Old World Politics - rising from the ashes

[Cornuck]

Sounds so counter-intuitive to what we're being fed here!

[5thhorseman]

Canada should negotiate an agreement like that. And a separate one with SE Asia. We can't depend on the US anymore.

[donlever]

You want me take a position?

Not sure why I have to....

...but...

I agree.

[Per]

EU and India announce a new free trade deal!

https://youtu.be/UTJlAd6Wiak?si=Ww65O4opnn08-KmX

If Donald doesn’t want our business, we can find new friends.

[Per]

I’ve stated it before - it is only a matter of time before China annexes Siberia. Large parts of Siberia used to be Chinese but was annexed by russia in the 19th century. Of the roughly 150 million russians there are,120 million live in the European part and only 30 million in Siberia. Meanwhile the Chinese province bordering it has more than 300 million inhabitants, and China in total 1.4 billion.

As Putin’s wars bleed russia dry and weaken it, the Chinese are just biding their time, waiting for the right moment and slowly preparing the takeover. Chinese mining and forestry companies already operate in Siberia, and there are mining towns where the Chinese outnumber russians ten to one. And now they are starting to redraw the maps, switching names on towns, mountains and rivers to the traditional Chinese names they had before russian annexation. A first step on the way to reclaim these territories.

https://youtube.com/shorts/FVQnw-K3uUI? ... PlzC8-CI8P

And of course, the position held by the current US government, that the rules based world order is over, helps strengthen the hand of the Chinese. In the new system might makes right. The Chinese already outnumber the russians nine to one, and their economy and military grows stronger by the minute while russia is crumbling. Time is on their side.

[Per]

The combination of Brexit, Putin's ongoing failed invasion attempt of Ukraine and Trump's threats of invading Greenland has convinced Iceland to start looking into EU membership again.

https://www.reuters.com/world/iceland-p ... 026-03-06/

If they would choose to restart negotiations, this could have an impact on Norway's stance as well.

Norway has held two referendums on joining the EU, in 1973 and 1994. As recently as in 2018 74% of Norwegians polled opposed memebership, but in recent polls, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Trump's trade wars and the threat looming over Greenland has started to sway them.
Recent polls show 41% of Norwegians being in favour of joining. Still less than the 48% that oppose it, but the Conservative party is now arguing that joining the EU is a strategic necessioty for Norway's long term security.

Should Iceland decide to join, that would most likely lead to an increase in the number of Norwegians who favour membership as well.

https://euobserver.com/197351/the-green ... n-eu-bloc/
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/04/jo ... -closer-eu

There are currently 9 recognised candidates for EU membership, plus an applicant (Kosovo) that has not been recognised as a candidate yet. There are some issues vis-a-vis Serbia that has to be resolved first. Turkey's candidacy is currently frozen. They applied for membership in 1987 and initiated negotiations in 2005, but these have been frozen since the crackdown on opposition figures in 2016 following an attempted coup.

Candidates that are in the process of negotiating their memebership are dark green.
Georgia and Bosnia (light green) are recognised as candidates, but negotiations have not started yet.
Kosovo (yellow) is an applicant, but have not been given candidate status yet.
Turkey, frozen negotiations = red.
Member states are blue.



Norway and Iceland could quite possibly become green within the near future.
The candidate country that is closeset to achieving membership is Montenegro. They are scheduled to reach membership status in 2028.

Ukraine is a special case. They have started negotiations, but normally these may take a decade or so before a country is accepted as members. There is a long list of criteria you need to meet. But membership in the EU may be a solution to the security gurantees they ask for, as it seems they can not be granted Nato membership. There are discussions if they should be granted a sort of apprentice or second rate membership, where they are recognised as members but will lack some of the rights and benefits till they meet all membership criteria.
The problem is that this speeded up process might meet protests from the other candidates.
So should they also be allowed to join on these terms? These are tricky questions.

We also have the problem with Hungary, who fulfilled all criteria when joining, but under Orban have rolled back human rights, minority rights, freedom of the press and independence of the courts in recent years. How should the EU handle this?
Now, with a bit of luck the latter problem may get solved in April, as polls have the opposition winning in the parliamentary elections held then.
Hopefully they will restore Hungarian legislation so it meets the requirements of EU ground rules again.
But this may happen again in other member states, so we need to establish clear ground rules on how to handle this in the future.
One measure that has already been put in place is that the EU Commission can freeze payouts to a member state that does not exercise rule of law as defined in the EU Charter. There has also been suggestions that voting rights should require adhering to EU law.

It's one thing running an organisation of six or even fifteen countries, but 27 - in a system that requires unanimous decisions on important issues - is tricky. And if we let in all the candidates, plus perhaps Iceland and Norway, we'll be at 38 and counting...
We really need to get rid of the requirement of unanimous decisions and switch to qualifed majorities, as we already use for most issues.
A qualified majority in EU council votes requires that 55% of countries, representing at least 65% of the EU population are needed to win a vote. An addition to this is that a blocking minority must consist of at least four countries, so even if the three biggest countries oppose a certain vote, they cannot block it, even if they should represent more than 35% of the population, unless they can get a fourth member state to join them.

