> sure you're also staunchly against Scotland and any referendum to join the EU, and against Catalonia becoming independent as well?

Why? I think the first is a good idea and the second fine if that’s what they want.

Because those would be breaking up the unions of those countries. It's no different morally or philosophically from Switzerland leaving the EU.

Say what? Switzerland isn't in the EU, how can it leave?

It has treaties, but not membership. That doesn't make it "leaving" if they annul the treaties.

This was the OP:

> It wouldn’t be full Chexit. Just renegotiating and then rejecting the Schengen chapter. It would then be up to the EU to execute its Guillotine clause.

My terminology was matching what was used here.

This is pointlessly argumentative, but I'm just going to continue having a conversation using the terminology brought up by the OP and what I interpreted them to mean. It seems to be working just fine for us.

You are mistaken. I am pro-Scotland independence and EU admission but anti Catalonia independence. Simply because the former will expand and strengthen the EU and the latter will divide and weaken it, especially since it's supported by Russia.

…if Greenland voted to join the U.S., the conversation would be quite different.

I don't think it would be - you're focusing on the actions of the territory (for lack of a better term) and ignoring the parent organization.

It's a bit of a stretch to be upset at Switzerland who would be serving in a role similar to Scotland or Greenland here for voting to take an action and then being ok with it in other instances. There isn't any consistency in this position in how you are picking and choosing what sovereignty you respect and what sovereignty you don't respect. Well, you can be consistent if you are in favor of the EU as an imperial organization that seeks to enlarge itself and punish member states, but I'm not sure if that's your belief.

> you're focusing on the actions of the territory (for lack of a better term) and ignoring the parent organization

That’s how self determination works.

> bit of a stretch to be upset at Switzerland who would be serving in a role similar to Scotland or Greenland*

You’re muddling wildly different situations with wildly different levels of sympathy.

> That’s how self determination works.

Right, like when the UK left the EU.

> You’re muddling wildly different situations with wildly different levels of sympathy.

I'm not sure they're really that different at a high level. The population of Spain would vote against Catalonia leaving. The population of the UK would vote against Scotland leaving. How can these groups (Scotland and Catalonia) self-determine to leave?

> population of the UK would vote against Scotland leaving

The UK literally let Scotland vote on it [1]. On the other end of the spectrum, Greenland is a proposed military invasion and unilateral annexation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Independence_Referend...

The UK government let Scotland vote, it didn't allow the entire nation of the United Kingdom to vote on it. And they allowed it because they know it will fail and the smart thing to do if your aim is to keep the UK together (much to Russia's dismay of course) would be to let these referendums proceed when you know they don't have the votes and then they'll sort of fizzle out over time. You did support Brexit though, right? I mean they voted on it after all.

> Greenland is a proposed military invasion and unilateral annexation.

I don't think that is/was the only option on the table nor do I think it was a serious threat albeit it did have the intended effect which was to help scare the EU straight on spending a lot more on defense in Greenland.

But let's say the US pulls together some package deal for Greenland, say, hey everyone who lives in Greenland if they vote yes to join the United Stats they get a million dollars and American citizenship (it could be something else, just a random example) and if they do so of course Denmark and the EU would be against it, but why? It's morally no different than dangling EU membership and billions of Euros in eventual aid to Scotland if it were to leave the UK.

> UK government let Scotland vote, it didn't allow the entire nation of the United Kingdom to vote on it

The UK government represents the UK. Everything doesn’t need to be a referendum.

> they allowed it because they know it will fail

Irrelevant. They allowed it. If the EU agreed to Switzerland voting on Schengen per se, then it would be comparable.

> don't think that is/was the only option on the table

But it was on the table. That makes it distinct from the other examples.

Again, I think you’re muddying very different situations in a way that undermines your own arguments.

> The UK government represents the UK. Everything doesn’t need to be a referendum.

> Irrelevant. They allowed it.

Respectfully I just don't agree with your framing here. Another wrinkle could be Northern Ireland if we want to go into this further with the UK specifically.

> But it was on the table. That makes it distinct from the other examples.

It was on the table but it seems that it was on the table as a bargaining chip for a different aim which was to scare the EU straight on spending the money necessary to secure Greenland and these arctic routes. While I agree that the situation itself is distinct, that's true of basically all separatists movements, whether that's Scotland, Taiwan, or Catalonia.

Setting aside American "threats", we can look at tools the United States could use, similar to tools the EU can use with respect to Scotland, to achieve a popular vote in favor of secession that would be detrimental to the organizing entity (UK/Denmark). At what point is such a thing hostile, and at what point is it simply a population exercising what we consider to be a fundamental right? Is Spain being undemocratic by not even permitting Catalonia a vote on independence?

How do you feel about the separatists movement in Alberta? Would you fully support that as well if they decide on a referendum in Alberta to leave Canada? What about Quebec? Genuinely curious.

> How do you feel about the separatists movement in Alberta?

I’d say they have nothing to do with a Swiss immigration vote.

