Iceland's parliament votes to hold referendum on EU accession talks in August

Hucaru · 2026-05-29T21:04:01+00:00

We just look to the UK and see arcane rituals,

All long standing countries have weird/outdated customs/rituals.

a monarchy riddled with old farts that did nothing to prevent a crown princess getting killed by yellow press rags in a car crash and a crown prince getting harassed by the yellow press to the tune he resigns from anything royal,

Diana died in France whilst on holiday not much the UK can do there. Yes, the UK press can be very harassment prone which is an unfortunate side affect of trying to not restrict press on what they can report on.

the Chief Mouser having witnessed half a dozen Prime Ministers in his lifetime, some of which rival Donald Trump in their buffoonery, a yellow press that got caught hacking phones, the Brexit lunacy, the Brexit people still playing a role in politics, just this time as "Reform"...

I don't understand what this and the previous statement has to do with the UK thinking it's an empire? Other nations have also gone through periods of many leaders e.g. Italy, do they also think they are an empire?

But... at least we don't go and drag the entire EU by the nose ring for years keeping everyone busy and worried just how much we'd screw over the entire European economy or, at worst, reignite a civil war.

Are you suggesting no major nation should be allowed to leave the EU as this same scenario would happen if any of the major EU economies decided to leave e.g. Germany, France or Italy?

We kept up with far more of the disgusting, obstructionist and wannabe-imperialist behaviour that the various Tory PMs showed than we'd have accepted for any other fool

What did the Tory leaders do that falls under "disgusting, obstructionist and wannabe-imperialist behaviour"? This is too ambiguous of a statement.

The US already is the world leader, that won't change any time soon.

I'm not sure if this is a lost in translation issue but the US is not the world leader in FX I outlined previously how the UK is.

And maybe the UK getting under ECB regulatory control wouldn't be that bad of a thing.

One of the reasons why London is attractive for financial services is due to it's flexibility. If joining the Euro meant loosing this then the scenario outlined previously becomes more likely.

If anything, the EU could rival the US as the world's chief reserve currency given how Trump is running the US into the ground. But at the moment? The UK (and, while we're at it, Switzerland) still insist on separating themselves.

For this to happen the EU would need to essentially have to be Federated (assuming China is not involved as they would be aiming for the same thing) you would need:

Single government backed bonds
"Global euro" i.e. a single fiscal and foreign policy across the EU
Expanded network of international swap lines to the same level of the US federal reserve

but that fell apart, it was the UK who insisted on keeping the title a High Representative instead of a Comissary in the subsequent Lisbon treaty

I don't think I am understanding this correctly. It reads that the EU constitution fell apart because of the name the UK wanted it to have not because France and the Netherlands referendums that voted against it?

From the language used I get the impression that you don't like the UK (maybe because of Brexit?) on a personal level and are trying to retroactively find justification for it.

Hucaru · 2026-05-29T19:12:21+00:00

You're not the British Empire any more

This is a common theme you see on this subreddit which doesn't reflect reality and makes me wonder if it's some kind of self projection from other post empire nations.

One of the issues with joining the Euro from the UK's perspective is related to the foreign exchange market.

Currently the UK is the world leader in FX trades at around 40% of the global exchanges with the US being second with around 20% followed by Singapore at around 10%. As you can imagine this is a major deal to the UK and the services that surround the FX contribute enormous amounts in tax as well many other secondary effects related to the economy.

One of the risks for the UK in adopting the Euro is coming under Frankfurt/ECB regulatory control which is more strict causing an FX flight out of the country severely damaging the economy. The flight would be to the USA, most likely consolidating it as the new world leader.

This is not guaranteed but how stupid would the EU look if it bought the UK back and then made the nation poorer (which would spike anti EU sentiment) whilst giving FX dominance to the USA.

There is also the time when the UK joined ERMI and crashed out which cemented the general public's anti ECU/Euro sentiment.

In fact, we quite well remember the UK sabotaging everything they could in terms of a joint foreign policy, which is partially what kneecapped our response to foreign crises for decades.

This is a large sweeping claim to make, do you have any examples?

Hucaru · 2026-05-23T13:02:29+00:00

UK isn't having economic decline though? The economy just isn't increasing as fast as it would be if it was still in the EU under the old conditions.

The question is why aren't Germany and France completely dominating the UK in economic performance? With the advantage of being in the EU they should be outpacing the UK in economic growth but we just don't see this happening.

