I’m going throughout the various countries and making them more individual, and I noticed that we have some policy options that are basically prevented by the EU.
Already we have 3 countries from the EU single market: France, Spain & Germany. In these 3 countries, the lack of a sovereign currency (they all use the euro) means that they cannot implement QE or helicopter money.
These policies are replaced by a new ‘EU Monetary Policy’ in the next patch.
But it also occurs to me that members of the EU single market should not be able to:
Implement Capital Controls (free movement of capital is part of the EU constitution).
Change Immigration rules (basically set by the shengen treaty)
Anybody think thats a bad idea? I can easily block the capital controls with a single data change but will need some code, UI and text to show that the immigration rules are fixed
Well, I’m gonna say that not matter what others say about what the members of EU should have and shouldn’t be able to do, I think that there should definitely be a way to exit/turn off the European Union if the player want to. We shouldn’t want a bunch of changes to suddenly makes 3 countries unplayable in case it breaks something (looking at disabling Immigration Rules here, it seems like something that can bring back uncontrollable immigration).
Yanno what’d actually be really cool? No idea how it’d work coding-wise, and this might be something more for Democracy 5, but ah well!
Be able to sink political capital points into the European Parliament to simulate lobbying the EU. From a mechanics standpoint, it’d use similar mechanics to electoral stunts (like eating at a breakfast cafe) but for the EU. The more you advocate, the more you potentially get back from the EU (IE pork), and the more you can shape its policy (IE affect how the EU treats immigration or currency).
That way the player isn’t left stuck, so-to-speak, unless they leave it.
I came up with a compromise to reflect the complexity involved:
EU countries now have a 4x multiplier to the political capital required to change immigration rules, due to needing EU agreement.
I think that gets across the fact that there is some inflexibility on international issues for EU members, but still lets you nudge things in the desired direction if you need to.
Interesting point about capital controls. Presumably there was some explicit set of circumstances that allowed the temporary suspension of the rules, because its clearly agreed that the single market allows for free movement of goods, people and capital.
Actually thats raised another point…maybe import tariffs need the same treatment (a change to the amount of political capital required).
On the flip side, the EU’s farm bill is humongous (which would probably help with farmer income & food prices?), and since all those countries are merely one of many in the EU, international trade’s less affected by foreign relations.
The random events “Left Major Trading Bloc” and “Fishing Quotas” (something like that) may need to be tweaked, too.
Also, EU members would likely have more stable debt regimes (Greece aside…) since they can’t print money to get out of debt. And have more foreign investment. And have more technology investment (to reflect EU grants, maybe?).
You’ll also want to consider locking the following:
firearms policy - the EU has surprisingly-strict rules on this, with only a few exceptions. European Firearms Directive - Wikipedia Skip down to the 2017 directives
and maybe include something to reflect that over 1/3rd of the EU’s budget today is spent on the Common Agriculture Policy. Common Agricultural Policy - Wikipedia Maybe have EU countries get a big big boost to rural development grants and/or agriculture subsidies at a super-low cost due to the EU?
P.S. The criticisms of CAP are pretty neat from a coding perspective. CAP is basically an EU-wide agricultural subsidy in D4, so to see criticisms of it makes me think about D4 mechanics a lot. The criticisms even say that CAP disregards public health due to obesity concerns! Which is already in the game! Huzzah.
Yeah there’s hundreds of advantages to being in an intercontinental union too. The Galileo GNSS satellite constellation offering cutting-edge GPS services to member states for one.
A change like pricing out all immigration rules until the late late game seems to be a dizzying disadvantage to not offer something in return for. More importantly, whether or not an individual state bears the brunt of the costs of the union, it’s likely in anticipation of incredible things, like a carbon neutral, affluent, borderless megastate?
Hmmm. I wonder if its fair to suggest that in this case, stability should get a slight bump from EU membership, given you are basically spreading economic risk over several neighboring countries?
I am wary of limiting EVERY policy that the Eu theoretically controls, because it might make play 3 of the current levels in the game really frustrating, as we do not have a mechanism for lobbying the EU to change policy.
