Larian Studios Forums General Chat Chat (Anything) EU and You...

On Sunday there was a referendum on whether Estonians want Estonia to become part of EU. 63% voted Yes.

I think the same day sweedes sayd NO to euro.

Most of you guys live in Euro zone or in EU. How do you like it? How, is this affecting you personally?

For example, I know that euro currency is pain for many countries.

yes, the euro isn't what its supposed to be, you will only gain profit from it if you go on vacation twice a week, without having to exchange your valuta <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

the prices are going trough the roof, at some places you must pay 2 euro for a small glass of beer for instance.
Thats way more than it has been.

If our Prime Minister Tony Blair has the guts to put the currency debate to the electorate there would be a considerable majority voting against the Euro.
I am a staunch supporter of the £.Ihave been to many of the countries who have the Euro and the general public to whom i have spoken in the main are against the euro and wish things had not changed.
Here is a link to a site in the Uk which supports the £.
Keep The Pound.
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />

well, since the pounds is a dollar more than the Euro - i can see why. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" />
I just bought 1000 of each - and it cost me close to 4000 Canadain. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ouch.gif" alt="" />

I love the euro. And yes theire hav been rises in price but cars and big electric appliences are much cheaper and who knows that the price rises wouldn't have come anyways theire are econmic problems in the world. It's a great boost for the economy, also companies don't have to fear currency changens in the euro zone. I thinks it's really sad that the sweads didn't go for the euro. I think the gouverment are couragous to do the unpopular for the good of the country.

And the most important thing is that instead of europe as a group of countries, europe is now a fammely of countries.

The Swedish ppl are wise. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
For the big public the € was/is a disaster. Everything got more expensive. Except maybe for things like cars (in some places) and big household appliances (in some places).
But how often do you buy those things? Hopefully you don't have to buy them often.
Daily life has gotten more expensive for everyone.
Also the currency changes argument that some politicians love to use is a joke. Becouse currency changes work both ways. Sometimes in your adventage, sometimes not. They only tell half of the story ofcourse.
The economy in most European countries hasn't been this bad in a long time. So I don't see what good it did for the economy.
Profs. and economy experts from different European countries say that if the goverments had the guts to organise referendums in all countries, most countries wouldn't have switched to the €. Now the € has been "forced on" most inhabitants of Europe.

Currency changes are never profitable, you always have to be a conversion percentage and you buy them more expensive then you can sell them. Oh yes you can make money with currency exchanges if you do it right. But as a company you did not have the luxury to choose which currency you would be paid in, you got what was common there. Big companies lost millions of euros a year on currency exchanges alone.

Prices increase every year and it's not the Euro that made the prices more expensive in itself. It's the shops, the restaurants, the bars etc. who increased the price beyond that what would have been acceptable given the introduction of the Euro.

And who says how good or bad economy would have been without the Euro? There is no way you can tell. Unless all non-Euro countries have a blooming economy of course.

I couldn't agree more <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />

you have to keep in mind the Euro will only become a real profit in years, when everything adapted, then we could compete more with the dollar and the pound. Export products as let's say Antwerp diamond shouldn't be sold anymore in dollars, but in Euro's, all big exports still get sold for Dollars, once that's all replaced with Euro's, meaning non-european countries will pay Euro's for EU specific products. then it will benefitus greatly. But that needs change, for know where to dependant on the dollar, and with 1 currency for the whole EU independance is more real.

O yes. It's the bars and shops who increase prices. And they used the € as excuse for it.

I regularly have to deal with international money exchange.
You still have to pay for it. € or not. Some banks even dare to ask more. Becouse they have to make up for the conversion exchange that they lost is their explination.
Companies do get to choose what currency they want to use.
(even you could/can do that) In the past that was very common. In east-europe fi the most prefered German marks.
Now their options are more limitted ofcourse.

Today in the news:
The economic grow of countries not yet using the € is 4 times as big as the grow in the eurozone.

(I don't care at all about the european union in general.
They can't agree on nothing and are constantly devided.
Coutries form little clubs inside the EU and so on...
It's everything but a union.)

Well, i do know that it has helped Eire. Their economy is now booming - the introduction of the Euro has helped them...

Here in Germany, every al least seems to have become more expensive.

The problem is, the people are / were so accustomed to the D-Mark, they have some problems now re-calculating . <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> I mean ... 1 Euro has the value of almost 2 D-Marks.

The worst thing was in the very beginning : A *lot* of shops just kept the price ... they just left the price signs where they were, and wanted to be paid in Euro ! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/memad.gif" alt="" />

That could be a reason why everything seems to be nowadays more expensive : Forgotten price signs. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

On the other hand, everything looks so cheap ... "only 5 Euro ?". But re-calculating, it's almost 10 Marks ! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

It's interesting how perception works. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

Years ago when Canada switched to the metric system, the government increased the tax on gasoline at the same time. People knew it seemed more expensive to fill up, but most didn't convert the $/liter into $/gallon. Without an obvious comparison, the government got away with an increase that would have otherwise cause protests.

