Why does the EU work as it does?

One Massive Point about the EU which tends to get lost is that it is all about the biggest member states giving exaggerated and unceasing reassurance to the smaller ones. This explains why the voting weights as per the current Nice Treaty work hugely to the disadvantage of Germany in particular, with the UK/France/Italy Spain also doing fairly badly.

The effect of this is that the Bigs can not overpower the Not So Bigs and Smalls, even though the Bigs pay more heavily into the common Budget and have far more actual people.

Strip out all the obvious explanations for how this came about and there is something deeper going on: a strategic deal based upon the relative stability of national population weights as between the various member states.

Because the respective population weights of the various member states vary at a slowish and predictable pace, those states can sign up to these ‘discriminatory’ voting weight arrangements safe at least in the knowledge that they know what to expect for some time to come – they can not be caught out by abrupt demographic jumps, and accompanying demands for the rules to be rewritten.

That said, changes do accumulate up. And down.

Try to imagine an EU in which the UK was the largest country and Germany third after France. That could happen comfortably within the lifetime of children at school now.

Still, fifty years is quite a long time in immediate policy terms. Twenty years is only some 1040 weeks – not such a long time. 

What if a community in a divided multi-ethnic society thought that the numbers were working very fast in its favour? That within a mere 1000 weeks or so it could have a predominant demographic position, and so be able to change the constitution to rewrite the country’s rules completely in favour of an effective mono-ethnic outcome on its own terms?

Would not this stunning historical prize dominate that community’s political thinking, and be more attractive than doing all that boring work needed to join the EU?

Welcome to Bosnia, via this remarkable must-read analysis.