bear94 wrote:Secession is tricky business. I'm sure the "remain" campaign will exploit this tragedy to garner more support for remaining in the EU.
My understanding is that those nations that joined the EU are allowed under EU's "constitution" (it's not really a "constitution".....explained below) to hold a national referendum any time they want if they wish to withdraw.
Technically, the EU is not really a nation; it's more of an "economic cooperation confederation". In order to belong, member nations (yes, they are individually still their own nations) agree to abide by a common set of standards in areas like law, economics, currency, the existence of democratic institutions of gov't, etc.
My mother's best friend from childhood was a justice on France's version of SCOTUS. When she retired, she entered into a sort of "elder stateswoman" role, which is a custom in France when people of great accomplishment in the law or policy retire. It's a smallish club. I say "club", but it is actually an official governmental institution populated with these highly regarded and learned retirees who act as sort of counselors to the gov't, and they advise the gov't in areas of policy or law where great national interest is involved. Louise was such an advisor to the French gov't when France was reviewing the proposed EU constitution, prior to a referendum of French voters on whether or not they would accept that constitution's provisions over their affairs, and she was one of the people who reviewed the EU constitution to advise the gov't whether it was in France's interest to join the EU.
When I was last there in 2004, my wife, son and I stayed in Louise's apartment in Paris for a week, and I had a long conversation with her about this constitution, on which the French would be holding their referendum the following May (
LINKEY). I asked her what her impressions were of it, compared to the U.S. Constitution. She liked it overall, and if I recall correctly, her advice was that France should join (the voters rejected it that next May). I asked her how it differed from ours, and she said that, for one thing, it was 600 pages long. I was shocked, and asked how it could be so long. Louise said that it was because there were a LOT of different kinds of regulations included in it......environmental regulations for example. So I replied, "Well, it's not really a Constitution then, it's more like a body of laws", saying that
our Constitution is more like a framework on which the laws are hung, so that if a law does not fit the framework, then it is unconstitutional. She agreed that this was the case. So I then asked her how it was that they actually called it a Constitution if it wasn't really a framework for laws to be hung upon. She understood the difference, but didn't think that it was an important one. The interesting thing is that French voters overwhelmingly rejected the EU treaty, but France joined anyway. Britain's voters appear to be overwhelmingly in favor of withdrawing. I'll believe they've withdrawn when I actually see it.
And that leads us to how Europe became socialist. They don't actually seem to believe in frameworks for the law. They are gov'ts made up of socialist bureaucracies, staffed by functionaries who all have a ricebowl to protect. There's no concept that there are things that the state
cannot do because those actions would not square with the framework. It's not an accident, I think, that the Founders who wrote our Constitution are often referred to as "the framers".
Anyway, ANY member nation of the EU is free to withdraw from it if that nation's voters decide they don't want to be part of it any longer. The thing is that most EU nations would rather stay in. Their economies have been so weakened by socialism that I believe their hope is that other nations will bail them out when they run out of OPM within their own borders....... i.e. Greece..... Of course it never occurs to them that the sort of
super-socialism of the EU is smothering all of them. On the other hand, the member nations have had centuries of war between them, and I rather suspect that they're inclined to accept any kind of indignity if it will save them from more wars on their own soil.
International Jihad has changed that, becoming domestic within the EU. They just haven't recognized it yet.