2019 European Parliament Elections

[Major-Tom]

I was happy to see the Sweden Democrats join a respectable group like the ECR and since I think Peter "Nalle" ("Teddy") Lundgren, who I've met personally btw, is a great guy - he gets my vote.

That being said... I used to be a "soft eurosceptic" and I understand why it's the right choice for the SD. But I'm more and more leaning towards being a "hard" Eurosceptic, on a personal level. The EU hates free trade and liberal democracy, and is built upon some old X-tian notion of "European" culture that simply doesn't exist. Of course we should be friends with Europe etc. But the cultural differences are simply too large to fit into a single political entity. This is reflected among conservatives/nationalists as well.. the South is a way more authoritarian bunch who openly argue against liberal democracy, while in the North, I sense a lot of people actually vote for such parties to preserve the basic tenets of liberal democracy.

And even Marine Le Pen is now pro-EU, I hear. I don't wanna be in a Union led by her buddies either... The cultural differences are simply too big.. as are the strategic interests. People play the Russia card, but France has always been friends with Russia and has hardly any strategical reason to not be that, other than perhaps the illusion that France shall rule supreme over Europe. A Nordic Union (+ Intermarium) is probably a securer counter to the threat of Russia eating up it's smaller neighbours. From both a cultural and a geopolitical perspective, it'd arguably make more sense to have Sweden become the 53'th US state since we share the same protestant-germanic influences... no matter the prejudices we might have about each other...

(or maybe we should just invite the Chinese to build a base on the Isle of Gotland..? that way we could surely have peace for a thousand years, here in the North... )

There is a ton wrong with this post.

For starters, the absurd notion that the EU is anti free-trade. The founding of the EU was nearly entirely predicated on free trade and the encouragement of it. This value, of course, holds equal weight as the promotion of liberal democracy in the eyes of the European Union. I feel like a good number of people read an article or two on how "EU bureaucrats are destroying democracy," when in reality, the EU often forces it's hand to ensure that it's member states maintain an independent judiciary, fair & free elections (competitive elections, especially), and maintain human rights ranging from LGBT Rights to the right to criticize, say, a governmental official.

Just because the EU has some incompetent buffoons in and around Brussels and Strasbourg, it doesn't undermine the values and positive mission of the EU, it merely undermines the portions and individuals working closely with the EU who/which act as a detriment. The EU is massive and is bound to have flaws, ranging from slow policy processes to integration of proper monetary policy for poorer member nations. But, again, that doesn't translate to "antithetical to liberal democracy/free trade," as you describe it. In fact, again, it's the contrary.

As for LePen, despite my personal strong distaste for her and her nasty dog-whistle style of politics, she isn't quite stupid either. She recognizes that many Europeans are looking at the Brexit fiasco and thinking "well, fuck, we can't have that shit here..."

[Hakons]

The European People's Party are my favorites, for the good 'ol Christian democracy and all.

Ugh, why can't the US have Christian Democracy

[Phoenicaea]

The European People's Party are my favorites, for the good 'ol Christian democracy and all.

Ugh, why can't the US have Christian Democracy.

you should be careful, the people's party is not (the most part, and the leadership) what had been intended when built in the age 50's, and 60's.

it is peaceful the founders of people's ideology, and practice, would fight against nowadays people's parties at blood knife. so, they were contenders of the incumbent faction.

early since '50's in some countries, some decades after for other countries, most influent people's founders were ousted by rivals, even if they d greatly gained for their countries.

it was, to summarise you, an highly educated and 'un-populist' leadership, with a strong democratic practice and belief, after the devastation of wwii and fascism.

so that in most issues you can t have shared side between the original and the ruling, so you can t have it depending on which you mean.

sample, people's founders set the process to an unified army, which nowadays people's oppose untill death. while the founders believed it to be 'unavoidable'.

an other, they made ecc to feeble 'national corporate' giants gaining raw resources (coal, oil), which nowadays they strife to encourage. these two cited are essentials issues in eu.

i may suppose you wish to refer to nowadays people's party, which is a melting of different parties, so perhaps in Us the american great political unity discourages it.

if you wish to say founder's people's party, well as i was telling you, it suffered since few years after. it needed a great political militancy, a melting of morals and anti-fascism.

