If a resource is so scarce that its real value is higher than the official one, the producer will have to either increase production, or accept that black markets will appear.
you don't really need "AI". There are plenty of solid tools already available for archeology, typically what is lacking is the images to run them on. That's why they are still discovering entire "lost cities" - because someone takes good quality pictures for one reason or another, archeologists then feed them into their tools, and voilà...
Ukrainian membership will hopefully never happen (unless Ukraine actually shapes up into a modern country first). Without the war the process would never have gone as far as it has already.
What makes you think that the reforms that have been going on since the war began aren't evolving Ukraine into a "modern" country similar to Romania, or Bulgaria, or Slovakia, or any of the post-Soviet members?
Not OP, but I think there's a valid argument about how "modern" those countries are. It's generally accepted that Romania and Bulgaria were let into the EU somewhat early, mainly for geopolitical reasons (foreclosing Russian influence there, cutting off Russia from the West Balkans). They are countries that continually lie on the tail end of every EU statistic, and have relatively unstable domestic politics and rule of law.
Personally, I'd like to see Ukraine in the EU asap, but I'd also like the EU reformed into a democratic federation, such that the equivalent of the FBI has meaningful authority to investigate and prosecute corruption and rule of law irregularities in member states like Ukraine and Bulgaria.
Entirely agree on what you would like to see. My point is that Ukraine is no worse than any of those nations, so admitting them to the EU is hardly going to affect the EU in any bad way.
Integration would be difficult on the agricultural front, but is something that the EU has been dealing with since inception.
One of the "benefits" of the war and the Ukrainian diaspora throughout Europe is that they will be able to integrate much faster than the previous Balkan and Balkan-adjaent countries as integration into Schengen would be able to be rapid.
Ukraine's engineering, mining, and agricultural industries would bring major advantages to the EU as a Union, diversifying engineering from dependence on Germany, and bringing broadscale agricultural efficiencies to the EU as well.
> integration into Schengen would be able to be rapid.
If there is one thing that Western EU countries have learned over the last 30 years, is that borders should be opened very slowly. With the current "black wave" sweeping the continent, there is no chance in hell that Ukraine will be admitted to Schengen in less than 10-15 years - if at all.
I'm not trying to rain on your parade, I'm just being realistic. Ukraine has all the problems of countries that were admitted to the EU too quickly, plus all the problems coming from scale and an agrarian economy. Just waving it in the EU would be a repetition of all the major missteps of the last 30 years.
> there is no chance in hell that Ukraine will be admitted to Schengen in less than 10-15 years - if at all.
The main concerns about new states joining Schengen are usually that (a) there may be too many immigrants from the new member to the old members, and (b) that the external Schengen boundaries will be insufficiently protected by the new member state.
Neither problem applies to Ukraine - Ukrainians have had essentially free migration access to the Schengen since 2022, and Ukraine's borders with third-party states would be - by far - the best defended. Ukraine could join Schengen very easily (unlike the EU itself, which may indeed take years). I wouldn't be surprised if Ukraine becomes part of Schengen well before it joins the EU, á la Iceland.
Hopefully this war will be over very soon, and soon after there will be a boom of children born in Ukraine, as happens after wars.
They'll have all sorts of issues, but has there ever been a nation that has been so unanimous about wanting to join?
I think NATO membership is more likely to occur before EU membership, Ukraine won't accept anything less for their future protection, having fought the Russians to a standstill.
EU integration is more about the economics first. For example, Ukraine just cut off traffic of Russian oil/gas across its territory. That was a source of income for Ukraine that will have to be compensated after the war. Perhaps via damages paid by seized Russian assets.
What I hope that both of these perhaps decade long paths start in 2025.
It would make a good celebration in 2035 if both of those things have happened.
Vero powers don't exist anymore on almost anything; but if you're vehemently opposed to something you have no chance to actually stop, it's better to be inside so you can trade your nominal opposition for something, anything.
If you know you're going to lose 10 no matter what, you might as well trade your opposition for something worth 2 or 3, so you lose less.
Vetoes are limited to very specific areas, and are often bypassed already even in those areas (because most practical decisions are actually not taken by the organisms where vetoes exist). Even the Hungarian government, which has stretched the interpretation of such definitions to the most awkward limit over the last decades, in practice falls in line pretty much all the time, using it as a bargain chip to ensure this or that subsidy keeps flowing. It's a desperate strategy anyway: like the Visegrad bloc's actions effectively prompted reforms to reduce their leverage, so will Hungary bring about new ways to further diminish even the current simulacra of veto.
The Qualified Majority Vote has been being used in increasing scope of policy areas for many years.
QMV was part of stuff from the 1986 SEA, and got a major boost in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, since it was recognised as practically being necessary to make any progress towards (and within) the Single Market.
Yes, not much progress since - apart from Russia, China and the USA increasing pressure... I suppose they support our federalist project and try to motivate us !
The requirement for unanimous voting has not existed for more than a decade. It was removed in response to the tactical shenanigans of Visegrad countries.
In practice most decisions are still technically unanimous, because it looks better politically and it doesn't cost anything more (since a majority can simply pass whatever they want, they are not forced to concede anything to the obstructionists; with the newer rules, it's smarter for any isolated bloc to immediately trade any publicly-stated opposition for any minor favour they can get).
This is the reason why Orban, despite all his bombast, has no influence whatsoever on the actual decisions; but also why German resistance against overdue fiscal reforms has basically melted.
The problem is the definition of success. Yes, the sector grew and employees made more; but franchisees felt some pain. In fact, I'm sure someone will argue that they had to expand precisely to try and recoup the profit lost to lower margins.
For capital owners, no redistributive policy can ever be a success, by definition.
Why can't UW increase the number of classes?
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