LeSving wrote:
the number of students going to the UK has dropped dramatically. Today Australia is the number one choice, and USA, Denmark, Poland and Hungary are also popular. So, if Norwegian students studying abroad is an indication, the UK will become irrelevant, and it will happen “over night” so to speak.
One important reason is that the UK has decided to leave the European Erasmus programme for student exchange.
At the same time they have introduced their own Turing scheme which is unidirectional – only to help UK students to study abroad. Everything to keep the furriners out. (And people call the EU negotiation stance “petty”.)
Cobalt wrote:
In 2019, the candidate for President of the Commission (i.e., head of the European Government) of the winning party was Manfred Weber.
The European Council then appointed Ursula von der Leyen.
Not exactly!
1. The candidate of the winning party Before the election was Weber. Leyen is from the winning party as well. The fact is – and that’s not better – that the winning party changed its candidate after they won the election.
2. The president of the Commission is elected by the European Parliament. Full stop! It’s only proposed by the European Council. If the parliament doesn’t like the candidate and therefor doesn’t elect her/him the council has to propose a new candidate (within a month).
Both 1. and 2. are signes not for a structural problem of the European institutions with respect to constitutional power, but practical failure of parlamentarism on European level. It starts with the very basic fact that there is no such thing as “European Parties”. There are national Parties that for reasons of practicality form certain coalitions. That makes it easy for the national governments (and the parties behind them) to call the plays independent from what the parliament wants. If there would have been a real European Conservative party which won the election and their candidate would have been Weber, he would now be president of the commission…
LeSving wrote:
Nonsense (disregarding covid of course )
I meant because of Covid :-)
In normal times student visas are probably easy enough, but working visas to Australia are pretty difficult. Damn near impossible unless you fit into one of the desired occupational categories. I have devoted a lot of time and effort to getting this guy there and keeping him there after the first two years, and this is a science graduate on a good salary working in clinical research.
It will be interesting to see where the UK goes on visas for incoming students. There is a high-end sector that will obviously continue (because Oxford and Cambridge haven’t just become crap overnight), and of course at the other end we have for decades now had a massive problem with people who come in on student visas to study at fake language schools (usually a registered office above a kebab shop) and then disappear into the black economy with no papers. No-one will be sorry to see that eliminated. The middle ground – people who don’t want to leave university and get a job yet and fancy a semester in a different country – who knows. I imagine we’ll set a policy based on what we think they’re likely to contribute. I believe the major economic contribution to date is from Chinese/Japanese/Korean students who elect to come here, rather than Europeans.
I think this thread shows how our political traditions are different and so how difficult it will be to create a european political scene.
About the EU parliament, these are all quotes from its wiki page :
Not so fun facts :
It all looks like a pro forma parliament, not a real legislative power 
Jujupilote wrote:
t all looks like a pro forma parliament, not a real legislative power
Well – kind of – but as we are not the “United States of Europe” but a more group of independent nations, one should even more ask: Why should any institution on EU level have any legislative power?
Jujupilote wrote:
1 french MEP “represents” more than 900,000 voters
I think this is illustrating the core challenge of the EU parliament extremely well – but maybe differently from what you meant to tell: There is no such thing as a “French MEP” in the EU parliament. The members of parliament should represent the EU and not particular interests of individual member states.
The reality is obviously a different one – and that is exactly the reason why the commission has such a strong position in the EU power game: The MEPs spent much more time fighting amongst each others on particular interests rather than jointly working to balance the power of the other institutions while the commission “just acts”.
Malibuflyer wrote:
one should even more ask: Why should any institution on EU level have any legislative power?
Which then leads logically to the next question, why should it exist?
Jujupilote wrote:
1 french MEP “represents” more than 900,000 voters
In the USA House of Representatives, 1 member represents about 750,000 people. (I don’t know about voters, but maybe you meant people?) That’s not so different.
Surely any politician should be representing the population who has voted for them?
Graham wrote:
One guy who works for me, an Irishman, lives in Australia and is on a 4 year working visa. If he were to leave now, he would not be allowed back in.
I don’t even think he would be even allowed to leave either, unless its for good.
kwlf wrote:
Surely any politician should be representing the population who has voted for them?
Indeed. I guess jujupilote was trying to argue that 1 MEP for 900.000 people was too distant from the population, but this is quite debatable. I don’t know of any “ideal” quota for voters per MP. Airborne_Again posted the figure for the US above, which is not much different from the EU. In Germany the figure is more like 100.000 per MdB, but at the cost of having one if the largest parliaments in the world…
