European Union

Comment: The British Wake-up call

Offended, the EU leaders responded to the British Brexit vote, and offensive to the British, many German commentators Express their views. A restart of Europe is more than overdue, says Zhang Danhong.

Marriage is the attempt to be the second to cope with the problems they’d been alone, had never once said Woody Allen. It’s a similar thing with the European Union. It deals with questions with which it would be as a single nation-state is not confronted. For example: Where is the seat of the community? In addition, the member States of the Montan Union had argued in 1951, the Predecessor of the European Union, three days and three nights. The choice fell on Luxembourg.

Exhausted, Jean Monnet, former chief architect of European Integration, and said to his assistant: “Now we have a few hours to Sleep. Then we need a couple of months for the next step of the Integration. Then…” His cunning assistant interrupted him: “Then, we face great difficulties. And Not forcing us to further Integration. Is that so?” Monnet laughed: “Exactly. You have understood the principle of how Europe works.”

Discreet and technocratic Integration

So, Europe has to work over six decades. The Integration has pushed the political Elite to the people passing by – quite deliberately. The top-of-Europeans Jean-Claude Juncker in 1999, has admitted in a rare Moment of honesty in the open. Literally, he said the news magazine “der Spiegel”: “We decide something, put it in the room and wait for some time, what happens. If there is no great cry and no uprisings, because most people do not even understand what was decided, then we continue – step by step, until there is no going Back.”

DW-editor Zhang Danhong

So the procedure was to a good part also in the introduction of the Euro. Which is the member of Parliament suspected of 1991, the scope of the first decisions on the monetary Union, which he agreed to at the time? All at once the train has left the station then. A Pause is not possible.

In European politics, and the path dependence. Took a wrong turn? No Problem. Close your eyes and. The error is cemented a Return to the starting point appears to all Stakeholders as too complex and therefore not considered. The Euro was curbed the crisis by mutualising the debt. The further this process advances, the more likely the reversal.

All this without an Alternative

The magic word of the European Integration is “no alternative”. It may not be what must not be. This includes, logically, that no country leaves the community, because that would be dependency on the path to break through.

The British were not impressed and voted in direct democracy, the majority of the exit from the EU. So you have demonstrated that you have no desire to, one day, unnoticed in the United States of Europe to Wake up.

The European Integration started 60 years ago as a project of Reconciliation, especially between Germany and France. Both have also benefited the most. France used the EU to be, in spite of the economic weakness, with the German eye-to-eye, and the Federal Republic of Germany could rise under the umbrella of the community, without making the neighbors fear. The British saw themselves at the beginning rather than as a Mentor and promoter of European integration. That you don’t force it, even after their accession, the ever deeper Integration with the same fervor as the Germans, you have to accept in this country. To play after the Brexit vote, the insulted liver sausage or to keep the British are stupid, bears witness to more of an intolerance and a peculiar understanding of democracy.

In the crisis the opportunity

No, the British did not have plunged the EU into a crisis, it is already since years. The EU should understand the British vote as a Wake-up call for a restart. In doing so, you should reconsider the powers between Europe and nation States and other key projects, the people. The British must be shown, not hardness. Because many couples have demonstrated that one can remain even after a divorce friends.

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