The EU in just the past year has signed deals with Latin America and India in addition to the already existing ones with South Korea, Canada, Japan etc.

It has positioned itself at the center of the world's largest free trade zone.

It's managed to replace US contributions to Ukraine and looks like its in the process of bloodying Russia's nose.

Reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated.

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EdiX an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Free trade didn't stop Russia from invading Ukraine and it didn't convert China into a democracy. And the india's deal is saddling us with more third world immigration that will only make things worse.

It seems to me that this is still all the EU not keeping up with where the world is going. We started drafting the mercosur agreement 27 years ago so we finalize it and call it a victory, all that it's probably going to do is precipitate the demise of our domestic agribusiness, so that farmers won't be able to cause a ruckus in Brussels anymore.

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kergonath an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Free trade didn't stop Russia from invading Ukraine and it didn't convert China into a democracy.

We do not need China to be a democracy. That’s a matter for the Chinese people. Imposing a form of government from outside rarely works and is really counter-productive most of the time.

	▲	EdiX 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The point of all this free trade ideology is that it would make the whole world into peaceful liberal democracies. If it doesn't do that, why are we doing it? We're just making ourselves dependent on dangerous dicators while simultaneously enriching them.

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vrganj 27 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Our defense industry and economic might are plenty to stop Russia.

China's system of government is China's matter. I think we could learn a lot from them, actually.

Immigration will be vital to the survival of Europe. We are far below replacement level birth rates and we'll need new young people to keep our societies functioning. Being European is about values, not the color of your skin. If immigrants don't live up to those, we can sanction. But we can't just let Europe die out because of some sense of racial superiority.

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graemep an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The EU has expanded to incorporate many more countries but is a much smaller fraction of the world's economy than it was in the 70s. Europe is the world's slowest growing region so this will continue.

	▲	vrganj 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Youre only counting the core, not the periphery we bound to us through deals I mentioned. Korea, Canada, Latin America, India. They're all bound to us. Europe is just the imperial capital of the largest economic region in the world.