[Free Land of The Free Land of Freedo]

The EU hates free trade and liberal democracy,

The EU is built off the back of those two things, both of which are bad.

[Deutsche Herrschaft]

The EU hates free trade and liberal democracy,

The EU is built off the back of those two things, both of which are bad.

What? Are you saying that the EU looks marvellous on paper but impractical in execution?

[Aellex]

I want to know if the Article 13 vote will hurt parties and MEPs who voted for it, I mean I assume it will since the EPP is expected to drop in terms of votes and MEPs anyway.

The truth is that it probably won't matter. Remember, turnout for European Parliament elections tends to be miniscule except in Belgium, and that's only because voting there is compulsory.

Not gonna vote myself, not so much out of any ideological opposition (tho I still view the EU as a disgusting and unworthy organization) but just because I've better things to do with my life.

[The Blaatschapen]

The EU hates free trade and liberal democracy,

The EU is built off the back of those two things, both of which are bad.

Liberal Democracy is bad. But less worse than other systems of government

[The Feylands]

There is a ton wrong with this post.

For starters, the absurd notion that the EU is anti free-trade. The founding of the EU was nearly entirely predicated on free trade and the encouragement of it. This value, of course, holds equal weight as the promotion of liberal democracy in the eyes of the European Union. I feel like a good number of people read an article or two on how "EU bureaucrats are destroying democracy," when in reality, the EU often forces it's hand to ensure that it's member states maintain an independent judiciary, fair & free elections (competitive elections, especially), and maintain human rights ranging from LGBT Rights to the right to criticize, say, a governmental official.

Just because the EU has some incompetent buffoons in and around Brussels and Strasbourg, it doesn't undermine the values and positive mission of the EU, it merely undermines the portions and individuals working closely with the EU who/which act as a detriment. The EU is massive and is bound to have flaws, ranging from slow policy processes to integration of proper monetary policy for poorer member nations. But, again, that doesn't translate to "antithetical to liberal democracy/free trade," as you describe it. In fact, again, it's the contrary.

As for LePen, despite my personal strong distaste for her and her nasty dog-whistle style of politics, she isn't quite stupid either. She recognizes that many Europeans are looking at the Brexit fiasco and thinking "well, fuck, we can't have that shit here..."

The EU hates free trade and liberal democracy,

The EU is built off the back of those two things, both of which are bad.

First of all, the Coal and Steel Pact is not the present EU. A free trade agreement between Germany, France and Benelux was a rather sensible thing to do. We have that kind of arrangement going on here in the North as well.

But the EU of today is rather a corporatist, protectionist entity that exists for the benefit of big business and to flush tax money to businesses. They also ridicolously micro-manage the market by measuring bananas, to keep smaller bananas from developing countries away from competing, among other things. They've banned the sale of Swedish snuffbecause they prefer people dying from lung cancer over their businesses suffering a hit from good competition.

The main function of the EU is to subsidize everything that can be put under the term "agriculture" (this is environmentally and ethically outrageous and unsustainable, but that's beside the point). In fact, 41% of the EU's annual budget is spent on agriculture, they even admit that themselves. The EU and its protectionist racket has been terrible for businesses in developing countries.

The criminal £30 billion-a-year subsidy regime allows the EU to dump thousands of tons of heavily-subsidised food into Africa every year. As a result local producers cannot export their products because they compete with the lower prices made possible by the CAP.

For instance EU farmers are guaranteed a price for their sugar which is three times higher than the world price. Mozambique loses more than £100 million a year because of restrictions on importing into EU coupled with the dumping of cheap exports at its door, while many thousands of workers in Swaziland have lost their jobs because the local industry cannot compete.

Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal have been hit by cheap, subsidised imports from Europe while the £30 paid to British farmers for every tonne of wheat they produce inflates the price of breakfast cereals, bread and other goods in Britain.

