Can you name examples of EU initiatives on that level that delivered the desired results?
EDIT: I am asking because I seriously want to know. I haven’t made up my mind yet what to think about the whole thing. I am not familiar with successful EU initiatives. I’m open in believing this can work if there were successful examples in the past.
> I am not familiar with successful EU initiative.
The EU Cohesion Fund is one. Since 2007, ~133 billion € got invested in the poorer countries of the EU to improve trans-european traffic infrastructure (TEN, aka road, rail, waterways) and environmental projects (e.g. villages hooked up to proper sewage pipes with treatment plants at the end, instead of dumping sewage to the groundwater / into rivers and seas).
Even if that’s true (which I wouldn’t know), I don’t see how that can be sufficient to declare a project that aims to improve things a failure.
Let’s assume that project was for the poorest 10% of the EU. That would be 44 million people. €133 billion divided by 44 million is about €3000 per inhabitant.
I don’t think one can expect such an amount to bring roads, rails, bridges, and sewage treatment systems up to standards of the richest parts of the EU.
I don’t know how much the EU spent, but over here EU money payed for a frankly crazy amount of fiber optic cable. Completely common for a house far from any urban centre to have fiber internet.
That is the intentional result of Helmut Kohl's government many decades ago. Kohl wanted cable TV instead of fibre... because cable TV could be used to broadcast programs that were not "left mainstream". Wish I was joking, private TV stations in Germany are a thing only because the state TV was too left (in reality: not right-wing enough) for the freshly appointed Conservative chancellor.
I've visited several small towns in Romania, and all plumbing was in good order. It's not like a country stuck in 15th century. Are you talking about 'villages' of like 5 people?
In Croatia, they did, just saw a big sign in the hood when I went there for a funeral in the summer (which is what actually inspired me to write this comment).
EU funds for improving infrastructure is the only money that actually is not mostly money down the drain. Unfortunately programmes that don’t have such concrete outcomes (like this one) are entirely different.
I think the Erasmus initiative is an outstanding EU programme, which helped collaboration between EU universities and to build a EU identity for young educated students. It's not an economic initiative per se, and it's hard to measure its effective results objectively, but I believe it's been an absolute net positive for the EU.
Airbus is the obvious one; successfully broke a foreign near-monopoly. TSMC would be playing the role of Boeing, here.
I'm not sure if this will work, but I do think that something needs to be done by _someone_, even if not Europe. TSMC having a global near-monopoly on high-end fab is obviously not long-term viable. That's a bad situation for _everyone_.
You mean that resource wasting shop, that is sending huge airplane parts all across Europe for political reasons? I don’t even want to start about the subsidies considered illegal by the wto...
Isn’t that the kind of outcome you would expect from such a monopoly (/duopoly)? Even if a company could be more efficient it would not make sense for them to try to compete
EDIT: I am asking because I seriously want to know. I haven’t made up my mind yet what to think about the whole thing. I am not familiar with successful EU initiatives. I’m open in believing this can work if there were successful examples in the past.