[Per]

Oh, and a growing majority of Brits want to rejoin!

The political parties think it's too early to hold a new referendum, but more and more people are starting to realize just how badly Brexit is hurting the country. In the most recent poll, conducted in February 2026, 52% would vote to rejoin, 29% to stay out and 17% don't know. 2% refused to answer.
https://www.whatukthinks.org/eu/questio ... ean-union/

A whopping 83% of youth 16-24 years old would vote to rejoin. These are people who were too young to vote in 2016.
https://www.itv.com/news/2026-02-19/ove ... poll-finds

The leave vote had its most pronounced majority among voters 60 and older, and a substantial part of that group has since "left the building", being replaced by the more EU-phoric youngsters who dream of studying and/or working in a Europe without borders.

[Cookie La Rue]

Boris was one of the biggest liars so far and blended more than 50% of them. It's just a matter of time before they're realizing how dumb they were.

[Meds]

Oh, and a growing majority of Brits want to rejoin!

The political parties think it's too early to hold a new referendum, but more and more people are starting to realize just how badly Brexit is hurting the country. In the most recent poll, conducted in February 2026, 52% would vote to rejoin, 29% to stay out and 17% don't know. 2% refused to answer.
https://www.whatukthinks.org/eu/questio ... ean-union/
A whopping 83% of youth 16-24 years old would vote to. These are people who were too young to vote in 2016.
https://www.itv.com/news/2026-02-19/ove ... poll-finds

The leave vote had its most pronounced majority among voters 60 and older, and a substantial part of that group has since "left the building", being replaced by the more EU-phoric youngsters who dream of studying and/or working in a Europe without borders.

I’d like to see the numbers that could tell us how many of these youngsters (or their parents) were not born in the UK.

[Cornuck]

I’d like to see the numbers that could tell us how many of these youngsters (or their parents) were not born in the UK.

Seems about 16%

[Per]

Really important election tomorrow; parliamentary elections in Hungary.

It’s pretty much a question of whether they want to be part of Europe or russia.

Orban, who has been Prime Minister for the past 16 years is pretty much a russian puppet. He has been obstructing and blocking support for Ukraine, using the right of veto that all EU member states have in major foreign policy questions. Recently recordings of phone calls have been leaked that show that the Hungarian foreign secretary was on the phone with russian foreign secretary Lavrov during breaks in meetings of the European Council, and basically taking orders from him. President Macron of France has said this should be considered treason. And yeah, if the EU were a country, it clearly would be.

Polls show a solid lead for the opposition leader Peter Magyar, but the Hungarian voting system is complicated and favours bigger parties, which has helped Orban stay in power even without getting a majority of the votes. This time more or less all opposition parties have joined forces to topple him, so hopefully this time they will succeed.

Mind you, Magyar is no dreamboat either, he used to belong to the same far right party (Fidezs) as Orban, but left it because he was getting diisgusted with the rampant corruption and the russian influence. He will probably be as ultraconservative as Orban when it comes to immigration and gay rights, but if he cuts the ties to russia and starts addressing corruption, that would still be a great start.

Polls have Magyar roughly 8 percentage points ahead of Orban, and some 75 percent of young voters (under 30) want change, but many of the elderly rural voters are loyal to Orban, which should come as no surprise since he controls all the media. Younger voters, who get their information from the internet, are harder to control.

Putin, Trump, JD Vance and Netanyahu have all come out in support of Orban, which should tell you what kind of person he is.
Fortunately, for most Hungarian voters, I think that may be the kiss of death.

[Per]

And Orban is gone!

He has admitted defeat. The votes are still being counted, but it looks like the opposition will get 136 seats in the 199 seat parliament, which would give them the two thirds majority necessary to undo the changes to the constitution that Orban has made.

This means no more Hungarian veto against aid to Ukraine!

Putin has now lost his fifth column within the EU and things will be a lot smoother from now on.

Hilariously, it seems JD Vance’s visit and show of support made Orban drop even further.
First he killed the pope, then he killed Orban’s dreams of reelection.

And yeah, he probably won’t be able to ever be reelected, The opposition has had the idea of instituting a two term limit to the office of prime minister on their platform, and Orban has already served four. With a two thirds majority they can add that to the constitution.

[donlever]

This means no more Hungarian veto against aid to Ukraine!

Perfect...maybe when they finally pitch in the ridiculous tax dollars I pay can go to Canadian issues instead of how ever many hundreds of million more we intend to ship over on top of the how ever many billions we have already sent.

[Tciso]

.

Putin, Trump, JD Vance and Netanyahu have all come out in support of Orban, which should tell you what kind of person he is.
Fortunately, for most Hungarian voters, I think that may be the kiss of death.

I am glad he is gone. I wonder how much Trump's support hurt him.

*edit* I just read your post about JD helping drop Orban's numbers.