Union? (CLOSED, ATTN Montogranda)

[Montogranda]

Iris laughed. "You're so generous, your highness!", she said, masking sarcasm with innocence. "I'll have to decline though, seeing as how I'm already in government again."

Queralt, never the biggest fan of the Democratic Socialists, suppressed her urge to blurt out Does minister without portfolio really count as being "in government"?. Hannes took up the slack instead by saying, "Sir, I don't know who'd accept a demotion from cabinet member to Jhernan Erzed¹, and I'm pretty sure we'd get roasted if it sounds like we're trying to throw Iris under a bus."

"Mum's more or less like a third rail of Zaras politics.", Sarah deadpanned. Iris chuckled in response, but on a level she did enjoy the ego-stroking.

"Regardless, we're debating a united legislature here, not Iris' political status.", Muhammad said, rushing to move the conversation along. "Say we have 500 constituencies. That means we'll need 250 of those seats to use a much smaller math, say, one representative for every 1.000 people or less, to account for Montogranda's population, whereas with us it'd be more like 1 representative per 5.000, or higher. I couldn't help but think though, maybe it'd be fairer if we let Montogranda have single member, first past the post constituencies, and we'll use the STV multiple-member ones, to get around the population issue?"

1. Zaran equivalent of Walter Cronkite.

"Yeah, lets go with your solution," Jozef II said. "It is just here, in Montogranda, in five years, she would be retired, and that would mean you will need to have a leadership convention to function. She might get a pension in pacos, but it would be so unpopular we'd give her a position as Grand Duchess of Antauen (Antaŭen) with a role as Chair of Elections Montogranda. But, back to the subject: the merger, I think we should adopt the lira, but allow regional specific sides, meaning Montograndese coins can display the Prince on the national side, per se, and something else on the common side."

[Zaras]

"Well, y'see, Prince Jozef, Dora never bothered to put in a mandatory retirement age for politicians.", Seevertsen said. "It's just one of the oversights we've had to work around... like the fact that we still don't have a Welfare Ministry."

"Don't mind, Your Highness. Mark's just angry that we have to split social services responsibilities between him, me, Iris and Sarah.", Stewart added quickly.

Iris raised an eyebrow. "Waiiiiiiiiiit. When did somebody abolish the Welfare Ministry?"

"We had one?", Seevertsen said in surprise.

"Yeah. It's what I did before becoming Mayor."

"The Union Agreement's only a preliminary one anyways", Muhammad said, waving her hand. "Once we have the principles down, we'll write a federal constitution, and hopefully we won't have to override too much of both of our existing constitutions..."

"Though we'll probably have to either abolish the mandatory retirement, or risk pissing off her fanclub", the younger Bernev snarked.

"... RE-gardless. Unless somebody's altered the Montograndan economy behind our backs, y'allready use the lira instead of the paco, and have done that for a while. How 'bout: we keep our mint, you get your own, and have a bit of a euro-like variation by region. We'll have to... uhm..." Muhammad read more closely. "... apparently, establish an exchange rate between the esperi and the kend. That's something I didn't see coming."

Seevertsen nodded. "Just saying, that whole 'we legally use the paco but practically use the lira at 1:1 parity but with our own subunits' deal can be quite a headache. Since it's been pegged for 32 years now, should we just go ahead and move the esperi to 1:1 with the kend, and then set a date by which the esperi will be withdrawn from circulation? Would 2-3 be enough for you to mint liras?"

"Mark, we're not talking about the EU here.", Muhammad said. "A year would probably be enough to cover 90.000 people, and they can just use our banknotes until they can make their own." She turned back to the Prince and Prime Minister. "Speaking of which... Prime Minister, can we assume that Montograndans won't need an "adjustment" period or a public education campaign for the currency switch? I'm just saying, you might technically have been using the lira for decades, but let's not give your wackos an opening to pretend that the lira switch was "imposed" on you and caused prices to increase."

[Montogranda]

"They won't really need to have a campaign, even banks use lira instead of pacos, the difference is that we still use the 5 lira note here. The Amharis might use it as leverage. Only the esperii coins (75, 50, 25, 10, 5, and 1 esperii) are used and even since the early 2000s are getting rarer, since the currency reform in 1982 gave them the size as the Zaran kends and value... sort of," Jozef remarked. "The 25 esperii is similar to 20 kend, but the same size, and the 75 esperii is rounded to 1 lira. Nobody even uses paco banknotes anymore, save for the odd 25,000 paco note floating around here. Perhaps we can redefine all values above 10 esperii and declare after a certain date, they'll be the same value as the kend."

[Zaras]

"Or we can just impose a 1:1 parity between the kend and the esperi, like how the paco and lira are already pegged.", Seevertsen said. "The economies really aren't that different to cause problems, and having a kend to esperi exchange rate just looks a bit silly. How does that sound?"

[Montogranda]

"Or we can just impose a 1:1 parity between the kend and the esperi, like how the paco and lira are already pegged.", Seevertsen said. "The economies really aren't that different to cause problems, and having a kend to esperi exchange rate just looks a bit silly. How does that sound?"

"It sounds good," Prince Jozef said.

[Zaras]

There was a silence, before Mayor Muhammad finally said "Oh! Sorry, what was the next issue on the agenda?"

"Well, we've covered political organisation and economics so far...", Gerald said.

[Montogranda]

There was a silence, before Mayor Muhammad finally said "Oh! Sorry, what was the next issue on the agenda?"

"Well, we've covered political organisation and economics so far...", Gerald said.

"How about Esperanto and English are official languages? And before the idiots from the NUF ask, no, Montogranda is sure as hell not to implement something like Bill 101 (Charter of the French Language, except it is Esperanto, not French). We will have both as official languages.

[Zaras]

"I wouldn't worry about those fuckers too much. They could be personally saved by Montograndans in the middle of the worst disaster Zaras ever saw, and they'd still feel threatened by foreigners.", Muhammad said with noticeable distaste. "Both, yes, but it'd more or less be a federal solution - you're the ones who mostly use Esperanto, and we're the ones who mostly use English, and we'd have to offer government services in both languages. Though given that there isn't much in the way of overlap, that shouldn't be a problem."

[Montogranda]

"I wouldn't worry about those fuckers too much. They could be personally saved by Montograndans in the middle of the worst disaster Zaras ever saw, and they'd still feel threatened by foreigners.", Muhammad said with noticeable distaste. "Both, yes, but it'd more or less be a federal solution - you're the ones who mostly use Esperanto, and we're the ones who mostly use English, and we'd have to offer government services in both languages. Though given that there isn't much in the way of overlap, that shouldn't be a problem."

"Good. I have a feeling we are almost done. Anything we have forgot to table?"

[Zaras]

There was fidgeting from the Zaran delegation.

Muhammad scratched her head. "Well... I can't think of anything. But if we did, we can fix it with amendments once we get the actual union treaty signed."

[Montogranda]

There was fidgeting from the Zaran delegation.

Muhammad scratched her head. "Well... I can't think of anything. But if we did, we can fix it with amendments once we get the actual union treaty signed."

"Yeah, we can do that. That means all we need to do is a referendum, sign it, and then watch our countries fall into one nation, two languages."

[Zaras]

"How soon should we organise the referendum then for the actual treaty?"

[Montogranda]

"How soon should we organise the referendum then for the actual treaty?"

"We could organize the referendum for a month's time, and then we can sign the actual treaty on Kauras."

[Zaras]

"Well, that's agreed then, and with surprisingly no harsh sticking points.", Muhammad said, and laughed a bit towards the end. "Here's looking forward to a similarly painless drafting of the actual union treaty!"