A common coin? Maybe, apart of Denmark and UK that pretend to keep their currency. And obviously, till last September, I worked for a corporation that had 3 HQ with 3 different currencies… Düsseldorf, London, Copenhagen.
A common retirement plan? Neither! Each damn country has its own fund. At least they granted to people moving around to have offshore rental plans. But this is not being european at all. It is completely a grey area.
Taxes? Apart of saying that the VAT has not to be paid between fiscal entities of different countries… but it doesn’t apply for common citizens without a VAT number. Which is normally given only if at least u are a freelancer, like I was. I had to give up my italian health insurance in order to avoid to be double taxed, in Germany and in Italy. Yes, registering to AIRE, you loose it. Which makes sense, but what if I move back to Italy within a short term? I mean… moving inside the European Union is not like moving across USA.
Language? HA! Germans, specially the *uckin* secretaries of professional officies, they threat you like in the beginning of the century… a Gastarbeiter. You don’t speak german? Your fault. You have to speak german, you have to know their rules, or they fuck around with you. Contracts are not translated to english, and they will never give up or accept english as secondary language as “standard commercial language of the EU”.
What do they expect from us? Learning every EU language and every EU legislation? This is INSANE!
French people will never accept to have english as secondary language neither… who else out there is pretending to be the center of the world?
In Italy, english is barely spoken. And in the few cases when you’ll find someone, you’ll recognize that the level is below basic acceptance…
Where do we want to go? Tell me. Cause there are some billion of chinese and some other huge amount of arabians knoking at our borders. Will we speach chinese or arab in the near future?
In the mean time, many xenofobist parties are taking small but raising percentages of power in each of the EU governments. Mainly they have also anti-EU attitutes. If no one takes the leadership of driving a cultural change and let the EU citizens merge together as “United States of Europe”… this project will soon fail…
…and the recent financial crisis is already blowing it apart, piece by piece.
Guido Maria Serra 
