Brexit: breaking up…
…is hard to do.
When a country voluntarily signs away some of its autonomy—in this case, to join the EU—it would seem at the outset that such a decision would be reversible if that country so desires. After all, the vow wasn’t “till death do us part.”
But if France and Germany have anything to say about it, they’ll make Britain pay for Brexit:
Before I go into detail about the phone calls, remember that no one really knows what will happen next because this has never happened before. Article 50 in the Lisbon Treaty allows member countries to leave the EU after two years of negotiations. If the country and the EU cannot reach an agreement then the country leaves without anything.
But like many promises made during the courtship stage, easier said than done. A price might be extracted:
Wolfgang Sché¤uble said Britain would be bound by tax rules after it leaves the European Union (EU) which would restrict giving incentives to retain investors.
The German finance minister also said the UK would be forced to pay EU budget bills for more than ten years, echoing proposals for the UK to pay an exit bill of up to £43billion.
Theresa May had been looking to close ally Germany, as a net exporter to Britain, to quell French demands the UK “pay a price” for wanting to leave the bloc.
Read the whole thing.
Germany and France aren’t historically accustomed to uniting on much, but apparently they’re united on this.
We in the U. S. have a little experience with states trying to leave the union. Didn’t turn out well.
I read somewhere today that the EU is now prohibiting beer mugs like the Bavarians use because you can’t put a line on them to show where the liquid stops and the foam begins. All commercial glasses have these marks. If the people in Brussels can’t figure out why they are hated, they should be kicked out.
“EU could BREAK UP the US: Juncker in jaw-dropping threat to Trump over support for Brexit”
“EUROPEAN Union boss Jean-Claude Juncker this afternoon issued a jaw-dropping threat to the United States, saying he could campaign to break up the country in revenge for Donald Trump’s supportive comments about Brexit.”
Liberal insanity…
Geoffrey Britain:
It wouldn’t be the first time Brits tried to tell us what to do 🙂 .
Reminds me a bit of this, including the preoccupation with Ohio.
I read Juncker’s absurd comments and immediately thought he must be a drunk. He clearly knows nothing about America if he thinks Ohio, which went for djt, is listening to his babblings. However, much of Texas might be willing to put a fence around Austin and allow the bureaucrats of Brussels to take over the city.
Wow! Brexit is producing snowflakes in Europe!
The Texas and Ohio choices really puzzle me. Unless he is thinking that the US would only become more aggressive if say, parts of California were to secede.
But of course, if those parts of Ca. did, then they would become enemy states and we could kill the people there and take the land and all would be well again. Or so the Euromonkey no doubt envisions it.
Junckers is pronounced Yuncker.
Junkers were the nobility of Prussia, a feudal state. After German unification in 1871, the Junkers became the Ruling Class of most of Germany. I don’t know if his name relates, but I suspect it does.
Junckers is a Luxembourger, with a fairly leftist history. As PM, he governed in a coalition with the Social Workers Party. Also in his role as head of the Luxembourg government, that country became a haven for multinational corporate tax avoidance.
Finally, he has said that “borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians”.
I always thought that a Juncker was a Nazi dive bomber.
Roy,
That would be Junkers.
Cap’n Rusty Says:
March 30th, 2017 at 3:53 pm
Wow! Brexit is producing snowflakes in Europe!
* * *
Bring on the global warming and melt them all.
“When a country voluntarily signs away some of its autonomy–in this case, to join the EU–it would seem at the outset that such a decision would be reversible if that country so desires”
One would think
I would wonder that Germany might be extra cautious, knowing that the fate they set for Britain might be the one they set for themselves in a few years.
I don’t know the EU system very well, but it seems that certain states do more of the working and paying. As worker states leave the EU, that puts more burden on the remaining working states in a domino effect.
This is likely the reason behind such harsh penalties on Britain, and the need to keep every state in line. However, at this point the British people have spoken, and EU sanctions wont reverse the vote. Harsher sanction, in fact, draw an even deeper divide between Britain and the EU, and demonstrate more clearly the need to separate.
When people are given power over others, very reluctantly do they ever give that power up. Usually, the more independent the subjects try to be, the more ruthless the subjegators will behave. The events preceding our own war for independence are a good example of that. The EU leadership will not, willingly, allow Great Briton to leave the union; and I suspect, if they had the wherewithal, that they would even go to war with England to stop them from leaving.
KRB
Hard to find, but see Sayers’ “Praise God Now An English War.”
All-time maker of good cheer Neil Sedaka, happily lip-synching perhaps the best of his many masterful pop songs – a perfect coda to this post. Bravo, Neo!