What are you on about? Independance from who, Europe was lots of independant countries now its all falling under one umbrella,The United States of Europe <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />, i certainly don't want to be part of that <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/exclamation.gif" alt="" />

At least i was not old enough to know so. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badsmile2.gif" alt="" />

Neither was I. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> It came up in a university course on energy I took years ago. This came following another example; I forget which country it was, but somewhere where gas was cheaper than bottled water, the government tried to introduce a very small gas tax. There were huge demonstrations and they had to back down.

the only place i know where gas is cheaper than water is in the middle east. which is why they have no problem driving vehicles that drink fuel like beer lovers(u know who u are) downing beer.

There are still hot debates in Estonia on EU and euro.
We sayd yes to EU, and it seems that, being tiny country like Estonia, we haven't got much choice. It is funny though, that our politicians say, that after 700-800 years, this was first volunteery decision to join some larger union (or empire).

As for euro, it will take years before we can start thinking of it, as there are some conditions for economy that should be met first.

As for being non EU country benefiting from EU and at the same time EU country suffering from euro, I will make small example:

After Finland adopted euro, finnish economy lacked about 2 billion euros first year (correct me if I am wrong). With euro prices went up in Finland, i.e. beer, cigarettes. Finns started to make small 1-2 day shopping trips into Estonia and later into St. Petersburg. That was, and still is strong blow on finnish economy, imagine lots of small businesses like bars and pubs having no customers, as finns staying at home having their refrigerators full of estonian beer. Sure, that was serious boost to estonian economy.

There is an idea of staying small country between Russia and EU, there are serious cons. and pros., cons more feared. Like staying without EU dotations and having limited quotas on export to EU.
As for Russia, some time ago, after Estonia announced that it is looking forward to join EU and NATO, Russia implemented double taxation against Estonia. It is still that way.

As for EU can you make some short term predictions on it's structure and development?
For example, will it have the president, will the countries having majority votes have the privileges on being elected into Presidency of the Council by having more members in European comission? Then small countries like us will have less options in influenting things in EU.

How do you see the future of EU? I am very interested in hearing western point of view. What do our canadian, australian, malaysian, US friends think on future of Europe? It looks like it is going towards integration (is it to be able to resist US expansion even?) Look at US measures against France! Thats discusting.
And thanks to changes started in Russia with Putin, Russia may and will become strong and influential again, it may take years though.

Actually, if there is interest, we could start similar discussions on NATO or UN. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

no offense to the americans in our forum (except maybe the US admin), i feel US admins have more than once been underhanded in their dealings.

one is that their own exploitation on 911 incident to attack anybody that they deem as enemy. doesn't need much proof, just arm twisting.

the so-called pinacle of free speech & yet when malaysian prime minister criticised the way US admins handled certain issues, they told him to shut up or face the consequences, whatever that means.

sorry, sometimes i just feel that US admin act the big bully of the world & don a 'police uniform' 4 justification. my bitter 2 cents.

as for EU & the euros, theoretically & by principle, it should be a good thing as with that, smaller countries instead of being poor competitors of the big ones, they becomes allies or some sort. with such community, the strong will 'help' the smaller one by unifying the currency. the cons will be that the strong ones will suffer some setback due 2 'supporting' their poorer neighbours by distributing their currency buying power into a pool of more generic currency which becomes standard for every EU member. poorer ones will get a good deal out of this but richer ones will be poorer. it's distribution of currency buying power.

much like accepting a lower level dude into your party of elites & u see your ratings go down ...... . average does that 2 u.

but then i may be wrong. so keep the discussion flowing! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

[the so-called pinacle of free speech & yet when malaysian prime minister criticised the way US admins handled certain issues, they told him to shut up or face the consequences, whatever that means. ]
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- There was a large internationall poll carried lately on -democracy and press- US and Russia were close to each other staying on 100+ position. The winners were Norway, Sweden. So, democracy, you say?

[sorry, sometimes i just feel that US admin act the big bully of the world & don a 'police uniform' 4 justification. my bitter 2 cents.]
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- Hmm, we are coming back to a question. What makes one country better than another one? We can endlessly say that culture, economy, high-tech development or social helthcare etc. but, still now and forever the main reason will be military force. You have 2 tanks I have 100 so, shut up and do it my way. So, US is the strongest in the world, and it has it's own idea and plan of world domination.
Btw., Clinton was more economy oriented president, Bush (I think both of them) don't care much about economy, and pay closer attention to the means of force. It brings sooner results <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
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[the cons will be that the strong ones will suffer some setback due 2 'supporting' their poorer neighbours by distributing their currency buying power into a pool of more generic currency which becomes standard for every EU member. poorer ones will get a good deal out of this but richer ones will be poorer. it's distribution of currency buying power.

much like accepting a lower level dude into your party of elites & u see your ratings go down ...... . average does that 2 u.]
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- Disagree. Supporting lower neighbours, they make them richer (look at Greece)
The annual fee every member pays to EU depends on countrie's GDP. As GDP goes higher the fee raises, supporting the pool.
Also there are taxation and legislation bonuses from supporting so called poorer neighbours, so everyone stays happy and richer don't get poorer.