Many countries (notably Norway, fiercely opposed to the EU a short time ago) asked to join the EU very recently because of Russia's invasion of Donbas (Ukraine).

Only the European Union can guarantee them adequate security in the face of Russia's actions.

When you live here you don't realise how complicated it is 😲

The USA is very similar to the concept of the EURO zone as it its a union of territories/states that are self govern under a constitution that permits each of them to benefit of free travel and free economy between all it's members. Prior to the constitution there was the confederation set by the British that had the option of opting out of this union but the "founding" fathers made that option illegal under the new contract (constitution). Take Texas as the perfect example; as they joined, they made sure to get a verbal assurance that if they wanted to leave they could. Whereas the EURO zone anyone can leave if they want (BREXIT)

The ban women region in greece is there because of religion you see again and again what believe is doing great to mankind. One day we will get rid of the last orthodox monk and then women are free to settle in these in the name of god occupied region.

schengen area is my fave deal of the european union bc like when i was a kid wed go to italy every summer on holiday and didnt need to worry about any of the visa/passport stuff

The bit of Greece where "its legal to ban women" is Mount Athos, its completely covered in eastern orthodox monasteries and since its just celibate monks living there women have been banned for more than 1000 years.

The funny border across the street was in this town in the Netherlands and Belgium! 😱🤯🤪👌🏼✌🏼
Qriosity
Scrambled Borders of Baarle
https://youtu.be/FC52l4Jdn-I

I would like to suggest that you react to the world's oldest and most dangerous motor bike race in the world

its like the tax system of food etc in the US, impossible to keep track from all the different types of taxes of wich state, region of state, street etc

Uk is not member of EU since 2020
Lithuania use €

The UK left years ago, that's what BREXIT was…

The last new member was 2013 Croatia. Britain voted to leave in 2016 and there's rumbling in several others of the 27 remaining countries. Poland is being hammered by fines equating to almost a million Euros a day and they've been denied the billion Euro benefit package ALL the members are getting because of COVID – except Poland because they won't comply with demands to restructure their legal system, you can image their assessment of the EU. Hungary has had issues with them and one year into their 7 year budget (that they struggled to get past) they've lost €10 billion AGAIN!

Here's something you don't know, EVERY EU treaty exempts the officials and executives of the EU from ANY external legal processes, including investigation. It's a Mafia of enormous proportions that is technically exempt from external legal jurisdiction. With a view and ambition to becoming a world government. Why do you think the USA withdrew from trying to compete in manufacturing, industry or services in the EU, they're a bureaucracy that really puts new meaning the word. It isn't just one organisation the European commission has all the power and it's appointed not elected, the European parliament is a show to make thing look democratic and the European council is a collection of each nations representatives. There are literally dozens of presidents, and no real control over the entire organisations.

The Euro is the noose around their neck, all new members MUST adopt it – although there hasn't been any since 2013, the reason being control the currency you control the government. Currency 19 of the 27 remaining members use the Euro. I don't see any country that's not in dire financial distress eager to join. Once in you can't get out. Which mean once you hand over financial control you can't get out of the European Union either!

The membership dues are paid directly by each countrys govt. so it is not a separate tax levied on people or businesses. But in the end it is tax money.

The island ban in women is a monks island, there are several monasteries on it if a remember, and women are not allowed in orthodox monasteries, I believe.

about the place that bans women, as others said already it is located in greece, and it is a mountain with monasteries and all that.
but the other two replies i saw were like "oh they only ban women because they want to devote to praying"

1. it's church they hate women by default

if all these monks wanted was to devote to praying,
2. they would ban any outsiders, but many men with money go there, also men of power(politicians, country leaders etc).
3. they wouldn't try to claim land outside of their damn mountain based on some crap papers they had from 400 years ago or some bs like that (huge scandal about 15 years ago)
4. they wouldn't every now and again spawn hate towards minorities
5. they wouldn't spawn every conspiracy under the sun and spread it

to be a monk in that mountain you need to give everything you own to the monastery (money, land, houses, etc)

so yeah it's not as innocent as the other comments made it look.

To break any illusions,EU was created by the economic elite and the industrialists in order to enlarge their customer base.
The free movement principle is kmportant bcs this way they can move around specialized labor easily from between countries.(and diminishing the hopes of these poorer countries to evolve since all the human capital is taken away. In most cases the tax payers of the poor countries pay for the education of their kids ,only to then watch them emigrate(for good reason, i m not blaming them).
In all,EU was too good of an idea to be true…
Today,lots of Europeans question this union.
The European Parliament is now similar to the US congress as fas as corruption,revolving doors and serving the interests of big corporations

Plenty of migration issues around the EU border as well, at least as bad as with the US I'd reckon. There's a lot of reasons for that ofc., but that's a giant basket of hot potatoes to go through, esp. considering it's online and trolls/racists burping all over 😀
EU could do better, imo. Overall EU has been very good for it's people, but not fully the shinning star of the planet it could(/should) be. fx considering generational wealth/poverty on a continent to continent basis. But if there's one thing most Europeans understand due to the continents history, it's "progress takes time", sometimes a very, very long time, but we usually get there. EU is a sign of that, imo. Here's to hoping anyways 😉

I still witnessed as a child when the borders were still everywhere and there was still a lot of control in the 1970s. I live not far from the Dutch border, where today the municipalities share the fire brigade and ambulances.many farmers share their machines and basically it is hardly interesting where the border really is. with us it is quite normal to shop Dutch or sit in coffees or visit cultural events , turned upside down, of course. and that's what I love about europe today. greetings from westphalia (germany)

UK is no EU member anymore.

