How long can Western Europe fund the rest of the EU?

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Discipline_Cautious1@reddit

This is EU budget not total country budget. Ask AI before posting.

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P-l-Staker@reddit

Ask AI before posting.

Man, I fucking hate this timeline!

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Discipline_Cautious1@reddit

You can say "google first" but google is more evil than any AI.

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Discipline_Cautious1@reddit

It's not about who's evil, mate 😂

throwing in emojis at the end just makes it come across as an excuse for now having a proper answer.

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r/AskBalkans can we have some sort of prefilter please? The umpteenth time of some random joe throwing in some serious political topic, engages with nobody, then deletes when the argument isn't too polarized.

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Novel_Plum@reddit

It's in the interest of the already developed countries to assist the undeveloped, as they can get access to bigger markets.

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hgaben90@reddit

It's funny how some folks still don't (or act like they didn't) get this. Marshall plan made Western Europe come back as a strong partner of the US just a few years after the continent pretty much burned to the ground.

Meanwhile in the Eastern Bloc, "liberated" countries were sacked further, the Warsaw Pact's only purpose was keeping the members a part of it with violent means, and it all came down crashing as the "Big Brother"s economy shat itself.

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HuckleberryUpbeat518@reddit

All countries contribute to the EU budget proportional to their GDP. Then the EU funds projects. Eastern and southern Europe have relatively underdeveloped economies and infrastructure, so they get more projects approved. The west benefits from that by having a bigger market for their goods as well as a better infrastructure for export to Asia.

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dwartbg9@reddit

Can somebody check where is AmazingMaps based and hosted from?

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No-Championship-4632@reddit

How the EU works in the eyes of a vatnik.

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hgaben90@reddit

Nah, even they don't believe it, they just want us to have doubts.
All the while sitting in some Russian countryside shithole sucked dry and kept poor by the Moscovite elite.

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dwartbg9@reddit

gif

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No_Listen5664@reddit

Western Europe runs on Eastern European migrant workers tho. So who funds who?

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mikewazoski59@reddit

Thats just pure cope

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Talithea@reddit

I mean, you are Romanian as equally as me and you saw the massive exodus of people moving from here to Italy and Spain.

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mikewazoski59@reddit

I hope you see how our provinces are being emptied out as well.

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BagRight1007@reddit

But it does happen - east is "trading" workers for funding.

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mikewazoski59@reddit

Who is going to suffer from this in the long term?

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BagRight1007@reddit

Well... depends how you look at it.

Easterners aren't migrating in good enough numbers - West still needs more people to sustain the system (pensions etc) but now, due to the people that left, the East also needs them - we're all going to look more East for those people - Nepal, Pakistan and such.

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hgaben90@reddit

Not cope, just trade. You give something, you get something in return. And they assist us in becoming better partners. That money isn't spent on nothing, unless our politicians steal it.

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deathflowerprincess@reddit

Which they also do!

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hgaben90@reddit

Gotta change them frequently so they'll get the message and they'd sabotage each others' greedy efforts.
Also, the EU needs to pay more attention.

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deathflowerprincess@reddit

Yup the EU is so distracted with being good that they even send billions overseas to other corrupt governments! (1billion to South Africa and 1 billion to Brazil)

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Available_Bear_245@reddit

Many people from the Balkans where not allowed to stay in West Europe after the war in the 90s. Now everyone who have 2 arms and legs is allowed to come and stay. The Western population is in rapid decline and they need workers. I do not judge it is just very noticable.

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Ujemegaz@reddit

Working class unite ✊️

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Brilliant_Success346@reddit

Germans owe us billions of euros

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hero_in_@reddit

Similar maps can be done for individual countries as well where some regions are contributing more and others are benefitting. How long is Serbia going to fund Sandzak until letting it go?

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WorldlinessRadiant77@reddit

EU funding comes with a lot of strings attached.

Sure, the EU will give money to a Greek farmer to expand his operation. But he will buy Dutch seeds, German pesticides and Italian tractors. He has to - those are the terms of the cohesion funds.

