But Markel’s freakin’ proposal to decide on the treaty without one of the member states was OFFICIAL. What kind of a Union is the European Union? When somebody disagrees with the big kids who are “supposed” to run the show, we throw them out? And it’s obvious that a meeting held by All-But-Poland is really France, Germany, UK and maybe Italy deciding things for themselves, with other smaller countries as window dressing.

God, I can’t wait till Turkey gets accession and the we-have-more-people-now countries will get their due.

Yep. And all of this becomes even more whacky when you take into account that between 2004 and 2006 Poland had the lowest birthrate in the EU and lost circa 2 million people in out migration. The way they are going in 50 years time Poland will be half the size it is now. So maybe they would be better advised to spend their time addressing things they can do something about, rather than lamenting over something they can’t. Time - for good or for ill - has a directional arrow.

Incidentally - for Doug Muir, and anyone else who is interested - the World Bank published a major study of ageing and population decline in Eastern Europe and Central Asia this week (entitled from Red to Grey). Most interestingly they focus on the time horizon of 2007 - 2020, which is when it seems all the important action is going to take place.

I hadn’t realised just how dependent Russia itself now was on migrants for employment growth (the working age population is already in decline). This means that in Europe at any rate the “human well” is about to get sucked well and truly dry, and over a relatively short time horizon. I am about to post on Latvia in this context. (my apologies for interrupting what is a fascinating thread with my own preoccupations).

“I was referring to the broader reasoning of “if not for WW II, we would be doing better/have more influence in the world because of our larger population”, rather than how much representation a country “should” have in EU institutions.”

The Second Republic was poised to do reasonably well at the end of the 1930s, and to emerge as a European power of some note. The problem lay with its geography: Any country sandwiched between Germany and the Soviet Union, with claims on them and their claims on it, was doomed absent some sort of external support.

Really, I think A. Merkel i right in saying that if the Poles are going to behave like this then she’ll just keep on negotiating without them.

I’m sorry, are we having the same conversation?”

Ah, sorry, it seems not, and I’m not sure how much of a conversation I was starting. I was referring to the broader reasoning of “if not for WW II, we would be doing better/have more influence in the world because of our larger population”, rather than how much representation a country “should” have in EU institutions.

I’m sorry, are we having the same conversation?

Doug M.

And the small, trifling detail of dead or living Germans, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, British, Italians, French, etc. altering the equation never gets brought up, one surmises?

In the case of the Serbs, it’s “if we hadn’t lost millions in WWI (sacrificed to save the Western Allies) and then millions more in WWII (slaughtered by fascists — looking at you, Croatia), then there’d be a lot more Serbs today (and we wouldn’t have all these problems).

In the case of the Russians, it’s simpler — if Russia hadn’t lost ~20 million people in WWII, there’d be a lot more Russians, the USSR probably wouldn’t have fallen apart, and even if it had, well, there’d be a lot more Russians. This tends to pop up whenever one discusses Russia’s current demographic situation with Russians.

In both cases, Serbia and Russia, it seems a straightforward reaction to those nations rough times in the ’90s — if there were more of us, we wouldn’t be treated this way!

(Who does not do this? Well, the Romanians lost almost 10% of their population in WWII, but they don’t seem to have a thing about it. Hungarians neither, AFAICT — although in that case, a lot of those lost were Jews.)

Doug M.

1. By now the K twins are beyond just shaming themselves, they’re also dragging Poland into the dirt with them.

2. If we’re to include war-dead, then maybe it’s Israel that should get these votes, not the Poles

3. About the lesson from the US experience. Yes, the EU is about getting over WWII. Too bad we let the politically/historically underdeveloped Poles into it. They’re obviously incapable of entering the modern world. If not already, then soon they’ll be less popular than the Greeks.