>>Im pretty sure the fall of the EU has little to do with Facebook
Wait, what? EU is doing better than ever and it looks like after Brexit we will enjoy greater integration, and hopefully a full financial and political union in the future. If this is what a "fall" looks like to you, then I don't really know what to say to you - but from the rest of your sentence it seems like you don't like EU as an institution, so I guess it's unlikely you share my enthusiasm for it.
Maybe the EU is doing better than ever on some metrics, but I find it quite scary how over the last 20 years, Europe has completely missed the train on technology. We are now in a vassal position where we have to beg foreign CEOs to have some sort of view / control over the technology that runs our society. And it's not getting any better.
GDPR is too little too late, and may even be counterproductive[1]. It would have been vastly preferable to have healthy European competitors to Microsoft / Apple / Google / Facebook. But we don't, and probably will never have.
The situation with Microsoft in the 90's should have made it obvious of what was to come. Our politicians ignored it entirely. They are now making grand statements about democracy that leave me less than impressed.
[1] Some say that GDPR will cement Google / Facebook's advertising monopoly as they are in a much better position to gather data sharing consent from their users than their smaller competitors.
Missed the train? Maybe didn't fully participate in the dot-com boom or the startup-buzz, but that's not the full picture with regards to technology. The world wide web came from CERN. ARM which powers most popular mobile devices was founded in the UK (only bought by a Japanse company post-Brexit). German cars are everywhere. Nokia and Ericsson were at the forefront of the boom in mobile telecommunications. ITU is based in Geneva and GSM (the basis for all modern mobile telecomms) orginated in France (it took years for the USA to catch up).
But there's no way to way to fight back for Europe unless EU countries get even more homogeneous laws concerning running a multi-national (basically any online) business.
It's easy in the US because they have a large, wealthy and boundary free market with almost no access cost beyond marketing.
B2C is still wildly localized. In the earliest days of the commercial web (and before), this wasn't the case and it felt like a truly level playing field (the general lack of transactions involving the real world fulfillment certainly helped as well).
Only when the giants started translating their offerings to reach an even wider audience in non-anglophone countries did end users start to expect a web in their home language and the potential audience of non-anglophone-based companies dropped (because they usually address their home language first).
Now the most inhibiting cost of multi-language offerings is usually not the act of translation itself, but the resulting quality which is rarely high.
I just mean with Brexit and all ... if the English leave, English will be deprecated as an official language, yet it will still be the lingua franca of European Business. It's just a kind of a funny, and slightly ironic situation I think.
EDIT: I think actually it speaks very much to how european unity is about so much more than just the EU. By extension how culture and national identity is about so much more than what the Westphalian paradigm provides.
UK leaving EU doesn't mean it's leaving Europe. It still is and will be a huge business partner, travel destination etc. so I seriously doubt English will deprecate as an official language.
I'm sure Italy and Hungary are excited about 'greater integration' too - they've certainly expressed that desire in their recent elections. I'd say 'fall' is the wrong word, but the European Union is not in a particularly healthy state right now. One large member leaving, one founding member making potentially illegal demands after electing populists, another three being sued for refusing to follow rules on migrants. It's not the first time, and it probably wont be the last, but it's not a good place to be.
I can't speak for Italy, but as one of the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who could easily get a job outside Hungary _because_ of Hungary joining the EU, I'm deeply thankful for the fact that EU is trying to control the damage that Orban Viktor is doing to the country.
As for the elections: Orban used lots of tools (cheating) to make sure that they win again. Migrants/illegal border crossers are not a problem here at this time here actually (they prefer Germany with a better economy).
Most of us Hungarians want to stay in the EU, but we have a dictator who would prefer to be outside if the money stops flowing from EU to them.
The EU has massive structural problems - sure most of them are not a direct fault of the EU but it certainly weakens the union.
Just look at youth unemployment in Spain for example. There is an entire generation growing up out of work and not building any skills. They can't compete in a global market.
What happens when Spain falls on actual hard times?
Or for example a small number of refugees have caused a huge shift right in politics and a lot of friction between member states. What will happen when there is a serious refugee crisis?
Spain, or actually any other European nation for the sake of this argument, has been through rougher times by any measure. Successfully if I may say, time and time again.
