement is between the UK and EU. Of course both sides have to ratify it. It wouldn't have been necessary only if the UK had dropped out without an agreement in a "hard Brexit".
<snip, snip, snip>

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Originally posted by chellim1:
Isn't "raise taxes and spend more money" always the government preferred solution to everything?
That doesn't sound like a "different approach" to me...

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But the policy is broadly in line with what the Brexit camp campaigned for from the get go: use British money for popular national institutions and aids.

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Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
(snip)
He put Parker pen to paper on the official copy of the Withdrawal Agreement in Downing Street this afternoon, ending months and months of bitter and divisive politics.