And it is! People here are always complaining about the EU as if it's a single state, even though it's very clearly in the process of becoming one. It's a long road, we're not sure if we're going to make it all the way to the finish line (but I suspect we will), and we're going to have some happy little (and big) mistakes along the way. But for now it's imperfect, and it might be imperfect for a very long time to come. It's still a lot better than not having it, and we're actively working on improving it.
> Nah, it should either become one, or dissolve, but this half baked shit definitely isn’t it.
Since the current situation is shit, and one EU national state will be shit, too, this only leaves one option. :-) So let's dissolve the EU before even more billions are wasted in this futile project.
> I'm trying to think of a single metric by which the EU hasn't been a massive success.
- Number pages of lunatic regulations
- Money gone into the EU
- Not a metric, but fitting very different philosophies of how to handle the domestic currency under one umbrella (ECU, Euro) has lead to massive tensions between the involved countries and their populations in particular when the Euro crisis hiy (e.g. in German "Pleitegriechen" [bust Greeks], PIIGS (pigs) countries (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain)). If there wasn't a common currency, each country would have solved this problem on its own terms. Now there is hate that continues up to today, and these countries (including their citizens!) can be used as scapegoats.
> People here are always complaining about the EU as if it's a single state, even though it's very clearly in the process of becoming one.
I think that attempts at making the E.U. a state are doomed to fail. There are too many differences between countries, including customs, language, legal systems, etc. The United States of America works because all states largely inherited or adopted the British social contract. You can't replicate this in Europe. The E.U. should have never been more than a free trade agreement. The currency union was a big, fat mistake that amplified the Great Recession in many of the poorer E.U. states.
And it is! People here are always complaining about the EU as if it's a single state, even though it's very clearly in the process of becoming one. It's a long road, we're not sure if we're going to make it all the way to the finish line (but I suspect we will), and we're going to have some happy little (and big) mistakes along the way. But for now it's imperfect, and it might be imperfect for a very long time to come. It's still a lot better than not having it, and we're actively working on improving it.