If only most people out of Europe, and most certainly Spain, would take a glimpse of the standards of living people take for granted in Western Europe, in particular Americans, they’d be demanding their governments at least the same.
Far right is having a strong time in many parts of the world, partly due to the rejection by electors of "establishment", but also because some politicians are quick to kindle nationalism and xenophobia to get cheap votes from angry people. Not sure what it has to do with the collapse of the USSR.
You didn't really address his points though. He named multiple countries in which Eurosceptics are on the rise, and that is going to become a problem in time for EU. Hell, even here in Latvia anti-EU sentiments are (albeit slowly) becoming more widespread. I don't think there will be a fall anytime soon, but we certainly have interesting times ahead of us.
So you like your free travel and ability to work anywhere in the EU??? But beyond that what does the EU offer other than a lot of regulations that seem to be hurting a lot of smaller countries?
"...beyond that"... that is funny. The "ability to work anywhere in the EU" is a huge win for all countries involved, and it alone would be worth having the EU.
And what kind of "regulations that seem to be hurting a lot of smaller countries" do you mean? I can't think of any.
Poland is not anti-EU, it just opposes the migrant quotas due to variety of reasons. The society also has a generally negative view on multiculturalism and forcing the refugees to live where they will feel unwelcome and oppressed doesn't seem like the best idea.
I'm struggling to see what massive wins you are referring to here.
The only 'win' I can think of of the top of my head was the UK referendum, which was 52/48 in favour of leaving. Polls taken now suggest that people are now mostly against leaving but the referendum result still stands.
reject[ing] giving more power to the EU is not the same as being anti-EU. I think there's a broad understanding that the EU isn't perfect, but that it's better than not having an EU. Britain is the one exception to this of course, but that depends on who you ask ... but even of the 50% who voted to leave, a large %age of those didn't really take stock of what it entailed.
In The Netherlands Geert Wilders' PVV became the second party by size, but the rest of the mainstream parties refuse to form a coalition with them so they are pretty much always in the opposition. I don't like that type of party (we had the LPF, then PVV and in the future maybe FvD) but I have to admit that as long as they don't actually govern they have a very useful function in that they often point out painful truths or situations that the other parties won't touch for fear of seeming politically incorrect.
That's four countries out of 28, and the Polish government is losing popularity (my girlfriend is Polish, I visit Poland often) due to its ultra-conservative Catholic views.
Poland was one of the most pro-EU countries in the union, and it will be again. It has seen the benefits firsthand, regardless of a vocal minority of xenophobes.
Le Pen had big gains yes, and still lost because the country decided to vote tactically, together to stop a fascist getting any power. She lost.
Hungary I'll give you, because it has been hardcore right-wing for a long while and massively corrupt.
How about arguing specifics instead of merely emoting? For instance, what does a national border mean to you? Is it totally meaningless? What is a nation? Does it share any characteristics at all, with the concept of a family? Should a country not set any requirements for entry or should it adopt a free-for-all with no barriers? Actually I'm not taking sides here but merely suggesting it would be instructive to see a salient point or two in support of your evident take on Orbán. There are lots of people I don't like but who gives a damn if I don't offer reasons for my preferences that show some evidence of intelligent analysis on my part?
Orbán's flirting with far-right groups, his opposition to everything related to EU and his extremely nationalistic bent are all well-known. He has a history of policies and laws that are overtly nationalistic and isolationist. Which is not a healthy approach in an increasingly global politic climate.
His policies and speeches bring definite reminders of nationalistic policies past, of using immigrants as refugees and scapegoats for everything wrong in a society, as well as appealing to traditionalist values, the "things were much better in the old days" rose-tinted glasses mentality.
It is a symptom of being stuck in the past, a wish to bring society back to the imagined "good old days", which never actually existed in the first place. There are also the obvious calls to maintaining traditions and cultural identity that is "under attack" and in many cases were actually imported from other cultures and assimilated over decades. It's the exact same story with every other nationalistic politic party, in every European country.
Wait, what? EU is doing better than ever and it looks like after Brexit we will enjoy greater integration, and hopefully a full financial and political union in the future. If this is what a "fall" looks like to you, then I don't really know what to say to you - but from the rest of your sentence it seems like you don't like EU as an institution, so I guess it's unlikely you share my enthusiasm for it.