Slovenia too. "If it's good for the USA/Germany/Italy/Austria then surly it has to be good for us too." that's how our politicians operate here :\

Finland. Whatever is penned down in Brussels is followed to the letter. Before EU, the prevailing thought was that anything that worked for the Swedes would work for us as well.

Slovenian ambassador in Japan, who signed it, was also sorry afterwards. When protests took place last Saturday, she asked people to be there on her behalf too.

Could be worse - if something works anywhere, the United States won't do it. Health care? How can we afford to keep everybody healthy when we have to fight bioterrorism?

Ireland. With hints of either half baked copies of UK law, or just implementing EU law

To give (an utterly ridiculous) example, the irish government copied a model of university funding from the UK. Now there is one major difference between the two systems. In the UK, the government controls the number of university places, while in Ireland, the universities do. The department of education rammed through this new funding system that divided up money based on the number of students per discipline (arts, science, medicine, business all having different modifiers). Now, this system worked in the UK as the universities couldn't increase their places themselves, but caused a lot of problems in Ireland.

Trinity College had a strategic goal to stay the same size as they were for undergrads, and increase postgraduate intake. When this funding model was introduced, they then had to increase UG numbers or lose loads of money (as the amount allocated was fixed, and other universities were expanding).

I think its a more general problem though, politicians are hesitant to try anything new as they can be blamed, which leads them to copy solutions that appear to be used elsewhere, as they can then blame the other country.

And the proposed post code system (which they occasionally talk about introducing) was going to just be a copy of the UK system instead of learning from the mistakes.

Czech republic sometimes does things its own way and it's even worse...

Staying out of the Euro (for now) hasn't been so bad. They're on track to be admitted eventually, but their euro-skeptic government probably slows that down...

well, that's debatable. It annoys normal folks (who have to exchange money when going abroad) and businesses (who have to hedge against exchange rate changes). And in the end when shit goes down in Hungary it takes CZK down too.

The upside is they can devalue their currency to address trade balance and solvency issues. Something Ireland, Greece, and Spain can't do. It beats the pants off trying to lower wages.

Sure. Devaluation is a whole lot of pain and a political suicide, though

The value of currencies goes up and down according to much more than political whims. It's also good for exports, which the Czech Rep is strong in.

Agreed.

> For the majority of European countries? Can you give some examples?

You seem to think otherwise.

Name five countries where the current political leaders can do a better job running your life than you can. In how many cases could all of their predecessors over the past 50 years have done a better job than you?

There are lots of countries and lots of political leaders over time, and I've yet to find more than a small minority who I'd trust to walk my dog, let alone run my life. (And yes, the same applies to other types of leaders, but that's not particularly relevant because reducing the powers of political leaders doesn't give other leaders power. Ford can't make me buy.)

I see many European countries mentioned from East to West, from North to South. So if everyone points to the others, who's the mastermind? Maybe it's just the effect of the EU?

Maybe agreements like ACTA aren't just the result of copyright lobbying, but also groupthink?

Croatia also. Bunch of dimwits.

Denmark, Germany, France

Poland, certainly.

Netherlands

Greece.