Should the U.S. seek to join the EU?

by philg

Barack Obama has written an op-ed urging Britons to vote to stay in the European Union. Let’s assume that he is correct about how great EU membership is for a nation. Shouldn’t the U.S. then also seek to join the EU? The UK is physically closer to the rest of Europe than is the U.S., but in our modern age of telecommunications and low-cost air travel, why is distance an obstacle to membership?

Some advantages of joining the EU:

  • We could stop fighting about interest rates, printing money, etc.
  • We wouldn’t have to worry so much about who is on the Supreme Court since the ultimate decision-makers on a lot of issues would be in Holland or Belgium.
  • No immigration lines on either side of the Atlantic.
  • No cheese import quotas and hence the prices of high-quality cheese would fall by at least 50 percent. Wine prices should also collapse down to European levels.

What do readers think? Should Britons take advance from Barack Obama? If so, why should we also take the same advice?

6 thoughts on “Should the U.S. seek to join the EU?”

  1. Um. While I understand the rhetorical force of your argument, you seem to have conflated the Eurozone (common currency/European Central Bank) and the Schengen agreement with the EU.
    Great Britain is currently an EU member, but is not in the Eurozone (they use the pound, not the Euro), and has also opted out of the Schengen area. Some European countries which are not in the EU (e.g., Norway, Switzerland) have chosen to join Schengen. Similarly, there are countries that use the Euro without being EU members, just as there are countries that use the U.S. dollar as their currency, despite not being part of the U.S.
    So, we’re down to Supreme Court and wine and cheese. Both important, but hardly as dramatic.

  2. > Great Britain is currently an EU member, but is not in the Eurozone

    “… all EU Member States have to join the euro area once the
    necessary conditions are fulfilled, except Denmark and the United
    Kingdom which have negotiated an ‘opt-out’ clause”[1]

    I.e. new EU states will be required to join the Euro.

    > conflated the … Schengen agreement with the EU.

    “1 May 1999 Integration of Schengen into the legal framework of the
    EU, following the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam”[2]

    I.e. new EU states will be required to join Schengen.

    1. http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/euro/adoption/index_en.htm
    2. http://biblio.ucv.ro/bib_web/bib_pdf/EU_books/0056.pdf

  3. There’s a lot of path dependence here. Advising a friend not to file for divorce in a rush maybe advisable even if you don’t consider his wife the best partner in the world.

  5. I know how to tell the story that big political unions result in big governments which result in dumb policies executed on a large scale, whereas many smaller governments are restricted in a good way by both their size and various forms of competition with other governments, etc. Still, my hunch would be that a voluntary union between the US and the EU under a single government would greatly increase the welfare of its citizens relatively to the status quo (and this currently unlikely scenario is presumably predicated on the currently unlikely scenario of the various EU states joining into a voluntary union under a single government; right now the EU is a confederation largely using a single currency, and confederations using a single currency seem likely to collapse due to different states wishing to have different monetary policies.)

    To continue the last point, I’m pretty certain that almost everyone in Europe will be better off under a single government than they’ll be if they let the EU collapse; we’ll see which they’ll choose. Of course the EU in its current form is not the most well thought-out institution, but then the same could be said about the US when it was a confederation, and the US similarly seemed to have two realistic paths ahead, dissolving the union or turning into a federation. Some think that becoming a federation was a mistake; to me it seems to have been the number one reason for the outstanding success of the US over the years.

  6. USA joining the EU would sure make my life easier as an expat in the EU. Also if Russia were to join the EU that would help me as well. In fact, it is still disappointing to me, even considering WWII history, that progress has not been made to allow Russia to join. Imagine what a challenge to US hegemony that would be.

    The cons are many, you can watch video clips of UKIP’s Nigel Farage in EU parliament to see them. They are highly entertaining, here are the best bits put together (especially him ripping apart Van Rompuy): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGNoZfvRoA

    Pros for Americans:
    1) Better healthcare system (if modeled on Germany/Austria/Switzerland)
    2) Child support payments are limited to… *gasp* child support and not profit
    3) Better looking women

    Cons for Americans would be:
    1) No national democracy for member states (but hey, not like we have a real one in USA anyway)
    2) High European taxes (actually, total taxes in USA are just as high when summed)
    3) Learning more languages (Americans are monolingual)

    Pros for Europeans:
    1) Maybe to learn a more positive, can do attitude

    Cons for Europeans:
    1) USA will import it’s workaholic lifestyle to Europe, no more 6 weeks vacation.

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