American reacts to The European Union - Summary on a Map

Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to The European Union - Summary on a Map

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[kinnie]

In Spain there is a saying: "Ignorant is not the one who does not know, but the person who does not want to know".

[Herzschreiber]

Ryan, you are not ignorant. Compared to lots of your country mates you are trying to get an overview over the world, the connections and the cultures. So I cannot call you ignorant. Maybe "unknowing" but not in the sense of being ignorant. You make an effort to understand the world outside the US and nobody can expect more!

[littleDutchie]

What they left out is 3 of the 6 original countries already had formed an alliance still DURING WW2, the BeNeLux. The three small countries in the north-West of Europe (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg) made a pact of free transport of goods in 1944. This was already the start of alliances in Europe

[lukaszepesi]

I heard that France also vetoed the UK's membership because they felt that the UK didn't really understand the spirit of the European community and the peace keeping aspect of it but were only interested in the trade. And this has been proven true in later years. We can see it in how British politicians talk about Europe and the EU.

[CumuloNimbus-UK]

I felt the tension in the room while you looked to see if the UK uses the euro 😂. UK has never used the euro, always been the pound / sterling. (jokey remark from me only, I wasn't being angry, good video!)

[Tim_OWL]

Although Switzerland, Norway and Iceland are not member states of the EU, they are still members of the Schengen treaty, so basically there is no boarder controls between all these countries (at least under normal circumstances)

[thefurbeastunderyourbed]

When I recently spent my holidays in Malta, I went to the reception one morning with a 5€ bill and asked the head lady in charge if she could change the bill into a whole set of Maltese coins (3, 86€) and the rest into whatever she had in stock.

Now I don't know if she was American or Canadian, but she definitely - to my utter surprise - had a North American accent. She looked at me twice in bewilderment, "Sir, you know you're still getting Euros, right?"

I said, "I know, i know, that's why I'm here. I'm a collector and it's awfully hard to get a full set of Maltese coins outside of Malta in the regular cycle. Malta is only a small country and they don't issue that much."

And then she looked more closely, "Oh, they all have different faces!". Then the great search began, even her colleague came to aid and they emptied every purse and wallet they had😅, very diligent. We actually managed to get together a halfway complete set, only the 5 and 10 Cents coins are missing.

But I'll never forget her face when she realized I was talking about the same currency. 😅

[queenofburggrafenamt]

European and 46 here. It's really great that you want to widen your knowledge about the rest of the world, especially as an American - given the average of interest for it by your fellow countrymen. We should all try our best to widen our horizons in general. But tbh what moved me the most was when you said "my parents were alive for this...". Well, I was as well for a big part of it. I clearly remember what an incredible feeling it was when they opened the borders and we could start circulating freely among all European countries [it really lift many local border tensions too: I come from an Italian region at the border with Austria and the Schengen treaty really took away much fuel from the ongoing fire between the local different ethnic communities]. The EU also financed inter-univesity programs like Erasmus, which allowed us students to study a year abroad like it was at our own university. It was an incredible feeling of opening up to a wider future. It really saddens me to see the nationalistic, eurosceptic, small-minded drift that has taken the EU these last years.

[wbcdlgs]

Just to clarify: the UK never adopted the Euro to begin with. They always used the pound. The EU is quite a beautiful clusterfuck of treaties and exemptions. GCPGrey has a very good and compact video explaining the difference between EU, Schengen, Eurozone, common economic area and associqted with the EU.

As European that was quite interesting to watch and see what can be thought of as common knowledge about Europe in the US.

[jasonlouis]

Your comment about how all these countries came together in spite of different languages is spot on (at 10.50 or so). Take it a step further. For two THOUSAND years, these people had spent more time fighting, killing, and exploiting each other than working together. France came out of WWII saying never again, and reached out to one of their biggest rivals. It's a testament to what cooperation can do.

Before Brexit, back in 2015 or 2014 the UK also blackmailed the EU into giving more extra perks or trigger the referendum for Brexit otherwise. The EU gave up and agreed to extra advantages for the UK and the UK still held the referendum. This says quite a lot about the quality of the British political class and how honourable it is...

[EtherealBlueRainbow]

The UK always was an opportunistic member of the EU, one foot out the door from the get go, with a million & 1 exemptions, wanting the benefits but not the costs.

[PanamaRedEyes]

For me as a French, it seems normal but when you take a step back, you realise it's quite mad how so many countries succeeded to get (almost) along. And the weird things that it implies, like i bought my car in Germany with money from an account i have in Lithuania and it normal to me.

[WaddleQwacker]

I think the video misses one of the points of why the European countries even started to union. It wasn't just for the sake of growing each other up, and "doing it for peace" is a vague statement. Sure, the European countries wanted to end the wars among them, but they also wanted to avoid becoming the war playground of the USA and USSR, and be able to keep their own sovereignty against the two superpowers. Which explains a lot of things like France vetoing the entry of UK, or the variations of acceptance of the Marshall plan or later NATO, challenging the American unilateral global leadership especially in early 2000s, the internal conflicts within the EU for individual sovereignty, ...
We need to remind ourselves that the Hollywood idea of Allies or any alliance being best friends fighting hand in hand against the bad guys and only wishing good things to each other simply does not exist. That makes compelling stories, maybe, but that's just not real (even human relationships aren't really like that to begin with, so national conflicts?). Looking at countries relationships like a high school musical only makes people see them in the wrong way. From the moment one sees History as a story with bad guys and good guys, and placing "that's that country's best friend right there" and "that one bit my feeding hand, what an ungrateful brat", you're not in History anymore. You're in romantic gossiping at best, or manipulative alienation at worst. I don't say this video does that, but people tend to default to that very easily and I see it all the time, especially when they are told a very one-sided story about History. See more international relationships as compromises games.

[nadineblachetta]

As a German this is what I am proud of for my people, after fighting two world wars we managed de reunite our country peacfully, without any shots fired. Ofo curse we are talking different generations, but still.

[biedl]

The thing with the Schengen area is really amazing. I remember as a child sitting in the car waiting in line to cross the boarder to Poland or Czechia (coming from Germany). But then in 2004 you could just go where ever you wanted, having just a bunch of signs on the road telling you, that you are leaving your country and entering the next.

Btw. the UK never used the Euro. And countries like the Czech Republic don't use the Euro either, for they aren't part of the Euro zone.

[flyingfeline]

It's interesting to hear Americans say they are 'going to Europe' on vacation when we Europeans don't consider ourselves to be culturally part of a 'United States of Europe', or one big block of united 'states', rather, a grouping of countries - all very unique and quite different.

[TheMercyBeat]

Since 2020 when the video in the background was made Croatia entered the Schengen Area and adopted the Euro as its currency. Moldova, Ukraine and Bosnia and Herzegovina got EU candidate statuses without starting EU accession talks as well.

[tepetti]

Interesting thing about Euro coins is that the other side is always identical but on the other side countries have different designs. My grandpa would always check the change if there were coins from other countries and he would save them.

[santividal]

20:38 Croatia has joined recently both Schengen and Eurozone. I'm from Spain so perhaps I misinterpreted this on the news, but I'm quite sure it happened around last winter.