Directly, no, but it's very relevant to our discussion about secessionist movements that sprung up.

Don't you find it interesting? I would think you would support it, or do you not?

Strategically the government of Canada should do as the UK has done and permit the referendum precisely because it's very likely to fail and to not permit it gives secessionists ammo for further action and debate.

This is not pointlessly argumentative, this is just downright trolling.

Did you mean to reply here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48451674

>These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of attitudes

This is a strange framing that itself usually comes from a standpoint of moral superiority. When you sign agreements with a governing body, like the EU on freedom of movement, and you break that agreement then there's consequences. And I don't mean that in an underhanded agressive way, but just literally you've broken the terms you had negotiated.

The superiority complex really often seems to come from countries like Switzerland or the UK in the Brexit situation. Countries that already have often privileged deals and then decide to forfeit them, which they are allowed to do, it's not an attack on their sovereignty, the EU is not mainland China and Switzerland or the UK were not Taiwan, they're free to do what they want, they just can't have their cake and eat it too.

> This is a strange framing that itself usually comes from a standpoint of moral superiority. When you sign agreements with a governing body, like the EU on freedom of movement, and you break that agreement then there's consequences. And I don't mean that in an underhanded agressive way, but just literally you've broken the terms you had negotiated.

I don't think so. Even in the case where the Swiss or UK are breaking agreements or demanding changes to those agreements, it isn't something that's uncommon as countries and nations and companies and all sorts of entities break or renegotiate agreements or contracts all the time. In the case of Switzerland let's say they no longer feel the EU's freedom of movement policy works with the existing agreement because the EU has failed to protect its borders. You're painting a breaking of the agreement in the sense that nothing has changed in the agreement, but that may not be true and so breaking the agreement by the Swiss would have actually been because of a break in the agreement by the EU.

These interactions taking place and then now all of a sudden the Swiss are to be the recipient of some draconian action "we'll show them" is not really that strange given it's relatively straightforward to see how these two entities can reasonable come to a disagreement which may or may not resolve itself.

>it isn't something that's uncommon as countries and nations and companies and all sorts of entities break or renegotiate agreements or contracts all the time.

what the Swiss are trying to do here is very uncommon, in fact it's so uncommon literally nobody has ever done it before. No country in history has imposed a numerical population cap on its population, and in addition, freedom of movement isn't a detail. It's the very core of the Treaty of Rome and the Schengen agreement that Switzerland is part of. That Europeans can now move freely between countries is the bedrock achievement of virtually all its labored for.

And the EU is not going to do braconian measures, the EU does not bully its smaller neighbors. Britain wasn't intimated, threatened and nobody tried to interfere with it when they wanted to leave. THey decided to do so and did. Swizterland can cap its population and deny freedom of movement, nobody's going to bully them, but they're obviously not going to have the relationship they had with the EU.

To even rhetorically compare the EU to the US (which has threatened to annex an ally's territory) or China (which throws minorities into camps and threatens a democracy with force) is pretty damn absurd. Ask Taiwan if they want to trade places with Switzerland on the world map if they could.

> what the Swiss are trying to do here is very uncommon, in fact it's so uncommon literally nobody has ever done it before. No country in history has imposed a numerical population cap on its population, and in addition, freedom of movement isn't a detail. It's the very core of the Treaty of Rome and the Schengen agreement that Switzerland is part of. That Europeans can now move freely between countries is the bedrock achievement of virtually all its labored for.

I think you are putting this referendum on a pedestal it doesn't need to go on. All countries control population to some extent, whether that's in how they support parental leave or how they support mothers, or through immigration control, quotas, points systems, &c. Switzerland is just adding in another wrinkle. Plus all legislation was at one point new.

The EU didn't break any agreement.

> the Swiss are to be the recipient of some draconian action "we'll show them"

It's quite clear that the EU-Swiss agreements were negotiated as a whole and one side just can't suddenly pick parts of it that it will reject.

Sure it did. Spain just gave 500,000 "undocumented migrants" a residence permit. They can now freely move throughout the continent. That sort of act was never envisioned when the Swiss agreed to FoM with the EU, which for most of its history was used only by a tiny minority of people all of whom had a similar culture.

The EU/Swiss agreements don't have to be negotiated as a whole. The whole guillotine clause schtick exists only to try and transfer as much power to the EU Commission as possible. Nothing stops European countries being reasonable and looking for ways to work with each other on whatever areas they can agree; it's a deliberate ideological choice to refuse.

What EU-Switzerland agreement was broken by the EU by this action of Spain? And please do be exact which one and how. Otherwise stop telling lies.

> Nothing stops European countries being reasonable and looking for ways to work with each other on whatever areas they can agree; it's a deliberate ideological choice to refuse.

Yes, and it's the fine and reasonable ideology of protecting your own (in this case EU members') interests against the interests of other countries. Which is why neither the UK nor Switzerland nor other non-members can pick and choose. Makes them understandably unhappy of course, but so what? They are protecting their interests and we are protecting ours.

