[Juliate]

Not saying it is perfect, once more.

The referendums were a disgrace, true. So were they because referendums are often organised, and seen, and used, as votes of confidence for a given government, and not as expressions for the very question.

Find any country, political structure that is pure, of anything.

But still. Here we are. More than 70 years at peace on a continent, something not seen for several centuries before that. The EU project, and structure, and growth, and maturity, is central to that peace.

How factually worse, exactly, have been any EU member, since they joined the Union? How factually better have they been as well?

Pretending that EU members would be better off without the union is a plain, undocumented, geopolitically hostile, lie.

[timrichard]

That's got to be an object lesson in blinkered dogma.

> So were they because referendums are often organised, and seen, and used, as votes of confidence for a given government

From the grab-bag of possible explanations...

> But still. Here we are. More than 70 years at peace on a continent

Also an amazing co-incidence that NATO has been in existence for 70 years. Containing three nuclear powers, it doesn't take a leap of imagination that it was a greater deterrent than whatever you had in mind.

How has your version worked over 70 years? The EU has only been in existence since 1994. Prior to that, it existed in a smaller, trade-only form as the EEC. I thought the 'butter mountain' and 'wine lake' were figures of speech. So were they physical defences, something like an obstacle course to deter the Russians? /s

[thefounder]

Do you think the states of the United States would be better off as individual states with a pure economic and military agreement (i.e NATO + a kind of EEC) ?

[rayiner]

I think most people would be at least be happier under that arrangement. We burn enormous amounts of time in the US fighting with each other over basic differences in culture and attitude, and the resulting compromises satisfy no one.

[thefounder]

Would you agree to build walls/borders as well?

[Juliate]

Of course NATO is part of the equation... or was, since now your president is basically tearing it down. Guess why?

(edit for that: I'll answer for you: Trump is sowing chaos because that's how his kind grabs more control and more riches.)

Btw, there are 2 nuclear powers in the EU as of today.

[AnimalMuppet]

> More than 70 years at peace on a continent, something not seen for several centuries before that. The EU project, and structure, and growth, and maturity, is central to that peace.

I don't really buy that. There were a number of years of peace before the EU even existed; crediting the EU with the peace therefore seems a bit revisionist.

[Juliate]

EU is a thing, and is a dynamics too. What we have today is the consequence of what's been put into action right after WW2.

[muro]

What about Yugoslavia and Ukraine? Also calling the cold war "peace" is a bit stretch.

Edit: additionally just because countries are "better off" does not mean they should happily agree to every new power grab by Brussels. Some ex-soviet republics were also better off than before they "joined".

[thefounder]

What are you talking about? Yugoslavia and Ukraine are not part of the EU and they are not that well off either. What ex-soviet republics were better off before they joined the EU? Most of them were still recovering from communism.

As soon as the EU falls apart you will see everyone feeling cheated or oppressed by its neighbour for all kind of reasons not to mention territorial reclaims. War will be inevitable. The big powers will profit most(Russia, China and the US).

[muro]

The parent said "peace on the continent". Last I checked, Ukraine and Yugoslavia are part of Europe.

For "better off" - apologies for being unclear - I didn't mean joining the EU. I was making the comparison that the same was true for countries that were (forcefully) joined into the Soviet union in mid 20th century.