Lawrence Reddaway presents a report on the Fixers Discussion on 11 July 2022.Their topic for discussion was "The future of Europe: has the EU outlived its usefulness?"
Strangely, and usefully, our discussions about Europe included some interesting analogies to our own Australian problems.
(So we’re not sending this report only to Penny Wong, but to Albo as well.)
Here are some of our interesting topics:
The Britain we thought we knew seems to have gone: Five of the six candidates to lead the Conservative party in Britain have ‘non-British’ names. Is this good or bad?
- The European Union (‘EU’) deals with politics etc, whilst defence is dealt with by the different grouping of NATO. Why? Could we envisage, as Europe rises and America declines, NATO morphing into a multinational European Armed Forces?
- We’ve had peace in Europe in the 75 years since WW2 (with the huge exception of the current Russian aggression against Ukraine). In historic terms that’s pretty good. Did the existence of the EU contribute to this?
- Is the European Parliament destined to become a government of a federal Europe (cf Canberra), whilst the current nations decline into being akin to the Australian states?
- The Brexit referendum was a disaster, which led to a so-called Brexit. How long before Britain tries to re-join the EU?
- No doubt some of the so-called European red tape has been stupid. But why throw out the baby with the bathwater?
Altogether we had great fun being a sextet of grumpy old Rotarians! I sensed that most of us would like EU to continue.