Hi Sandcastle/
I found your reply very interesting.
Whilst I have views about the EU, (Mostly too many “functionaires”),
I am hoping to be retired shortly, & would welcome some reading recommendations from you please?
Well I do not know where you want to start from, but have you ever read the EU’s website that explains what it is all about?
It is odd that I so often find myself defending the EU because in fact I see many faults with it, but for me what is important is that it exists, it muddles along in the generally the right direction and I think that it genuinely has made life better for a lot of people. i feel sometimes that if people focused more on what the EU does, rather than what it is, they might feel differently about it.
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The term “fonctionnaire” covers teachers, nurses, firemen and policemen (I believe), as well as those administering systems.
Do you think there are too many fonctionnaires because
i. not all of them do worthwhile work (which would probably be based on some sort of research), or
ii. because some do work which you don’t think is necessary?
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Precisely, because until you have a clear picture of what the EU does, ie what those fonctionnaires do, how can you assess how many are needed to do those things? It is true that there are a lot of fonctionnaires working for the EU. However it is also true that there are a lot of nurses working for the French health service, but that is not the same as saying there are too many. There are not enough, we need more.
I’m a fonctionnaire. Like all the other fonctionnaires whichever category or branch they are in, naturally I spend my time loafing and jetting off to sunny climes for multiple annual holidays when I’m not demonstrating, flagwaving and burning things in the streets. That’s what we all do, all the time, obviously.
And counting our enormous stacks of free money dished out by the state. I cannot imagine why everyone isn’t a fonctionnaire, honestly, they must be a bit silly seeing it’s such a cushy number and we serve no purpose.
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Class 
How would things fonctionnent sans fonctionnaires ?
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So you hone your sarcasm skills in your spare time?
Chapeau!
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Hardly equatable to the USSR, which was a centralized power governed by a single political party, and which held sway over every aspect of every person’s life within that union.
In a pluripolitical context, the EU is a long, long way from anything resembling the USSR. It is a union of sovereign nations that have agreed to accept a modicum of relinquishing of sovereign control in return for the perception of the old adage “l’union fait la force”. To a certain extent, this has actually worked pretty well, given the mistrust that was naturally endemic after the end of WWII, and certainly in today’s geopolitical environment, the fact that countries neighbouring the current union would like to join, and those that are already in mainly want to stay in, is an indication that the system has achieved that goal.
I see many liberals, or ultraliberals from North America, and other anglo-saxon nations, consider the EU to be either a USSR-like socialist clone, or a proto-fascist imperialist empire. I’m always amazed at how it could be both at the same time.
The reality is that compromise features heavily in the building and development of the European Union. This means that nothing is perfect, and calling upon another proverb of “perfection is the enemy of the good”, perhaps this is no bad thing in the end.
As for becoming like the USA, there are certainly parallels to the extent that the effects of global finance, capital markets, and lobbying, pervade the thought processes and policy-making spheres of the EU commission, but this is only one instance of the decision making apparatus. Fortunately, the EU parliament and the EU Court of Justice also count in the balance and distribution of power, as does the participation of the member states themselves.
People are still, on the whole, very attached to being able to vote for the national party of the politics they espouse the most (or detest the least), and I can’t see that changing in the next 10 years or so, despite the similarities in party political leanings that are present in each country. That is also part of the charm of the system (personally, I find it occasionally immensely frustrating that we are still hanging onto those notions of individualist sovereignty, but perhaps that is only way the system will ever be able to function). I’m still in two minds as to whether a Commission, and the way it functions today as the developer and proposer of legislation, would still be necessary if there was but a single, fully integrated European Union parliament with 2 houses. Of course, the issue of sufficient representation would need to be addressed, if only because even with the current system, many people feel disenfranchised about the decisions taken by the EU. Having a single suprastructure parliament be accepted by the whole of the voting populations of the various member states would take more than a fair deal of persuasion and political will to achieve.
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This 
I was a “fontionnaire.” Thanks for all the yachts, sports cars and speed boats.
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