>Dude, can I politely ask you to increase the amount of commas and periods you use? Otherwise you're really hard to follow :)

My english teacher flashback: Long sentence -3 pt.

>That's not really the case. In fact, in a lot of sectors purely-national players are now the exception, not the rule. You have Portuguese building companies winning UK contracts, and French companies outsourcing to Czech companies. All that wouldn't be possible if richer countries could just lock down their markets with state subsidies. In fact, the only market where this does not happen is agriculture, which is heavily regulated and planned at the EU level.

I think we were talking about slightly different things, you have more Chinese construction companies winning contracts in the UK than portuguese I was talking about the competitiveness of specific traditionally "national" companies in the grander EU scheme and this is set pretty darn poorly against the smaller countries, Ireland big problem is that it's small (<5M pop), It never had any real huge industry, it had a pretty bad conflict in Northern Ireland for decades and it's tied to the Euro.
Poland, Denmark, and the Eastern/Baltic states are really lucky that they held their currency.

>You keep reasoning on national terms, whereas the point of the EU is to overcome those terms.

Well problem is that it isn't the EU is explicitly "anti-federation" at least on paper, if the EU was structured like the US it would be a considerably more fairer place but the nation states within it are sticking to their national terms, borders, and sovereignty I only attempt represents the reality not an ideal some might hold.

> The German taxpayer isn't really picking up the bill; The numbers respectfully disagree: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8036097.stm#start

I thought that we were talking about the Euro Debt crisis which went pretty bad as far as the Irish taxpayer goes and pretty good for the German one.

But if this is pan-EU economics then while Germany does pay more it also receives more.

2007-2013 Germany's net contribution was negative meaning it got more money than it paid out (same goes for all the other big contributors into the EU).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_the_European_Union#E...

Yes, Germany and the rest of the large economies do pay out more, but they also get considerably more and while we can all find a few years in which they are paying considerably more than they are getting if you look at the overall figures it's more or less a zero sum game, and if you look at economic crisis periods it tends to be negative.

The smaller EU member states on the other hand have positive net contribution to the EU, they can't afford not to have that, they don't have the political capital for that and the EU laws and regulations are not set up in their favor.

>Not just to Ireland, to anyone. Which is really the main problem with the Euro, to be honest. There are solutions, but they need a coordinated effort by Eurozone countries to overcome German diffidence towards potentially weakening the currency. This effort is slowly building, now that France and Italy have nothing left to lose.

Aye this is a pretty big issue, Germany treats the Euro like it was the Dutchmark (I don't fault them for that ;)) as they are the "biggest" economy in the EU (by a substantial margin) and if we are talking old-school industry only that margin is probably even bigger they are very keen on keeping their production surplus and they are doing everything they can to make sure that still is the case.

Germany is at a pretty tough spot since they are the factory of Europe and their economy is still set up around its Industry (they are post WW2 50's America).

The services sector is nearly 80% of the economy of the next 2 largest economies in the EU - France and the UK, while their industry share is 20% or lower (UK 20.4%, France 18.3%).

Unlike the UK, France and even the US (20.8%) Germany's industry is 30% of its GDP it produces tangible goods at a high surplus, this means that much more of its GDP isn't not only tied to the purchasing powers of its trading partners but is also considerably less "flexible" than a services oriented economy and Germany would resist any major financial policy changes with very very fierce opposition.

Simply because it's easier and quicker to shift the focus of retail jobs or even retrain them than it is to figure out what to do now with an automotive factory and the 30,000 people it employed.

>Well, it's what everyone wants, isn't it? :)

The cake is a lie ;)

>FED heads are also not elected but rather nominated; and historically they are pretty independent as well. Politically, the ECB is under a similar amount of pressure; the Governing Board is nominated by the European Council, aka national governments, and include representatives from all countries; on top of that sits a restricted Executive team which traditionally includes at least one German, one French and one Italian, recognising the larger role of their economies.

Yes but any US state will have more political pull over the the Federal government or any of its institutions (even tho the Fed is technically a separate entity but the head of the Fed is appointed by the President) than nearly any EU member state has within the EU parliament, EC, and various other institutions.

If Janet Yellen would say to Alabama what the ECB said to Ireland or Greece, the Congress would be up in arms calling for impeachment and she would be without a job before sundown, it seems that while the EU is very paranoid about national sovereignty it doesn't really act to protect it(mainly because it's structured against it, the EUP is very "anti-national" for the most part and is also hardly representative of the actual elected governments of the various member states, and the EC and other institutions that their members are appointed by the governments of the member states have different responsibilities and agendas).

>Absolutely. Fiscal harmonisation is the next step on that path, and this decision is coherent with that endgame.

Fiscal harmonisation is a "big no-no" most EU states do not want federalization they want to keep their national identity and sovereignty at least in this point in time.
This decision isn't really coherent with this, it's strong arming without the reach around and with no cuddles.

>Neither of those has unfettered access to the largest market on the planet. I should have probably qualified my previous statement with something like "in the EU".

Nowhere was it stated that it was, but it doesn't makes English the reason why Ireland is preferable to Germany, if English was an issue they would import Irish to Germany if it wasn't more lucrative for them to set up shop in Ireland.

>You're selling Ireland short, here. Tax is one element of policy, but not the only one. I'm pretty sure US companies would rather work with Irish unions than German ones, for example. Germany is also another hour away in timezone terms, two hours in flight terms, and more uncomfortable to access by sea. And of course, everyone suffers from competition from up-and-coming countries in the same way.

Taxes are only one aspect of the incentives Apple and the likes received in Ireland and that's the problem, if Ireland was setup as a tax haven like Luxembourg the EU wouldn't give a damn, but it set up specific preferential policies that didn't make Apple want to setup a shell holding company in Ireland they made Apple want to put 30% of it's employees in Ireland.

And I'm not selling Ireland short, it's an island with 5M people with a tiny local market an underdeveloped industrial and services sectors with all the logistical issues of being an island including having higher consumer prices than Germany.

And I don't understand what does naval access have to do with this argument, Ireland didn't went after MERSC, ZIM, GE or Shell, it went after the likes of Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

But even then last time I've checked the largest port in Europe and one of the largest in the world is in Rotterdam which is pretty well connected to Germany.