EU to collapse in 15 years - some thoughts

CIA gives EU 15 years before it collapses because of it's poor economic performance.

The experts felt that the current welfare state is unsustainable and the lack of any economic revitalization could lead to the splintering or, at worst, disintegration of the European Union, undermining its ambitions to play a heavyweight international role.

Part of the reason for this is high national debt as can be seen by this nice diagram and partly through the number of stupid regulations brought out by the EU such as droit de suite, which will kill the european art market, which stiffle business and the problems of creating jobs due to different EU regulations.

Not that people are particually productive when in these jobs, it simply isn't in our best financial interests to be as productive as, say US workers. Nor is it particually in our interests to breed, due to the current setup of the welfare state. So people don't. The replacement situation was similar in the US in the 70's, but when they changed the welfare system so that it favoured famillies the replacement rate went up. The favoured solution by the EU however, which cannot be modified by the member states, is to import workers from poorer, mainly Muslim, countries.

Which could be fine, but currently there are two problems:
One the second generation from the immigrants have very low educations levels and therefore very high levels of unemployment. This leads understandably to resentment, especially as islamaphobia tends to be blamed as the cause, and radicalisation.
Two, rapid visible imigration has always, and will always, cause fears in the host population, fears that can be exploited by Nazi scum to provoke riots. This tends towards an even greater polarisation between the comunities leaving the immigrants even more visibly 'other' and so even more the source of fear and resentment. From which a visious circle is formed.

However if this is a true assessment then by inverting the current conditions the results would also change.

Once the EU breaks up will once again be able set our own levels of immigration. By slowing the growth in the immigrant communities it might lower the fear so that more money can be directed at getting better results for the education of the Muslim minorities, which would lead to better job prospects, and so less radicalisation and more intergration. So long as there is jobs for them to fill that is, which requires a climate where business can create profitable jobs, which the EU is not exactly good at making. So the break up of the EU might not be such a bad thing so long as the government here is willing to make the required changes to take advantage of it.