Okay so how is the EU stuffing up the free migration thing so badly? The US has free migration without any of this butthurtedness.
Seems like the EU needs to be either a lot more unified or a lot less. Either way, figure it out already, Euros.
In my opinion, because valid strategic geopolitical considerations forced what in other terms was a excessively rapid introduction of the euro, and a mistaken attachment to a single velocity EU was maintained when adding so many new nation-states.
The euro was rushed into implementation at the insistence of EU leaders, especially Mitterand, to compensate for accepting a newly reunified Germany, which with the Deutschmark was thought to be poised to dominate all other states. However, in so doing, the euro was not restricted to only those economies most in sync: Benelux, Germany, France and, maybe, Italy (also some smaller ones, such as Austria, and of course had they wanted, the UK and Denmark). Other countries should have had to wait until growth and infrastructure, especially human and intellectual capital, brought their economies more in line, using a continuation of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Certainly the full free movement of labor should have been restricted to this initial, smaller and more compatible, euro zone.
This is what I would advocate for the EU today if it were not for the fact that leaving the euro is so messy as to be impracticable for all but the smallest states, and with massive currency backing from other states. Sovereign debt markets would go nuts, I reckon.
Good to take in Eastern Europe to consolidate freedom there, and in light of Russia today, a very wise move that certainly prevented a new takeover by hook or by crook. Good to include in the EU, as it had already been, Southern Europe. But an EU of 28 nation states, some just emerging from behind the Iron Curtain, simply is too disparate in nature at this juncture to have introduced so many open door policies, or to share a single currency among so many. A step-by-step approach was working better, but events overwhelmed when the Warsaw Pact dissolved.
The EU, therefore, throughout these last decades, can be seen to evolve very much in response to its threatening neighbor to the East; the EU is a strategic concept, not just an economic one. This is why Brexit, even if it nominally does not affect NATO, is psychologically such a bad, bad move, and may encourage copy cats and have a domino effect. If Trump wins, Putin will soon have all his ducks in a row, and more horror show fare will be in store.
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