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Unia Europejska wytłumaczona*
Poziom:
Temat: Społeczeństwo i nauki społeczne
Where, is the European Union? Obviously here
somewhere, but much like the the European
continent itself, which has an unclear boundary,
the European Union also has some fuzzy edges
to it.
To start, the official members of the European
Union are, in decreasing order of population:
* Germany
* France
* The United Kingdom
* Italy
* Spain
* Poland
* Romania
* The Kingdom of the Netherlands
* Greece
* Belgium
* Portugal
* The Czech Republic
* Hungary
* Sweden
* Austria
* Bulgaria
* Denmark
* Slovakia
* Finland
* Ireland
* Croatia
* Lithuania
* Latvia
* Slovenia
* Estonia
* Cyprus
* Luxembourg
* Malta
The edges of the EU will probably continue
to expand further out as there are other countries
in various stages of trying to become a member.
How exactly the European Union works is hideously
complicated and a story for another time,
but for this video you need know only three
things:
1. Countries pay membership dues and
2. Vote on laws they all must follow and
3. Citizens of member countries are automatically
European Union citizens as well
This last means that if you're a citizen of
any of these countries you are free to live
and work or retire in any of the others. Which
is nice especially if you think your country
is too big or too small or too hot or too
cold. The European Union gives you options.
By the way, did you notice how all three of
these statements have asterisks attached to
this unhelpful footnote? Well, get used to
it: Europe loves asterisks that add exceptions
to complicated agreements.
These three, for example, point us toward
the first bit of border fuzziness with Norway,
Iceland and little Liechtenstein. None of
which are in the European Union but if you're
a EU citizen you can live in these countries
and Norwegians, Icelanders, or Liechtensteiner(in)s
can can live in yours.
Why? In exchange for the freedom of movement
of people they have to pay membership fees
to the European Union -- even though they
aren't a part of it and thus don't get a say
its laws that they still have to follow.
This arrangement is the European Economic
Area and it sounds like a terrible deal, were
it not for that asterisk which grants EEA
but not EU members a pass on some areas of
law notably farming and fishing -- something
a country like Iceland might care quite a
lot about running their own way.
Between the European Union and the European
Economic Area the continent looks mostly covered,
with the notable exception of Switzerland
who remains neutral and fiercely independent,
except for her participation in the Schengen
Area.
If you're from a country that keeps her borders
extremely clean and / or well-patrolled, the
Schengen Area is a bit mind-blowing because
it's an agreement between countries to take
a 'meh' approach to borders.
In the Schengen Area international boundaries
look like this: no border officers or passport
checks of any kind. You can walk from Lisbon
to Tallinn without identification or need
to answer the question: "business or pleasure?".
For Switzerland being part of Schengen but
not part of the European Union means that
non-swiss can check in any time they like,
but they can never stay.
This koombaya approach to borders isn't appreciated
by everyone in the EU: most loudly, the United
Kingdom and Ireland who argue that islands
are different. Thus to get onto these fair
isles, you'll need a passport and a good reason.
Britannia's reluctance to get fully involved
with the EU brings us to the next topic: money.
The European Union has its own fancy currency,
the Euro used by the majority, but not all
of the European Union members. This economic
union is called the Eurozone and to join a
country must first reach certain financial
goals -- and lying about reaching those goals
is certainly not something anyone would do.
Most of the non-Eurozone members when they
meet the goals, will ditch their local currency
in favor of the Euro but three of them Denmark,
Sweden and, of course, the United Kingdom,
have asterisks attracted to the Euro sections
of the treaty giving them a permanent out-out.
And weirdly, four tiny European countries
Andorra, San Marino, Monaco & Vatican City
have an asterisk giving them the reverse:
the right print and use Euros as their money,
despite not being in the European Union at
all.
So that's the big picture: there's the EU,
which makes all the rules, the Eurozone inside
it with a common currency, the European Economic
Area outside of it where people can move freely
and the selective Schengen, for countries
who think borders just aren't worth the hassle.
As you can see, there's some strange overlaps
with these borders, but we're not done talking
about complications by a long shot one again,
because empire.
So Portugal and Spain have islands from their
colonial days that they've never parted with:
these are the Madeira and Canary Islands are
off the coast of Africa and the Azores well
into the Atlantic. Because these islands are
Spanish and Portuguese they're part of the
European Union as well.
Adding a few islands to the EU's borders isn't
a big deal until you consider France: the
queen of not-letting go. She still holds onto
a bunch of islands in the Caribbean, Reunion
off the coast of Madagascar and French Guiana
in South America. As far as France is concerned,
these are France too, which single handedly
extends the edge-to-edge distance of the European
Union across a third of Earth's circumference.
Collectively, these bits of France, Spain
and Portugal are called the Outermost Regions
-- and they're the result of the simple answer
to empire: just keep it.
On the other hand, there's the United Kingdom,
the master of maintaining complicated relationships
with her quasi-former lands -- and she's by
no means alone in this on such an empire-happy
continent.
The Netherlands and Denmark and France (again)
all have what the European Union calls Overseas
Territories: they're not part of the European
Union, instead they're a bottomless well of
asterisks due to their complicated relationships
with both with the European Union and their
associated countries which makes it hard to
say anything meaningful about them as a group
but...
in general European Union law doesn't apply
to these places, though in general the people
who live there are European Union citizens
because in general they have the citizenship
of their associated country, so in general
they can live anywhere in the EU they want
but in general other European Union citizens
can't freely move to these territories.
Which makes these places a weird, semipermeable
membrane of the European Union proper and
the final part we're going to talk about in
detail even though there are still many, more
one-off asterisks you might stumble upon,
such as: the Isle of Man or those Spanish
Cities in North Africa or Gibraltar, who pretends
to be part of Southwest England sometimes,
or that region in Greece where it's totally
legal to ban women, or Saba & friends who
are part of the Netherlands and so should
be part of the EU, but aren't, or the Faeroe
Islands upon which while citizens of Denmark
live they lose their EU citizenship, and on
and on it goes.
These asterisks almost never end, but this
video must.
