UKIP

[Thibault]

Esactly, Powerdesal, lots of people voted for the EEC not a United States of Europe. Economic and trading cooperation makes a lot of sense in today's global market.  I am not so sure that political integration is such a good idea.  If the auditors are unwilling to sign off the EU budget for the last umpteen years, what does that say about the 'political system' at the heart of Europe?

[powerdesal]

I have neither the time nor the language skills to trawl through the press of Europe, but it would no doubt be interesting to find out how the ''common man / woman'' in other European countries feel about the EU in it's current form and in it's projected form.

[idun]

My french friends would happily taquine me about les anglais being bad europeans, but would moan like mad at new laws from europe and the way things were going.

So I reckon that they like the idea but not the practice.

Also when we first got to France, the general feeling amoungst the ex pats, because I did meet some when I first arrived.. was that basically the french were still a bit afraid of the germans, and would defer to them and try not to upset them, something we found years later on holiday in France. That the french would mock the belgians, and that they would love to mock the swiss, but daren't as they were too rich. Generalisations, bien sur, they are. But generalisations often have more than a smattering of truth in them.