>Europe is constructed so that it can't win, but can "pick" the winner between scylla and charybdis, pest and cholera.

Because they have no spine and no leverage/muscle on the international stage to throw their weight around and make sure they get what's best for themselves at the expense of everyone else the same way US, China, etc do.

They play the international nice guy that just ends up being the doormat everyone takes advantage of, being at the mercy of Russian and Azeri gas, at the mercy of US tech, energy and defence, and at the mercy of Chinese manufacturing after dismantling their own manufacturing, at the mercy of Turkey for migration enforcement, etc so they can't do anything radical that upsets their "partners", or that makes their virtue signaling policies look bad, or risk massive repercussions they aren't prepared for, so they just turtle, bury their head in the sand and pretend everything is going fine while falling further into obscurity.

EU flaunts its "moral values" as its strength, but their geopolitical adversaries have no such values and are dominating over them in the process exploiting their morals against them as their weakness. There's nothing virtuous in being/acting weak and letting others dominate you.

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GistNoesis 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

European Union construction happened after the second world war in the context of the Marshall Plan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan ) to help rebuild Europe that had been destroyed.

By design European laws are superior to national laws. Leaving the union is also instant bankruptcy because all countries have very high level of debt which are only guaranteed because they are in the union.

European population is getting old and replaced by a migration coming mainly from previous African colonies.

Future paying for the past.

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roenxi a day ago | parent [-]

> Leaving the union is also instant bankruptcy because all countries have very high level of debt which are only guaranteed because they are in the union.

That seems to violate basic physics and accounting laws. It isn't possible for everyone to be in debt all at once, because when everything nets out then there isn't anyone to make the loans. Someone has to be producing the goods that get consumed.

	▲	GistNoesis 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's the magic of interest rates. Countries in the EU, let's say France for example have roughly 115% of GDP of debt. To service the interest of the debt it must finance each year the debt by paying the interests, and borrowing the sum on the market to reimburse the previous debts which are currently reaching their terms. The full owed amount is never paid back, but can be rolled forward indefinitely. These interests are currently ~2% for France. Which mean the debt is manageable and the interests can be paid with the citizen's tax and the music can continue to play. But once France get out of the UE, interests rates become 5% then the citizens tax are not enough to pay the debt, and nobody wants to lend money to France anymore because even at 5% interests the risk of default becomes too great and they risk not getting the full amount-owed back so nobody lends, and since their is no money in reserve, and they can't borrow it means they default => bankruptcy. France doesn't have its own currency anymore so it cannot print its own money which compounds the problem. National resources get plundered, citizens get poor. It is a game of musical chair which is highly non-linear.

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ahartmetz 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>after dismantling their own manufacturing

Uhm, Europe is not the US. We still have a lot of manufacturing. It varies by country - the UK unfortunately had structural problems, finance supremacy and a Thatcher who hated unions so much that she'd rather destroy unionized industries than have unions. Central Europe still does a pretty large amount of manufacturing.

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joe_mamba 2 days ago | parent [-]

>We still have a lot of manufacturing.

Then why are we afraid of China and the US and cave in to their demands?

Why is german manufacturing output back to where it was in 2006?[1]

[1] https://x.com/ThorstenPolleit/status/2047436171903394294/pho...

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ahartmetz a day ago | parent [-]

We still have a lot != it's doing fantastic and is expanding.

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joe_mamba 18 hours ago | parent [-]

So your >"We still have a lot", is just hiding the decline.

	▲	ahartmetz 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think the "still" implies that it's at least not increasing and probably slowly decreasing. And except in some of the largest companies like Siemens (where it doesn't seem to be a big deal anymore neither), the idea that manufacturing (or anything) may be profitable but not profitable enough has not taken hold as much as in the US.