EU PODs

There was a possibility that the referendum on joining the European Union in Lithuania could have failed, not because the Lithuanians could have voted against it (92 percent were in favor last I recall), but because Lithuania has a really stupid system on referendums where over half of all eligible voters need to cast their vote for the yes option for the motion to pass, not just those who showed up.

It's most likely that the government of Lithuania would have moved on to get the country in the EU regardless, there is no specific requirement for an EU application to be approved by referendum, but it's interesting to consider regardless.
 
There was a possibility that the referendum on joining the European Union in Lithuania could have failed, not because the Lithuanians could have voted against it (92 percent were in favor last I recall), but because Lithuania has a really stupid system on referendums where over half of all eligible voters need to cast their vote for the yes option for the motion to pass, not just those who showed up.

It's most likely that the government of Lithuania would have moved on to get the country in the EU regardless, there is no specific requirement for an EU application to be approved by referendum, but it's interesting to consider regardless.
It doesn't seem like such a daft idea given a certain other referendum!
 
It doesn't seem like such a daft idea given a certain other referendum!
It's pretty daft when you consider that we can't pass anything, either good or bad, through referendum.

It's the reason why, for example, the national electoral commission didn't allow to even start collecting the signatures for a referendum on adopting the Euro, and instead the government just passed it through. They know how it would end.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
The most interesting EU-related scenario I can think of is an EU that is deliberately much, much more stringent when it comes to monetary policy and deficits, and refuses to allow in any country that doesn't perform up to those standards (and has a policy to automatically kick out any country that fails to adhere to the standards for several years running). The result would be that it becomes/remains a North-West European Union, with Italy unwilling or unable to live up to the standards in '57. A common currency gets introduced, and it's a very strong one. Norway and Iceland join this "Northern European Union", and both adopt the common currency-- as do Denmark and the UK. Switzerland may even be convinced to join this alt-EU.

A union like that would be exceedingly stable, and the whole OTL issue of the "North-South divide" (and the East-West one) gets avoided. The Euro doesn't get into the OTL trouble because the Southern European countries can't get their budgets in order. Presumably, no Southern or Eastern European countries live up to the standards for admission even in the ATL present day. It's conceivable that Italy, Spain, Portugal (and possibly Greece) form their own union (a Mediterranean Union), and that Eastern Europe sees the formation of an Eastern European Union. The OTL trouble regarding certain EU policies over which the Western governments clsh with the Visegrad Group thus also get avoided: thery are both free tofollow their own preferences.

I'm sure this is all very implausible and unrealistic, but pre-emptively removing the sources of problems and tensions in the OTL EU and seeing how the alternative scenario plays out would be very interesting.
 
Which myth?

It's pretty clear that the Treaty of Lisbon was just a rearanged version of 2005's TCE, this time enacted by the national parliaments to avoid another defeat....

Given that:

1. Ireland never voted on the TCE in a referendum (so what the Lisbon treaty being a repackaging of the TCE has to do with what sparky says isn't at all clear)

2. The Irish did vote (and if I'm not mistaken were required to vote) and thus it would seem the attempt to avoid direct democracy by having the TCE become the Lisbon treaty pretty much failed in that regard

3. As sparky noted in other threads, what the Irish voted on in 2009 was different from what they voted on in 2008 with extra guarantees obtained on abortion, military neutrality and taxation

this is a myth. It isn't that the EU leaders didn't respect the Irish vote. They did. Which is why they gave guarantees on changes to be made to Lisbon for the things that mattered to the Irish.
 
Well, I know French far-right was pro-EU before the end of the Cold War and the beginning of globalism, I don't know about other far-rights, but that could leaad to very interesting consequences to have Anti-Immigration AND Europhilia being the mainstream far-right model.


Another PoD is to have France convincing other CEE members to reject NATO united command to create an European United Command in 1966.
 
Another interesting one would be if Italy had decided to opt out of the Euro when It was time adopt it. Apparently even German economists thought that let Italy keep the Lira for the time being was going to work better for everyone. Perhaps Greece, Portugaul and Spain could follow suit.
 
There is also this one I proposed a while ago:

Lithuania failed to join the Eurozone right before the economic crisis of 2008-2009 in the most humorous and anecdotal way possible - as our economics lecturer commented, in the lead-up to the application process, several of the country's logal governments increased prices for public transport tickets, which raised the inflation rate juuust above the Maastricht criteria (like 0.1 percent above).

Had Lithuania managed to join the Eurozone eight years earlier, it is almost universally agreed that we would have been much better off both in the short and in the long term, especially during the following recession. In OTL, as the Lithuanian litas was tied to the Euro, the government had to borrow money at far greater interest rates than Eurozone members, as there were real fears that Lithuania will detach its currency from the Euro and turn it into a floating currency again (which is what the IMF actually requested Lithuania to do, which would have been really terrible). This meant that severe austerity measures were required, which, while they rescued Lithuania from the economic crisis, also led to long-term complications.

An Euro-bearing Lithuania, on the other hand, would probably be similar to Slovenia, although possibly with a far smoother path out of the economic recession, as its economic policy and wage controls are considerably more flexible and the level of foreign direct investment is considerably higher.

Thoughts?
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
Let's see.

We already had the EDC mentioned.

- No British Rebate

- Soros does not speculate against the pound

- EURO negotiations fail due to differences between Germany and France

- Direct election of the EP earlier or later

- Turkey never gets candidate status

- something with the Kaliningrad oblast

- Slovenia blocks Croatian membership due to unsolved maritime borders

- Switzerland and Liechtenstein join in the late 90s, Liechtenstein blocks Czechian membership

- Greenland remains

- Scotland gains independence, EU has a problem to deal with that
 
An interesting POD would be the UK joining the Euro instead of going for the opt-out to keep the Pound. The Euro backed the 3 largest European economies would have a greater sense of stability and economic power than it being backed by 2 of the largest European economies. The effects would be interesting to see.
After the ERM debacle, this was extremely unlikely. The economic cost and pain to Britain of convergence would have been considerable and would certainly have ended the then Chancellor Gordon Brown's chances of succeeding Blair as PM (which may have some bearing on why he strongly opposed it).
 
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