In the 1980s, EU money was flowing to Spain, Portugal and Greece. And people complained about that too.

But the result is inarguably positive. Those countries had only recently become democracies after decades of military dictatorships or otherwise unstable third-world style governments. Today they're the most dynamic economies in the EU in many respects, and their democracies are well established and functioning.

The EU doesn't get nearly enough credit for how it transformed the continent. People have forgotten how nearly all European countries were in a very bad shape after WWII. Fascists had remained in power in Spain and Portugal. Soviets were orchestrating communist takeovers in countries like Italy. It's a small miracle that the liberal democratic economic order won so quickly and decisively.

That is incorrect for Portugal. We didn't took part on the WWII and came out with a rich country that kept growing on double-digits. Eventually it was attacked simultaneouly by the US/Russia proxies for 10 years until 1974.

It was after that US/Russia sponsored this communist takeover of our country that the new puppet governments have thrown the natives into extreme misery until someone from the EU decided to reduce the levels of corruption and misery. We simply swapped one master for another and hasn't been good for our land.

So please don't compare our country to whatever "solutions" brought by the same entities who caused our problems in the first place. We needed almost 50 years to remove socialism from this country and reduce the venezuelan/cuban style poverty forced upon us.

>Today they're the most dynamic economies in the EU in many respects

In what sense are they "dynamic economies"? Their GDP per capita has barely increased at all over the past two decades, they're mired in debt, and haven't produced a single new company that's significant on the global stage.

> The EU doesn't get nearly enough credit for how it transformed the continent. People have forgotten how nearly all European countries were in a very bad shape after WWII.

The EU is very turning major capital cities into complete shitholes. My city of youth, Brussels, is now a 3rd world hellhole where religious extremism (and not a christian one) reigns undisputed king and where drug-dealing cartels are running the show.

I fled that city.

> It's a small miracle that the liberal democratic economic order won so quickly and decisively.

We'll see how well the economic order "won" once there won't be enough money to pay for pensions and once islamists are going to take political power. 25% of Brussels is now bearded men and veiled women (and that number was near to 0% when I was a kid: so in my lifetime my native city turn from 0% to 25% muslims): if you think this shall lead to anything else than the "economic order" we're seeing in islamic country, you're a fool.

France is currently importing about 500 000 people per year, mostly from muslim countries, and it's estimated only 10% of these people are ever going to find work.

I find the EU's stance totally myopic and they're destroying the western culture with totally uncontrolled immigration, while handing the keys to the kingdom to religious extremists.

You mention WWII and fascists and communists: we got rid of those. But only to replace those with islamist extremism, which have already taken several cities, like Brussels.

So, no, the war against deadly ideologies ain't done yet and it's way too early to claim victory.

It's also quite thick to claim amazing "dynamic economies" when in USD the EU hasn't seen any grow since the 2008 financial crisis, at the same time where both the US and China skyrocketed. The EU is barely countering inflation and it's doing that at the cost of massive public debt increase.

I don't have the same reading of you at all as to what's happening in the EU.

I see the EU falling into both irrelevancy and islamism (btw islamism is already a major talking point of the next french elections, where two candidates are critizicing the "entrisme islamique" for the subject becomes very hard to ignore).

No growth since 2008 (in USD and inflation adjusted). Hardly any company in the Top 100.

A failure of a continent.

I think this is the hidden reason why the American alt-right/far-right/MAGA/techbro types hate the EU with so much apoplectic rage. For all its problems, big-picture-like it actually works to gradually coalesce a huge rich continent with a bigger population than the US into something increasingly more coherent, and if it continues to work it will mean that the Western world now has two heavyweight leaders, not one. For people who tend to view the world as a giant zero-sum dominance competition, this is of course a big threat. One more big player = one more competitor.

(The techbros hate it for a different, if related, reason - they aren't nearly as successful at capturing regulators, astroturfing and controlling discourse, and otherwise taking charge of that second entity as they are with the hapless US federal government).

So your measure for success is how people get to put a piece of paper in a box every four years whilst their issues get ignored.