EU countries should unite and form a single state

Secondly I would like to lay out what I view this debate to be all about. EU countries refers to all the states which are members of the European Union. The exact nature of the super-state to be formed, I will leave to the Prop to define. However the reform must be rather drastic and not one merely of name, and thus must have practical consequences. Now I will lay down the key items in this debate. In order to prove the motion, the prop must show: 1. that EU countries would be willing to join in such a state 2. that EU countries would benefit from joining such a state 3. that this super-state would hold together in the short term and in the long term. In each of my arguments I will attempt to disprove one of this statements under the assumption that if one can be disproved, I have proved my case. (feel free to argue this and force me to explain why all 3 must be proved for the prop) My initial arguments will be under the headings: 1. the nature of the contrast between social mentalities of certain EU countries, following a union of EU countries, ultimately would lead to everyone suffering 2. the implications of joining such a state would mean that nobody would want to join Before I start however, I would like to take a look at what the EU does as is. At the moment it is effectively as central ECONOMIC government. Therefore, the implications of creating a EU super-state would mean that (in addition to all EU countries pooling their funds) the EU would gain power on a legal, political, and social level in addition to economic. 1. My first argument will be directed against the second objective. Contrasting social mentalities; by this I refer to public opinion in a country towards concepts such as law and work. First I will deal with work. First of all, Europe has a large spectrum with regard to attitudes towards work. It has countries which believe in hard work and development (such as Germany) and it has other countries which are more inclined to do the bare minimum (emphasis that this is a relative comparison to Germany, e. g. Italy, Greece). As is the state of each countries economy reflects the nature of their mentality: Germany has a strong and well designed economy, while Greece's is quite weak and fragile. Therefore, as is, the country which works harder reaps the rewards and the country which doesn't suffers the consequences. Now lets take a look at the results of an unification. These economies would be meshed, and a central government would operate from a central fund. However where does a government spend its money? The answer is where it is needed. In modern Europe, such money is needed much more in countries like Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Greece. Therefore creating a central state has good effects and balances things out, right? Wrong! Step back and look at this. Given that a government mainly gets money from income tax and other such taxes, it is easy to see that it would get a high portion from Germany. Now this money which would have been Germany's gets spent on others. For starters this links up well to objective no. 1 in that Germany would be unwilling to join this state for this reason. However ignoring this lets look at the long term effects of such a system: A state is formed where the hardworking have to fund those who aren't, therefore there is not incentive to work hard as people who do get punished for it. Now going back to the weaker economies; social mentalities don't change overnight, therefore those country's wouldn't work any more having been given a boost to their economy, in fact they would world less as there is less need to work. Therefore a welfare state is created in which the entire super-state runs of the backs of those who works, while all along those who don't work less and less, thus creating an economic 'swamp' which the super-state will eventually sink into. Hence the countries involved would suffer, thus disproving objective number 2. 2. Now I will look into the implications of such a state which would cause countries to be unwilling to join. I will divide this into two sections: the larger countries with stronger economies, and the smaller countries with weaker economies (I consider large countries with weak economies as leeches and will ignore them). First dealing with the large countries. As I have already indicated, the creation of a super-state is all but asking these countries to bail out everyone else. In other words to risk the collapse of their own economy in return for membership in this state. All they would gain would be a relatively large percentage of the votes for the government of this state. For these countries however, the risks far outweigh the potential gain. On the other had lets observe smaller countries. They are being offered a 'bail out' in return for entering a super-state in which they would lose all importance and significance. In other words, it comes down to the small states selling themselves all but literally to the big states. Now you might say, that they would be better off having done so thus proving objective 2. However that assumes that all countries will act rationally in this matter. This is not the case. There is a concept which exists which in itself gets quite irrational, the concept of Nationalism. To explain the irrationality of it: the US repelled to Britain because 'no taxation without representation'. This was rational. Ireland however not only had representation but they had a very high level of representation, even so they rebelled. This shows that the status for Ireland of a part of a larger country, in which they were fairly represented, was repugnant to the people. Hence they rebelled. In fact look at the entire last century. The whole story of the last century is that of empires splitting into their proper countries. Such a reform, in addition to being unsatisfactory for small nations would be going back on 100 years of progress. In conclusion to this point, the creation of such a super-state is all but asking small countries to sell themselves to larger richer ones, something that neither would be willing to do. Hence disproving the 1st objective.