Imagine now that our Greek farmer goes to Piraeus Bank instead. His plan is solid and he gets the money. He can now go and buy an American tractor, Canadian seeds and Chinese pesticides.

The Western companies don’t have to deal with the competition because they are net contributors.

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Twofingers_@reddit

Very well said.

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Altruistic-Board5322@reddit

Yeah for sure. Poor good hearted West Europeans support other countries for humanitarian reasons.

-_-

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roctac@reddit

To be fair it's not even 1% of western Europe's GDP.

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AJ_Stangerson@reddit

From my observation, it is a system of bribery and quasi-imperialism. It allows the EU to dictate terms to the 'poorer' countries. In some instances it is a way to 'encourage' the recipients to buy western European goods and services and so is essentially part of the corporatist machine. In others, it is a way to keep local officials and politicians onboard with the EU project, effectively a bribe, ie. here is some money to pay your friends to fix some rubble and call it a 'cultural site', or 'if you do this for us you'll get to be a commissioner one day.' This can then all be smudged over by France and Germany telling us all what nice people they are because they are supporting those feckless southern and eastern Europeans.

As evidence I present the eurozone crisis, where several major countries effectively underwent regime change and massive austerity, which amounted to the citizens paying taxes to bail out German and French banks.

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hgaben90@reddit

Well that's a stupid take if I've ever seen one.

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NightZT@reddit

My region of Austria was objective 1 region up until a few years ago. We paved every crappy dirt road leading to nowhere with the nice EU money

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deviendrais@reddit

Whoever made this map needs to learn the difference between it's and it

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BadBasik@reddit

You just hate us cause we're black!

On that specific map...

"we" is Bosnia, if you aren't sure...

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CyberWarLike1984@reddit

You do know this is about the budget of the EU, not the Member States? And that this federal-like budget is somewhere in the area of 2% of all national budgets? Right?

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MinimumArt8781@reddit

Yes, but western Europe gets cheap labour, factories in eastern EU countries at lower costs, trade, a lot of it, preferential contracts and so on. Just because you give something to the EU budget doesn't mean you lose entirely.

Let's take Germany and manufacture in Romania and trade. The trade value is at some 44 Billion Euros, Romania exports less than 19 Billion out of that and what it exports is mostly made by German Factories, car industry, pharma,army etc. Germany also gets cheap labour especially seasonally in agriculture. The same mechanism works for Germany in regards to most of Europe, so even tho they pay a lot for the EU budget they win a lot more indirectly.

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Opening-Lobster-6027@reddit

Who is funding and who is benefiting? I would say, that for Germany, for example, 0,89% of GDP is pretty good price to access EU single market and free movement of workers.

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Far_Plenty_1942@reddit

Its a sneaky post meant to sow division

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o7_HiBye_o7@reddit

Just not that sneaky.

Downvote, block OP, and move on.

Every side has evil, but the real war has always been the top vs the bottom in history and now.

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trisul-108@reddit

The European Union is in the best interests of both. Western Europe contributes more to the budget, but reaps more benefits due to being more developed. It's a win/win situation ... until recently.

The current geopolitical situation demands closer cooperation and countries like Hungary are not cooperating, even working with enemy forces, bringing under question the benefits of this arrangements.

If this continues, it is likely that Western Europe will form and Core EU or even a federation within the EU and push the non-cooperating members to the sidelines. Not as punishment, but in self-preservation because the situation is becoming too serious to ignore.

Western Europe needs a consolidation and transformation based on trust in order to withstand the attacks by Russia, China and MAGA. If the entire EU will not participate, a coalition of the willing will be formed.

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ResponsibleCar8814@reddit

It's its

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VisibleReport5008@reddit

Not like western countries doesnt get anything from this. No ones throwing away money for charity.

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Comprehensive-Bike36@reddit

This is a meaningless post, likely made due to ignorance or propaganda

Even, if the EU would function in such a simplistic way, if the West helps the East get richer, then the East can buy more Western stuff, thus the West profits, so that's fine :).

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