Thousands of tonnes of surplus powdered milk from the EU are dumped in West African countries such as Mali at a cheaper price than local cattle owners can sell at, devastating the economy and driving them out of business.

Unwanted EU chicken thighs and wings are often frozen and exported to Africa where they are sold for rock-bottom prices. Chicken farmers in Senegal and Ghana used to supply most of the country’s demand – now their market share has virtually disappeared because subsidised imports are 50 per cent cheaper.

Secondly, no - the EU is not pro-liberal democracy, because most EU countries are not liberla democracies in the first place. Just ask the Catalans. I'll have a bunch of more examples bellow. French peasants are among those who benefit the most from EU protectionism and state capitalism, and France has always sought domination over Europe, so it's not surprising that Le Pen as a French chauvinist would like to use the EU for her own benefit. The hard right catholic government of Poland (which benefits even more from the EU... while still behaving like they're living in the middle ages..) is playing the same gig.

The European People's Party are my favorites, for the good 'ol Christian democracy and all.

Ugh, why can't the US have Christian Democracy

The EPP is rather "broadly centre-right". Sweden's Moderate Party is a member, and they don't really have any ideology apart from tax cuts.. And CD is not a coherent ideology at all. Some people take that term and put whatever they like into it, because you have everything from neoliberals to natcons using that label.

If you what you're after is the social conservative/fiscal "liberal" combo, I believe that's about as likely to occur with some nationalist parties, even some social democrats in eastern Europe.

*****

Moreover, it's important to note that the EP groups are (thankfully) not ideologically coherent even at the level of US. parties or whatever. Would be impossible since the member states are way to different, both structurally and culturally. Biggest reason EP groups even exist is for the funding and other privileges they get.

There is no "Europe". That mentality is a remnant of a time when Christianity was largely confined to this potion of the earth. And even by simply looking at X-tianity we can see it really doesn't work. Protestant Europe is further away from the rest of the world more than just geographically. We Scandinavians don't beat up voters, we don't jail or disenfranchise people for making distasteful jokes on twitter, we don't bomb cute Greenpeace boats, we don't beat our kids, we care about animal welfare, we generally speaking don't believe that Jews eat Christian babies, nor do we crown statues of Jesus as king, we don't take autistic children from their mothers because of outdated Freudian concepts, our guys generally don't feel a need to protect their "honour" by headbutting someone for mentioning their sister's sex life, we don't find sexual harassment "charming". Etc, etc... The cultural differences are simply to great on every level for any kind of political union to work. If the EU was a free trade agreement, sure, but it's the opposite of that.. -.-

I mean its hardly a surprise that the EU is against liberal democracy since Non-Protestant Europe consists of countries that are hardly that in the first place. And with Brexit.. they're gonna be even more predominant. And fewer of fewer of us will have to pay more and more money for the others.

What oughta happen is that Germany needs to stop feeling guilty for things hardly anyone alive took part in. They have no obligation to send a bunch of money to anyone.. especially not to certain unenlightened countries to the east where anti-semitism and chauvinism is as rampant as ever.

[Hakons]

The truth is that it probably won't matter. Remember, turnout for European Parliament elections tends to be miniscule except in Belgium, and that's only because voting there is compulsory.

Not gonna vote myself, not so much out of any ideological opposition (tho I still view the EU as a disgusting and unworthy organization) but just because I've better things to do with my life.

Does it really take that long to vote? I thought you supported Front National? Wouldn't it be worth voting for eurosceptics to make the EU less of a disgusting/unworthy organization?

[Free Land of The Free Land of Freedo]

What? Are you saying that the EU looks marvellous on paper but impractical in execution?

I'm saying free markets and liberal democracy, which are two of the foundations of the EU, are bad.

[Aellex]

Not gonna vote myself, not so much out of any ideological opposition (tho I still view the EU as a disgusting and unworthy organization) but just because I've better things to do with my life.

Does it really take that long to vote? I thought you supported Front National? Wouldn't it be worth voting for eurosceptics to make the EU less of a disgusting/unworthy organization?

