Smári McCarthyFeb 26, 2025
Alright, let's be clear here. Contrary to what Trump just said:
- 🇪🇺 The European Union was NOT founded to "screw with" the United States. It was founded to strengthen European countries through cooperation.
- 🚙 The EU does NOT reject American cars in general, just ones that fail to meet EU safety requirements.
- 🐔 The EU does NOT reject American agricultural products in general, just ones that fail to meet EU safety requirements.
... if you're seeing a theme, good.
The EU is not about the US.
Show threadEleanor SaittaFeb 27, 2025
@smari
To be clear, the EU was created to prevent land wars among its members. Anything else is gravy.
Show threadSmári McCarthyFeb 27, 2025
@dymaxion that's somewhat but not entirely true though. EU started as a industrial harmonization project - coal and steel, in particular. It's the Council of Europe that's explicitly intended to stop wars. The EU has slowly been taking over the peace role from CoE, and there was certainly that line of thinking among the "founding fathers", but it is only very loosely the original goal.
Show threadNils Fleischhacker
@smari @dymaxion Those two industries weren't chosen randomly. The whole point was that a coal and steel industry with strong interdependence between the countries was thought to make waging wars between them borderline impossible.
Feb 27, 2025 at 5:35pmWeb