He is a EU Citizen. That’s not that much better than the freedom to work or live wherever you want within the US. It only sounds so impressive because those 27 nations are all substantially smaller than the US. It’s nonetheless one of those achievements of European integration I most certainly don’t want to give up.
The US (mostly) all speaks the same language and has a much more similar set of laws and a largely homogeneous society.
By comparison e.g. Spain and Germany and almost any two countries in the EU you care to name speak different languages, are very different culturally, and have different customs.
Thats the big advantage - imagine having a choice of bread or cheese that actually tastes different!
Apart from a few of the more 'third world' european countries (like France) if you speak english and work in high tech it's not a big problem to work in Scandanavia/Germany/Netherlands.
The main difficulty is they drive on the wrong side of the road - but as consolation the coffee and women are much better.
It was 'irony' - France is notorious for obeying only those EU laws which benefit it. In particular there are lots of unofficial barriers to other EU individuals/companies working in France - even though they are legally allowed to. Is't common for various levels of government to delay required licencing for years.
It's an issue even with international collaborations - the European Space agency is in the Netherlands and CERN is officially HQed in Switzerland - there was a lot of concern over ITER before it was built in France, the French 'promised' to play nicely with people working there.
Wow, who put the more money initially in ESA and ITER? It's France, beside one of the 4 fields medal this year was a Vietnamese that had worked in France many years (then was recently naturalized) it's maybe not too bad to work in France when you're a foreigner. And frankly I've traveled in almost all EU and the two countries with the more immigration IMO are France and UK. "France is notorious for obeying only those EU laws which benefit it" a great thing of EU it's when one of its member does not respect the laws and treaties there are sanctions so the law is the same for every EU nations. Stop spreading FUD, please.
They had the last millennia to homogenize and it didn’t happen. The United States really are very much unlike Europe. That’s not to say it won’t happen but I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion.
Yeah, but it's been what, 60 years since they stopped trying to invade each other? I don't think it's a foregone conclusion either, but I think it's definitely the trend the EU is on.
A lot of the countries in Europe have strong independent governments that were established long before the USA existed. European countries have large complex systems of law that have taken thousands of years to develop and grow. We also have hundreds of millions of people. What was the original population of the USA?
How difficult would it be to wipe and rewrite the constitution of the USA today? Imagine something 100 times more difficult than that, and that is how difficult it would be to create anything resembling the USA in Europe.
> That’s not that much better than the freedom to work or life wherever you want within the US. It only sounds so impressive because those 27 nations are all substantially smaller than the US.
As a US citizen, it's a very appealing idea. While we do indeed have 50 different places I can live and work without applying for new/temporary status, the cultural, and historic nature of the places is certainly not as diverse as in Europe.
I'm not sure why we're both getting downvoted for this. It was a valid question, and a valid response. Thanks for the answer. I did not realize the EU had this privilege.
I suspect in my case it is because I said "European country" rather than "European Union country." Not all European countries are in the EU. The Wikipedia article on the EU has all sorts of interesting information:
Sure--but, if that's the case, you'd think someone would reply and correct you, instead of just blatantly down voting an otherwise "get the point across answer", and forcing you to speculate. :)