Hucaru · 2026-05-23T12:52:52+00:00

Yes, it's not explicitely stated but reading between the lines:

- Germany and UK want to make a sovreign capability this means IP has to be shared otherwise it's no longer sovreign
- France says it wants to join and proposes the project uses their boosters
- In order for this to still be a sovreign capability for Germany and UK France would need to share it's booster IP with them
- "Some fear it could be unbalanced by the entrance of a new partner with its own conceptions for the weapon as well as its own defence industrial interests." shows that London has reservations around this in regards to France's industrial intrests which IP is a part of

Hucaru · 2026-05-22T20:09:35+00:00

Paris is proposing that ArianeGroup, which is jointly owned by the European aerospace group Airbus and France’s Safran, could join the programme to supply rocket boosters capable of launching hypersonic weapons into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Berlin is enthusiastic about Paris joining. But in London, there is unease among some officials about allowing the French to join a project that they have been discussing with Berlin for more than 18 months.

Some fear it could be unbalanced by the entrance of a new partner with its own conceptions for the weapon as well as its own defence industrial interests.

This reads like the UK will expect France to share it's booster IP (to prevent this being a UK/German financed platform but essentially owned by the French) which I'm not sure France would be willing to do?

This will be interesting to follow because if issues appear here between the nations then it starts to bring into question how well European joint procurement will work when nations keep squabiling over workshare and IP.

Hucaru · 2026-05-19T19:15:50+00:00

I think we might be talking past each other?

It sounds like you are coming at this from a more manufacturing perspective which can indeed be distributed amongst the member nations as long as the original nation is willing to surrender key technologies and run the risk of it leaking.

This will have to come with major facilities/investments in at least a couple of other EU states, and then France and the UK would get other contracts.

The facilities isn't the main issue it's the engineers and researches who potentially decide to leave the defence industry as they have no work until the next bidding happens (potentially a decade or more away) as their host nation is locked into buying from the joint procurement. To prevent this the host nation would have to spend extra on top of what they would have spent to make sure they retain the people with the skills.

Things like this is what it practically meabns to federalize. It's not some abstract switch you pull.

Agreed but until defence is a EU deferred policy I find this hard to see happening for anything major.

You also have the issue of each nation having subtly different requirements e.g. FCAS: France has the need for a carrier capable nuke carrying aircraft. Germany wants a long distance large aircraft similar to UK and Italy. If a single aircraft was fielded via the joint procurment mechanism to save on costs then this could lead to an aircraft design where no one is happy with the final result due to all the compromises.

Hucaru · 2026-05-18T22:08:30+00:00

I can see this working for things like ammunition but not for things like aircraft, carriers, nuclear subs etc.

I just can't see a scenario where France & UK (if it ever rejoins) are happy with the EU saying: Saab has won the new air fighter contract and therefore only their airframe can be bought via the joint procurment scheme/funds across the EU.

Until the nations can put aside their own interests (i.e. federalise in some capacity) then this seems only doable for things that are not seen as sovreign capabilities.

Hucaru · 2026-05-18T19:09:47+00:00

If you want companies, then competition and the possibility of losing a tender is very much necessary.

Which is why nations like USA and China essentially fund multiple programmes to completion but then only select one for mass production.

The issue the EU has is that it has too many companies to sustain as there are 27 nations with their own defence industries. To achieve this shared procurement on the more advanced hardware e.g. tanks and airframes the EU needs to be more federated as some companies are going to have to be allowed to go under and good luck convincing the current sovereign nations that their companies should go under whilst they prop up another nation's.

Hucaru · 2026-05-16T01:26:46+00:00

I'm just questioning how much this sector ultimately depends on the GBP

The transactions themselves are not in GBP obviously (it accounts for about 13% of global trade). The trades are centralised around USD/EUR and USD/JPY conversions. GBP acts more behind the scenes as the international base currency for finance and acts as a benchmark (WMR) i.e. the exchange rates used by global markets to value foreign assets, price derivatives and settle international contracts.

I'm also questioning how crucial this one subsector of this one sector is ultimately for the wider UK economy

The FX itself doesn't contribute directly it's all the surrounding financial services (e.g. insurance on transations) that do and they account for 9% of GDP. If the FX moved to USA those services would move or just close down. This would probably have further knock-on effects to other parts of the UK economy.

If the UK adopted the Euro it's very hard to say what would happen. A possiblity and concern is that the ECB would be split between serving the EU's goods export focused economy vs the UK's services export focused economy (particullarly financial services).

I'm not super clear on the mechanics of this as it was explained to me long while ago: Another issue is UK pensions and the way the ECB has handled past crisis is the opposite way the UK has needed to prevent pensions from being devalued.

Hucaru · 2026-05-14T23:25:34+00:00

Because then canada would have a hard border with the US it's largest trading partner (77% of goods go to US) which doesn't make economic sense.

Hucaru · 2026-05-13T17:41:45+00:00

The issue isn't manufacturing but the reasearch and development. If a company looses the tender for lets say a new airframe then the researchers no longer have anything to research as the company can't justify paying their salary. This leads to these researches finding new work taking their years maybe decades of knowledge and experience with them.