There are about 740 million people in Europe of which 450 million are in the E.U. By comparison there are 330 million people in the U.S.

Since this video the U.K. has left the E.U.

1:10 Here the video shows its age – the UK is no longer a member of the EU. They hold a referendum in 2016 and decided to leave. If you want to know more about this massive act of self harm just search for the term Brexit and you'll find countless videos to watch. What is important to know is that the Leave campaign lied about the consequences of leaving, promising the voters that nothing would change and there would only be sunny uplands and unicorns while almost all experts warned them that this was a huge mistake.

And who would have thought but the experts where right and the Brexiteers where wrong which is the main reason why the UK economy is in serious trouble right now and millions of UK citizens have fallen below the poverty line.

UK citizens also lost their Freedom of Movement rights to easily travel or work in EU countries – another consequence the Brexiteers lied about. The UK is now a third country and third country rules are applied to them, a fact most british citizens do not like. And for some reason most of them blame the EU for being "difficult" because the UK doesn't get preferrential treatment. Many UK citizens travelling via plane threw tantrums when they realized that they can no longer use the E-Gates open to EU citizens at airports but have to wait in queues with people from the rest of the world now which of course takes way more time.

1:40 Yes the EU will likely expand eventually. Countries currently in negotiations about joining are: Turkey, Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegowina, Serbia, North Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Moldova and Montenegro.

The most likely countries to join next are most likely Albania and Serbia as it seems right now. Ukraine will most likely be fast-tracked as soon as the war is over.

3:10 It's not a direct tax – EU membership fees are part of the individual member states household budgets. A small portion of the money is used to pay for the EU institutions and employees while the vast majority of the money is used to pay for levelling up programs and individual projects all over Europe. This means that the investments in some countries are actually bigger than their membership fees while others (the richer countries like Germany, the Netherlands and the scandinavian countries) usually pay more than they get back. However the economical benefits of being a member of the EU and the Customs Union and Single Market are way bigger than any membership fees…another lesson the UK is learning right now with its economy faltering.

5:50 This is also the case for France which also has overseas territories. The same was true for the UK, however since they left this is no longer an issue; it has lead to some problems of the UK overseas teritories though because they now all of a sudden have borders with some of their island neighbours which belong to France.

The issues at the moment with Brexit in the UK is since we have decided to leave the EU (brexit literally meaning Britain’s-exit) we now have to fill in all of this new paperwork we didn’t have to before.

Now that would normally be a bit of a hassle and quite annoying but deal-able if it was simply just that case, however most of our workforce and our countries GDP comes from the type of manual labour that is often handed over more towards migrating citizens. This means that Britain’s workforce is heavily affected by paperwork that was all entirely unnecessary before (incl the new addition of administrative visas and passport facilities etc). Especially trucking and port work, whereby there are now increasingly longer queues to get through customs.

The trucking issue might not seem like much of an issue, but when you consider that these people spend most of their working lives in the cabs, and and now the ports ALL have delays, it causes havoc. A momentary 5 minute document inspection for one lorry is ok, but combine that with the potential thousands which pass through these places every day, the delays are tremendous.

This also adds tremendous cost to everything, since in the economic world spending time = spending money, so everything even minor-ly remotely related to importing products is affected.

Then there are the issues with creating international trading laws such as food import standards and product safety requirements. Since we used to be in the EU, that issue didn’t exist, as we just used the CE mark to say the product was “Certified for Sales in the European Union”.

Without EU food standards, calorific values and other intake labels will not be potentially required. The food itself could change too, with the emphasis now being placed on what the suppliers find cheaper or more affordable in bulk, rather than KEEPING HEALTHY PEOPLE A PRIORITY!!

There’s SOOOOOOO much more than this that I can’t possibly just explain the possible issues here. Hope this helps.

Greetings from Spain. Each Euro (bill or coin) has a symhol of the country where it was printed. After 20 years of Euro currency, today Euros from all countries are mixed, since europeans started to travel all around the continent freely, i had in my wallet italian, french, spanish, belgian or german coins and bills together. I remeber when it started and our old spanish currency (peseta) was finishing, we had everything in checks or payrolls in both currency so we saw the change

The "no women" region in Greece is Mount Athos. The only buildings there are international orthodox monestaries and populated only by monks. They isolate there to pray and live on what the land provides for them. They do not interract with anything that may cause "distraction", like women, and sometimes even male pilgrims or animals of any kind. People only visit if they have previous a letter of welcome (usually for a church group) from one of the monestaries, proving they will have accomodation and meals while there. The border police checks the passports (to ensure you are male) and letter of welcome before you board the ferry to the island. The monks basically want to be left alone

That place where it's legal to ban women is called Mount Athos. It's an "autonomous orthodox monastery community" so to say. There are a bunch of monasteries there and the land is inhabited exclusively by male monks so they can devote all their time to the faith, praying and all that stuff. It's not only women that are forbidden from going there, even female animals aren't allowed.
Fun fact: There was a guy who lived there and since he was adopted as a baby, all his life, he never saw a woman.

