Mohacsy's Safe Portfolio Member Forum

[Elroy Jetson]

My sense is when the EU was formed France, West Germany and England were all equally important.

But after East Germany and former Comecon nations like Poland, and the Czech Republic became part of the EU, Germany became the leader of the EU because these adjoining eastern bloc nations quickly became integrated with the German economy as they had been previous to WW-II. Berlin has become the defacto Capitol of Europe, even though the the EU is headquartered in the compromise nation of Belgium.

Many in Poland have a psychological connection to England, but the English are so xenophobic they don't want that connection with all of these strange blonde people. England voted for Brexit primarily to exclude more Polish citizens from seeking jobs and setting up businesses in England.

France and England have few economic connection to the eastern block like Germany does, but France benefits economically from their ties to Germany to the point they'll always be tied to them in some way, EU or not.

I think nations like France, Italy, Greece would benefit enormously from becoming more German or more northern European, where things work smoothly and there's virtually no corruption, but culture is such a hard thing to change.

I've seen a big part of the psychology in countries like France and Italy is they live in their glorious past with colonies around the globe, which is just not useful. Germans live in today and have little interest in their past, even the part of their past long before the Nazis.

The German bloc may not always be called the EU, though it probably will be, but there will always be the economic powerhouse of the German-Northern European bloc.

I'm pretty sure France and Italy will stick around for the benefits of borderless travel, but they'd both benefit from having their own currencies which they could continually devalue until such time as they're able to change their culture to one which fits a stable currency.