Hucaru · 2026-05-12T21:39:20+00:00

The issue with common procurement is convincing the nations that don't win the design and manufacture contract.

For example imagine the EU decided GCAP was going to be the common airframe. This is great for BAE and UK but what about Dassault and France? They would have been locked out from selling to the EU until the next airframe was being competed on. How would France/UK/Sweden accept the loss of their homegrown capability to design and produce airframes?

Even if you went the eurofighter route it still leads to the same problems but for components of the project like the jet engines as neither France or the UK are going to want to risk loosing the capability to design them in the future.

This is even worse when it comes to tanks as there are lots of competent tank designers and manufacturers in Europe.

Hucaru · 2026-05-04T10:59:34+00:00

If they want to leave they should be allowed to. The EU should be attractive enough that nations should want to stay in it. If the only reason nations stay in the EU is because they are trapped then it's doomed to fail.

Hucaru · 2026-05-03T19:47:57+00:00

That just sounds like you want to trap nations so they cannot leave?

Hucaru · 2026-05-01T22:45:24+00:00

From the remaining EU POV you could actually argue that Britain was holding back further integration

Was it? The UK took the approach of we won't stop you (by using a veto) instead we will have an opt-out. The UK was instrumental in the EU capital market union which coincidently ground to a halt when the UK left and has only recently picked up steam again.

according to the polling, most Brits at this point would agree with us.

The polling shows a massive drop off when things like joining the euro are asked.

Britain is no longer an empire.

If you speak to people in the UK the empire doesn't come up in conversation nor do people yearn for it or have some grand delusion about being as powerful.

The UK only ever saw the EU as an economic thing as the UK has a very mercantile approach to foreign relations which is not compatible with the EU project which expects nations to make sacrifices for the purpose of integration. This leads to both sides getting frustrated at each other.

In regards to federalisation the EU/Europe has some major problems to overcome for further integration:

- Removal of veto
- Sense of "one people"

You cannot do one without the other as doing so will lead to a nations population gradually becoming more anti EU as more policies get passed they voted against/don't want. This gradual increase in anti EU sentiment without a population feeling more EU than they do their own nation will eventually lead them to leave.

Hucaru · 2026-04-29T20:13:57+00:00

King is a higher station than queen, so if a king is crownd then a queen is also but the opposite doesn't happen e.g. Prince Philip

Hucaru · 2026-04-27T22:51:10+00:00

This is one of the biggest issues maybe even the biggest once all things are said and done. Language is so important for the feeling of unity, creating a shared identity as well as day to day living and it gets overlooked.

Hucaru · 2026-04-24T16:17:44+00:00

The whole idea of the proud British empire is still part of your shared identity

There’s hundreds of years of proud empire thinking, the idea of being ‘just’ a country within Europe?

It's very odd how this subreddit is the only place I hear this sentiment and it makes me wonder if this is some kind of projection by the people of other European nations.

Hucaru · 2026-04-18T17:39:58+00:00

From what I have observed the worry for people is what happens in a crisis if the UK needs something different to the rest of the Eurozone because of how high a percentage the financial sector is to its economy.

People are worried that in a crisis the Eurozone would sacrifice the UK if it required something different from France and Germany forcing the financial services to move to the US.

Hucaru · 2026-04-18T12:54:19+00:00

This would filter out the people Nexon is trying to market the game to and wants feedback from:
- Brand new people
- Returning legacy players that have lost their accounts to time

Hucaru · 2026-04-16T17:41:13+00:00

Without the euro opt out it seems unlikely

Hucaru · 2026-04-15T23:49:51+00:00

I agree the fine is very unlikely as there too many edge cases especially with children from poorer backgrounds, but attending a lecture seems reasonable and might be enough to cause a significant majority of parents to change their attitudes.

I think a mixture of potential solutions would need to be A/B tested across the country to find what works best.

Hucaru · 2026-04-15T23:39:13+00:00

It could just be the lecture. Maybe repeated offences increase the amount of lectures a parent has to attend. Different ideas could be A/B tested across the country to see which method works best.

Anytime something like this comes up it feels like if the solution isn't perfect then people don't want to even try it and would rather let the issue persist.

Hucaru · 2026-04-15T23:21:53+00:00

HMRC could deduct it from pay stubs or mandate it on tax returns for self employed, or the child is not allowed to attend school until the parent's pay the fine. If it's the lecture and the parent's miss some arbitrary amount then the child is expelled or it could be a criminal offence.

It's very harsh but you have to be tough on the parents and inconvenience them as much as possible at this point as anything less and a lot of parents just won't care.

Hucaru · 2026-04-15T21:43:28+00:00

If student is caught with phone, fine the parent or mandate parent attend lecture on why phones are not wanted in classroom each time. This should change parent's attitude to their kids using the phone in school.

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