I don't particularly support R.N., I just despise most other parties we have. Anyway, given I've got exams soon after the election and the city I live always vote left, I'm not gonna bother. Sure, with enough drops of water, you can make a sea but in that particular case, I don't find it worth it.

[Bienenhalde]

But the EU of today is rather a corporatist, protectionist entity that exists for the benefit of big business and to flush tax money to businesses. They also ridicolously micro-manage the market by measuring bananas, to keep smaller bananas from developing countries away from competing, among other things. They've banned the sale of Swedish snuffbecause they prefer people dying from lung cancer over their businesses suffering a hit from good competition.

The main function of the EU is to subsidize everything that can be put under the term "agriculture" (this is environmentally and ethically outrageous and unsustainable, but that's beside the point). In fact, 41% of the EU's annual budget is spent on agriculture, they even admit that themselves. The EU and its protectionist racket has been terrible for businesses in developing countries.

Protectionism is not always a bad thing. If companies overseas are insufficiently regulated and they engage in practices that are harmful to workers or the environment, then I would say it would be good to at least levy high punitive tariffs, if not keeping their goods out entirely. I think fair trade is preferable to "free trade" which harms workers or the environment. Agriculture is necessarily for producing food and other raw materials, but I would prefer that the agricultural sector in Europe focused on providing food and raw materials for Europeans instead of exporting stuff to the Third World and competing with their farmers.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Well if im still in the EU after tomorrow ill most likely vote for the Alliance Party (They are affiliated with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party) or the SDLP (Affiliated with Party of European Socialists) here in NI.

[Shrillland]

Well if im still in the EU after tomorrow ill most likely vote for the Alliance Party (They are affiliated with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party) or the SDLP (Affiliated with Party of European Socialists) here in NI.

Well, there will be two NI seats under Ireland from what I understand.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Well if im still in the EU after tomorrow ill most likely vote for the Alliance Party (They are affiliated with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party) or the SDLP (Affiliated with Party of European Socialists) here in NI.

Well, there will be two NI seats under Ireland from what I understand.

I think that is still up in the Air. Sinn Fein wants it to happen, and they will probably win one if it does with the other going to a unionist candidate, but i dont know if it will happen. I thought legal issues were preventing it?

[Shrillland]

Well, there will be two NI seats under Ireland from what I understand.

I think that is still up in the Air. Sinn Fein wants it to happen, and they will probably win one if it does with the other going to a unionist candidate, but i dont know if it will happen. I thought legal issues were preventing it?

That does depend on what happens in Westminster....if anything happens apart from falling off the cliff.

[Loben]

are any of the parties for the decentralization of power?

[Kustonia]

Europe of Nations and Freedom

[Shrillland]

Now that Brexit has been delayed until October 31, the Parliament totals have been readjusted to pre-Brexit numbers. Britain will get to take part in the election after all.

[Minoa]

Source: https://www.remainvoter.com/how-to-vote-london

Hmm, I was expecting Liberal Democrats to be the recommendation: if Labour had firmly committed to a second referendum, on the basis of a fundamental change of circumstances that rendered the original referendum obsolete, I would have said that it was a definite Labour. I think Change UK is going to get one seat due to public awareness, so I may go ahead and reinforce the Liberal Democrats.

[Nakena]

Strongly hoping for EPP being punished and loosing harshly.

They stand for everything that is wrong with Brussels and the EU, and european politics. Followed close by the S&D.

[Shrillland]

Polls are open today in Britain and the Netherlands, so vote, you bastards!

[Phoenicaea]

the move should be destitute european council, and have a second chamber in replacement. so, an european parliament made of congress and senate, burning council down.

[Shrillland]

the move should be destitute the european council, and have a second chamber in place of it. so, an european parliament made of congress and senate, burning down the council.

I actually agree with this. I also think there should be an elected executive, even if that means a presidium of sorts similar to Switzerland.

[The Grims]

Polls are open today in Britain and the Netherlands, so vote, you bastards!

That Brits are allowed to vote still is insane.