https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-leader-approve-defense-mi...
"EU leaders approve updated military plan. The strategy envisions the creation of an EU rapid deployment force of up to 5,000 soldiers."
However the EU doesn't need a physical army to stop a country leaving. It just needs sufficiently good control of local politics and law enforcement via loyalists in the countries establishment, which it has already. The EU has already proven it can replace governments in Italy and Greece against the will of the electorate, simply via "soft power" mechanisms like access to ECB liquidity, ECJ judgements and control over local institutions.
In other words an inability to leave the EU doesn't look like an army crushing a well organized political opposition. It looks like that opposition being blacklisted from the press, being spied on by the EU secret police, found guilty of vague laws like "misinformation" with judgements upheld by the European courts, votes being tampered with or outright ignored and more.
This is no theoretical problem. Anti-EU referendums in European countries are frequently ignored, even when in theory they are constitutionally binding. In the UK the Electoral Commission, the supposedly neutral body that runs the election and referendum process itself, was run by EU loyalists who professed in public that they wanted Leave to lose and spent significant amounts of time prosecuting Leave campaigners (fortunately their cases were ruled harassment and tossed out by the courts).
The EU Commission also had a long track record of classifying true reports about their activities in the British press as "myths". These days they'd call it misinformation and try to prosecute the journalists in question.
Ultimately it doesn't matter if a majority of the population want to leave, or reject a new EU proposal, if the people who rule them don't care about democracy and control the levers of power. That's how all dictatorships work.
Yeah, that's why the UK didn't leave in the end right? lol. Does "Non-biding referendum" rings a bell?
> long track record of classifying true reports about their activities in the British press as "myths".
Ah yes the trustworthy British press saying German kids can't write to Santa because of GDPR. Yes
Yes, keep talking, I like to make a collection of anti-EU talking points (from Peter Thiel's think tank most likely).
For all the criticism the EU deserves, it's very telling when the narrative turns into manipulation
UK was the first where it wasn't ignored. After the vote I remember being told several times by Europeans they didn't really believe it'd ever be implemented, exactly due to the track record of European countries in ignoring referendums that didn't go the EU's way.
Even then it was a very close run thing. The Remainers in Parliament were willing to create a constitutional crisis to try and get the referendum overturned a.k.a. the "People's Vote", and were holding the government hostage to get that. It was only a a lucky break (the Lib Dem leader going full delusional) that allowed Johnson to break the deadlock, go the country and allow the electorate to purge the Remainer MPs who had lied to their voters about their true position. But make no mistake, that was the worst constitutional crisis the UK experienced in living memory.
>> Ah yes the trustworthy British press saying German kids can't write to Santa because of GDPR
That story came from the German press and was correct:
https://www.welt.de/kmpkt/article183978370/Weihnachtsmarkt-i...
You see how easily you're manipulated by the EU? They've convinced you and others that if the press criticizes the EU the press must be lying. But it's almost never the case.
The EU has taken down their myths site now. It was trash. Not only totally focused on the British press, but I remember quite clearly flicking through them back when the site was live and noticing that all of them were admitted to be true, with the "debunking" (such as it was) being always along the lines of, "this is true but it's justified" or "we prefer an alternative interpretation", or "we don't phrase it like that".