Just an update that the UK left in 2020 so this is outdated

I'm a real EU citizen. As a Frenchman who lives in Eastern Belgium, I cherish our EU's freedom of movement. I live a 15-minute drive to the borders with both Luxembourg and Germany. The French border is an-hour drive away and the Netherlands are a 90-minute drive away. It would be such a nuisance if we had to deal with border checks. Visiting our neighbors and cross border shopping (all with the same currency) is normal everyday life. And I naturally drive south to France at least twice a year to visit my family – or they come visit me in Belgium.
And let's not forget what to me is the EU's greatest achievement; PEACE, lasting peace and friendship between nations that in the past stupidely wasted centuries and millions of human lives fighting each other, to the point of almost destroying themselves.

Very bad explanation.

One of the things that this vid does not explain is the history of the continent and the sentiment that lead to the creation of EEC that finally formed into the EU.

First thing to note the European mainland have had more than 3000 major conflicts and wars over the past 2000 years.
This comes with a lot of history and there for a lot well lets say hatred it might be too strong but lets say most countries don't like each other.
Difference in culture, religion and history.

So after WW2 the EU was well lets call it scared and wounded, emotionally broke and damaged and at that moment in time every could come together with one idea Never Again.
Say one thing but doing it is very difficult so there should be common ground that bind the nations together.
So they started The European Economic Community (EEC), The EEC was a regional organization created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957, aiming to foster economic integration among its member states. It was subsequently renamed the European Community (EC) upon becoming integrated into the first pillar of the newly formed European Union in 1993.

Until this day the EU and all there member states still do not like each other still the glue of the EU is very strong there are a lot of benefits but also a lot of problems.
At this moment the EU has a problem that other countries can ignore the values and norms of the EU while still claiming benefits.
So there is a lot of sentiment of the people in the Europe to reform the EU.
But this is not easy doable because of veto rights.

So any country that is benefiting of its membership of the EU and it is not following the rules and the values of the EU which they signed up for, cannot be kicked out of the EU.
If they EU would make such a law that states that they will kick out members who do not uphold the law, norms, and values of the EU. there are some countries that will veto this.
There are ways of with holding the benefits but this is not really done in the past or even very well established in law.

So the EU is big and its very strong but on the other hand its very fragile and slow, with a lot of problems.

fun fact: the last domino's pizza has closed in Italy, because people prefer to take away the pizzas in normal pizzerias 😁

As a Dutchman you hardly notice all those exceptions. You can live and work wherever you want within the EU (and some countries outside it). I experience that as very pleasant.

Just as an update to the countries that are members. The UK voted to leave in 2016. They officially left on Jan 1st 2021. As far as most of my friends are concerned, worst mistake ever.

More than 1/3 of the earths surface- they forgot New Caledonia off the coast of Australia which is French and would be considered EU too.

just few more inforrmation.
the membership dues is paied by the state EU is not olowed to make or add taxe, some time they can take import goods taxe (or pat of it) due too the fact is't all the same for all UE.
the island in grec where it's legal too bann woman it's a religious site where nearly only monke live permanantly, some pelerin tourist came at some saisons.

I live in the Canary Islands, which means that I am Spanish/European but geographically I live in Africa 🤪

The weird thing with the UK joining the EU, they didn't want us to join at first. Now we have left and kinda thriving, and was one of the biggest contributers to the EU, they ain't happy one bit. There is a big argument over the Northern Ireland protocol, fishing and illegal migrants coming by boat, nicknamed "dinghy divers".

Also the fact “Ode an die freude (Ode to the joy)” is the EU's anthem, befitting one of history's most war torn continents.

Countries have their own laws and systems for collecting taxes. People, companies etc. don't directly pay taxes to EU.
The funds or payments, which go to EU go from the national budgets of the countries.

Ireland here ..that vid was good ..but yes it was a lot ..to us here it really means just people can go live anywhere no paper work and because we all use euro no having to change money ..people often go to Spain France Portugal for a weekend or holidays or even a day trip just hop on plane and go and come back ..whenever … its good that way ….the membership payment thing…I havnt a clue of …knew we pay something ..but don't know it wouldn't be a form filling thing ..it really just gave us more freedom of movement to other countries for work holidays or living

Ukraine has started the process to join the EU, but since the war's restart the progress initially slowed alot but in the recent months the process has sped up quite abit. The Ukrainian parliament has also received the flag of Europe.