To join or not to join? Norway is edging closer to the EU

[jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de]

Everyone pays VAT that's the point of VAT. You might get away with paying a lower VAT if you buy something from a small store in another country but you are always suppose to pay the VAT of the country where you live - for example if you buy something from a German online store in Portugal you are supposed to pay the 23% rate to the Portuguese government not the 21% rate to the German government, and big online stores will do it for you automatically.

[distractor@lemm.ee]

A big issue with Switzerland is that the EU lacks direct democracy i.e. the ability for the people to force a vote.

It's actually pretty awesome. I mean sometimes they end up forcing a vote on stupid things but generally it's a safeguard that allows the people to block legal changes. So a situation like the Trump tariffs couldn't happen in Switzerland if the majority of the population objected.

Personally, I think the EU would be a stronger democracy if they added it, and the odds of Switzerland joining would increase substantially.

[wanpieserino@lemm.ee]

Fine by me

[stray@pawb.social]

Why would they have to get rid of agriculture?

[originaltnavn@lemm.ee]

The climate here is not economically competitive, we have fairly large toll walls and subsidies to protect local farmers. In a completely free market, most food production would be outcompeted by foreign goods.
This does of course make food much more expensive for us than strictly needed, but it also gives a safe supply.

[albert180@piefed.social]

No Switzerland has a fine working public transport system.

Stupid EU Rules mandate that you have to tender everything out starting 2031 that you subsidize with tax money. We have that in Germany, and it fucking sucks quality wise, and takes you every bit of flexibility

[albert180@piefed.social]

VAT in Germany is just 7/19%

[basxto@discuss.tchncs.de]

The most direct tools the EU has is an European Citizens' Initiative. With that citizens can directly propose a directive or regulation to the European Commission.
If that goes well, citizens will meet EU officials, have a public hearing at the European Parliament to explain their initiative. Within half a year the commission has to reply, but they always can reject the proposal.
It requires 1 million valid signatures and they have to be from at minimum 7 EU countries.
That’s 0.2% of the voters and 25% of the member states.

That indeed differs from how a popular initiative in Switzerland works. The % of needed signatures is 5 times higher, but if it gets rejected a popular vote would follow. That kind of vote would be hard to transform into EU rules. For this Swiss popular vote a majority of given votes has to be yes, but additionally there has to be a majority in the majority of the Kantons. Switzerland already has some population differences between their Kantons, Jura has less than half the population of Zürich. In EU that is a lot more extreme, Germany has 158 times the population of Malta. In EU half of the members would be 14 countries and the smallest 14 countries only represent 11.5% of the total population.

EU doesn’t even have a uniform voting system. The elections to the European Parliament already are distorted because the value of a single vote depends on the size country it’s from. Generally it’s proportional voting, but the details differ by country and that includes whether they use open lists, semi-open lists or closed lists and they use different formulas to allocate the seats. In regard to the voting rules that is probably the most diverse vote in the world. Some countries split themselves further into parts, so different regions vote for only a part of their seats. Active (16-18) and passive (18-25) voting ages differ. Belgium has compulsory voting. When you reside in a different country you can either vote their or in your home country. Since the voting age differs, that means some can vote earlier than other citizens from their country. They don’t even vote on the same day, a few vote for longer than just one day. Availability and form of absentee voting differs. Some countries have compulsory voting. A few countries vote with single tranferable vote, some do panachage, but most do open lists.

[bipedalsheep@programming.dev]

I dunno. We like being able to make our own decisions and self-govern. I'd be surprised if the majority voted in favor of joining the EU even now. As the article states, yeah it seems the common citizen want to distance themselves from the US now, but we live a pretty good life already and there are many unknowns regarding what joining the EU will mean for us in the long term. I don't wanna join the EU just to spite the US, however tempting that is right now. Though I believe signaling the middle finger to the US government is important, -- I will do it in other ways in the short term at least. I have started moving all personal products and services out of US companies and into the EU etc.

[awesomelowlander@sh.itjust.works]

Food prices are ridiculous in Norway. While I can agree with the need to subsidise local food production, grocery bills really need to shrink.

[shayeta@feddit.org]

Isn't Norway a part of Schegen already? Do you even gain anything extra by fully joining?

[bipedalsheep@programming.dev]

We probably would not stand to gain much. Our ex-prime minister Solverg is advocating for it because we would have a seat at the table and influence the economy that affects us more. Some economists say it would be beneficial economically for similar reasons, in addition to making the Euro our currency so trading with other European countries would be more stable and predictable, since now you pay less or more depending on how they fluctuate. The Norwegian Crowns (NOK) is not doing so well the past 10 years and there are worries that it will not recover again etc. I like the NOK currency myself. Depending on what business you are in having the crown become worth less could be a good thing.