About Unions

When a union takes place, for example a marriage or a merger, both parts obtain access to the resources of the other, but they are accountable for its obligations as well.

In the very special case of the EU, however, they attempt to make a political union (since there is a government) with the aim to manage more efficiently the union's resources and that's it. There is not such thing as union as far as obligations are concerned.

I am not specialized in such issues and maybe I am wrong, but in my mind it seems that either we should move on an absolute union with a single strong government or we should keep just the structure of a free trade union. The existing situation lies somewhere in the middle and it just creates counter-productive disputes.

My position is that we should move on, since so many structures are already made. What we should fix right now is the cultural issue. A union will never be realised as long as we have different values from our partners. There is the "north" and the "south" culture.

Indeed, using Hofstede's dimensions on culture, one can see the difference. I chose five northern and five southern countries and I estimated the averages on each dimension. Then I sorted the scores of the ten countries from largest to smallest for each dimension separately and draw a line to separate countries above and below the average.

In power distance dimension (PDI) they are perfectly seperated in southern and northern.

In individualism vs collectivism dimension (IDV), below the average there are only southern countries again. (Although France and Italy score high in individualism).

In masculinity vs femininity (MAS) dimension, southern countries score much higher, with the exception of Germany.

In the uncertainty avoidance dimension (UAI), there is a clear separation again into southern and northern countries.

In the long term vs short term orientation index (LTO), there is a mixed result. In this dimension there is no score available for Greece.

According to these simple observations, it is implied that we should work towards an alignment in PDI, UAI and MAS dimensions in general, while Greece and Portugal should raise their individualism score.

Is this feasible? We are talking about a huge change which needs certainly more than one generation in time to take place. Has this ever happened before in such a large scale? Of course not, but we also have to take into consideration that cultural changes are easier to happen mostly due to the web.

And this situation leads to another question raised in Hofstede's website.

"Will there be one big world culture in 50 years from now?"

I am not sure.