Croatia and Finland not rejecting EU shock

[nwhyte]

Cheerful news on the electoral front today. Croatia has voted by almost 2 to 1 - rather more strongly than opinion polls suggested - to join the European Union. (Official results are not out yet but my old friends at GONG have done their own calculations.) And the Finnish presidential election will be a runoff between the establishment Conservative

Comments

[redfiona99]

>> The English-speaking media may have generally adopted the narrative of imminent European collapse, but that doesn't make it true.<< I can at least understand why the English media have gone with that narrative, but I'm amazed that the US and Aussie ones have gone with it as well.

[nwhyte]

Given that Rupert Murdoch owns most of the English media, it's niot all that surprising.

(And, less cynically, the US and Australian media in general don't have a dog in this fight, and also don't have any good reason to doubt the English media, let alone to read more widely.)

I should have added in the original post that the Economist is a partial exception to my sweeping generalisation. Its take on the EU also tends towards the pessimistic but at least it is well informed.

[ext_1001342]

It is a known artifact of the Finnish absentee/polling day vote split that the rural areas vote significantly more absentee and urban areas more on the actual day. This is sort of understandable, as the absentee system often means avoiding a back and forth drive of several dozen kilometers on a Sunday to vote, whereas in a city I had to walk *gasp* almost 300 metres.

So we have come to expect the absentee and final results to differ in ways relating to the urban/rural split. If anyone ever was the sweetheart of the countryside, that's Väyrynen.

[nwhyte]

Thanks, I wasn't aware of any of that.

[pjc50]

Does that bring Croatia into the Eurozone as well, and if so on what terms?

[nwhyte]

Like all new EU member states Croatia has signed up to joining the euro eventually, but not immediately. Only the UK and Denmark have opted out of that obligation (Sweden has not, and is therefore in breach of its treaty commitments). Of the 12 new members which joined in the last eight years, four are already in the eurozone and the other eight are supposed to join when they can.