The treaties don't explicitly say "you may not grant residence en masse to city sized populations of illegal immigrants", because not doing that was considered so obvious it didn't need to be said at the time they were written. Such treaties don't cover a lot of possible but unlikely eventualities, which is why it's bad and wrong to make treat renegotiation artificially difficult.

> it's the fine and reasonable ideology of protecting your own (in this case EU members') interests

It doesn't protect their interests. That's the whole point. If it were about protecting the interests of European countries they could negotiate their each interest individually and independently with each other. The EU construct is deliberately designed to ignore the interests of any specific member state in favour of the interest of a new entity, the European Union, which has an entirely separate set of interests that don't correspond to the interests of the people living in it.

> Which is why neither the UK nor Switzerland nor other non-members can pick and choose

They actually can pick and choose and both have done so successfully. Hence why the EU/Swiss relations aren't governed by membership and why the EU has agreed to work with the UK on various interests without requiring membership (despite denying they'd ever do this at the time).

So no treaty was broken? Why did you write "Sure it did" when you know it wasn't?

> They actually can pick and choose and both have done so successfully.

They didn't. What happened was that some parts of some treaty were renegotiated or amended and agreed by both parties. Which is quite common in any such relationship.

You can use that definition of breaking a treaty if you like. But it's not a good idea. It sends the world a message that negotiating with European countries is dangerous because to avoid getting screwed you'd have to write down all known common sense and social conventions in the text of the treaty, and probably include the contents of a specific dictionary as well, and even then they might just do something crazy you never predicted whilst claiming the agreement was being respected.

Note: this argument was actually used by the pro-Leave faction in the UK. They explicitly argued that any deal Cameron reached with the other EU member states would be worthless because European countries can't be trusted to honor their agreements when it becomes ideologically inconvenient. And that argument landed, which is why Cameron returned with a vaguely worded emergency break deal and then never mentioned it again - nobody took it seriously, and he was forced to campaign on the state of the union as it was, and lost. So these tactics do have a cost.

Treaty law just doesn't work with 'common sense and social conventions' any more than compilers that won't compile your 'common sense and social conventions' text. You have to say exactly what you want, nothing more, nothing less. That's the work of lawyers and negotiators. As my lawyer friends say, well-written agreements make good friends (and vice versa).

But also note that you are the only one against Spain creating a path for a group of people that live there to gain legal status. No one mentioned that as a specific issue worth raising at international level. It's a non-issue.

> But also note that you are the only one against Spain creating a path for a group of people that live there to gain legal status.

Nah I have an issue with it too, conceptually. You're basically rewarding bad actors for breaking rules and laws which is unfair to those who were and are trying to immigrate legally. At a minimum.

Immigration isn't a moral good, it's just a switch we can flip on or off. Too few people? A given society can have more permissive rules. Too many people? Have more restrictive rules. Being an immigrant is just a random status one has by virtue of moving to another country - it's just paperwork.

I'm probably missing something but your last sentence doesn't seem to agree with the rest of the post. If it's just paperwork then surely nothing bad happens not following it (mostly because it's just not possible to immigrate lawfully to most countries in this age).

Note that I'm not defending unlawful immigrants; but once you spend a large amount of life in a country and you did nothing bad I don't see any issue with said country allowing you to stay. It's just acknowledging the status quo. Of course having a safe legal path to residency is obviously much better but too many politicians today as well as in the past are incentivised to disallow that.

> If it's just paperwork then surely nothing bad happens not following it

Well not filling out the paperwork means you'd be in the country without authorization which you know just subjects you to being deported or fined or to face other penalties depending on the laws and regulations of that country. So to your point, nothing really "bad" per-se happens by not following it. You just might be deported or fined and then you have to just accept that reality.

> Note that I'm not defending unlawful immigrants; but once you spend a large amount of life in a country and you did nothing bad I don't see any issue with said country allowing you to stay.

Sure, but conversely if that country decides you're not allowed to stay there's nothing wrong with that. Just being in a country for a long time doesn't retroactively grant you citizenship or anything. Though some countries may from time to time decide that it does, which I find unfortunate especially for those who are pursuing the proper methods. We shouldn't encourage breaking of rules or laws in our societies as a default.

> Of course having a safe legal path to residency

Well in the US at least we do have a safe and legal path to residency. Most other countries around the world are far, far more strict on these requirements.

FoM == freedom of movement

Those "guillotine clauses" mostly exist because member states didn't want to cede their sovereignty to the EU. If a treaty covers areas where member states have shared or full responsibility, it must be ratified unanimously by every member state. (Which in some case requires ratification by regional parliaments.) Any changes to such treaties must also be ratified, which means there will be 30+ parties negotiating and trying to win new concessions.

It's the opposite of what you think, if some countries get privileges without following the basic principles, then the EU would be unpopular.

> These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of attitudes and suggestions are precisely why so many folks have come to be anti-EU.

This would be a hilariously dumb reason to be anti-EU when the other major Western power, the US, has had a much bigger "we'll show them", strongarm attitude for much longer.