EU countries should unite and form a single state

In the second phase of this debate, first I will refute my opponents refutation, in addition to adding additional arguments: 1. A central super state cannot satisfy all parties. 2. How the EU economic system has already failed Europe However first I will address my opponents contention: 1: My opponent conflicts my reference to Germany's economy as a strong on the grounds: "In 1991, Germany unified together, this is a great example of how even with a great economy like Germany faces a problem. West Germany is heavy industrilized. East Germany... not so good. So you have this huge rift in between the West and the East and even to this day, you can still see the problems that Germany is having. Germany is not an economic superpower house, sadly." By saying this, my opponent has proven my case. He has shown how it was bad for a strong economy (West Germany) to join with a weak economy (East Germany) hence proving that it is bad for the two countries to unite, hence proving that it would be bad for strong European economies (not necessarily Germany) to join with weaker European economies, thus disproving objective 2 for me. He went on to say that the only reason that Western countries are more successful is that they never had communism. In itself this is not relevant. The matter is that the Western countries have stronger economies and would be unwilling to merge with weaker economies, regardless as to why those economies are weaker. 2. Next my opponent refutes my argument as to why strong economic countries would be unwilling to join this super-state. I will refute that midway through my speech. (it will be marked with a *) 3. My opponent says that my point as to that big countries would have to bail out little ones is irrelevant because they already have. This however is not the case (that it makes my argument irrelevant), quite frankly those countries wouldn't have been happy doing it as much as they have done, and joining this super-state is effectively a permanent commitment to do it in the future, something that they wouldn't be willing to commit to. 4. Finally my opponent brings in how Russia and the USA function while being federal states. This is an entirely different matter as these assortment of states have things in common to hold them together. In the case of the USA, while the people are of many different cultures, ultimately they all have in common the fact that they packed up all they knew so they could have a fresh start (the concept of immigration). In Russia, all the people are from the same ethnic background, just as the German principalities were, thus a union was possible. Now why is Europe different, Item 1, largely the European states have been enemies throughout history, hence a certain level of nationalism exists. No matter how logical a union is (which I have tried to prove that it is not anyway) if nationalism exists, a union can only end in one way: it falling apart where at best peacefully or at worst through civil war. Item 2, the language problem which will always be a obstacle to a successful unity. Now on to my new points: 1. A super state cannot satisfy all parties. Focusing on the logical side of things, a state will enter the super state if it will be better off, but in what ways can it be better off? a) economically b) politically. Given that Europe is not threatened by war at the moment, countries would not motivated by political power very much. Therefore I will look at it economically. The EU already provides all the advantages of a common currency, and policies to assist in trade. Therefore all that is left which a super state would accomplish is a pooling of funds and the standardization of policies. But wait a moment, this would not cause more money to appear. Therefore if any state were to benefit from this pooling, ie get extra money, it would mean that another country would suffer by the same margin. Therefore for each benefit you have an equal and opposite problem. Hence not all countries can be kept happy by this, hence they wont want to join, there disproving objective 1 and 2. *This ties in to my original argument as to why strong economic countries (previously I said Germany) would not want to join the super-state as without doubt, it would be these countries from whom the extra money would come, causing that country itself to be worse off. (that was refutation to "You make the argument that Germany will back out, I think not, because no government will suck money from one local area. Because you would know that the people will not like that and back out. So you need to exand your hand to ALL countries weak and strong." Either these countries would have to pay for the funding of other countries thus suffering, or they wouldn't but if that was the case and a 'provinces' money would be only used on that 'province', what would be the point of the reform in the first place? In addition, you must look at various contrasting policies between EU states. For starters, that of economic policies. For example, countries like Ireland are relatively capitalist (low taxes and few state supplied services), while others such as Sweden are relatively socialist (high taxes but many state supplied services). Therefore as almost by definition a state must have a constant structure, one of these parties would suffer, as between polar opposites, there is no such thing as compromise. Therefore one party would be unsatisfied and hence be unwilling to join the super-state, thus disproving objective 1. (Other such contrasting policies include the legalization of abortion, and, well, apply this identical argument to abortion) 2. Finally I will look at how the EU system has already failed, and thus why investing everything on this would be a disaster. In the EU, the ECB (European Central Bank) sets the interest rates for all banks withing EU countries, and this value is constant. During the 'good times' Germany and France were entering a boom, therefore the ECB set interest rates low to assist in the beginning of the boom, this was good. The problem is that the ECB failed to take into account that EU countries boom and bust at different times. For Ireland which was already well into its boom, this was disastrous. It was in effect for Ireland a pro-cyclical policy (in other words causing a bigger boom only to be followed by a bigger and worse bust). Did this only effect Ireland negatively? No, the EU is now being forced to help Ireland, while being dragged down by it at the same time. Therefore, although this policy was initially good for Germany and France, it ultimately hurt them. Therefore the EU economic system has flaws and it would be far too risky to risk everything on it. Thus this disproves objective 2. Incidentally thank you very much for debating this with me Mouzie as this your contention give me a great opportunity to prepare for this same (live) debate on Thursday both in getting a feel for what the proposition will say and giving me new ideas which I hadn't thought of previously.