非常抱歉我不会用中文作答或写作。如果可以的话我也希望自己能用中文交流。我现在正在努力学习中文，但是还完全不能书写，也说不了多少。我的母语是德语，并且能够非常熟练地使用英语和法语，能够比较熟练地使用西班牙语（包括口语和书写），并且我学了6年的拉丁语，还会说一点波兰语。我在尝试减少语言障碍。
但是我的中文还不行。我总觉得用不同的语言交流总比相对无言好。多亏了强大的翻译工具，让我能看懂你们的网站和问题，你们也能看懂我的回答。我的一名中国员工会翻译一些我的回答或文章，但是她赶不上我的速度，你们可以在她的知乎账号（https://www.zhihu.com/people/janny-16-13/activities）下面看到一部分翻译
I am a European, born in Germany, studied some time in Spain and Netherlands. I am married to a French girl, and my 2 sons have double nationality.
To me, the EU is a huge success, even though I also don't like a lot of its shortcomings in terms of bureaucracy, slowness, lack of real cohesion for international matters etc.
But what the EU was all about, at least initially, is PEACE. After World War II, the leading old enemies, France and Germany, got together (together with smaller countries Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg), to form a commercial alliance around iron and steel.
These timid first ties have eventually led to the longest period of peace in the entire history of Europe. No wars since 1945 in Western Europe, and THAT is worth more than anything else.
Today, people view EU often as an economic union. Sure, they established a common, tax free market in the early 90s. They introduced the Euro in the early 2000s.
But what this really was and is all about is to bring the people together, create understanding and ties, and such avoid hostilities.
Today, I am married to a French. For centuries, Germans and French went to war with each other every 20-30 years, so basically every generation, until 1945.
Check out this great graph
It shows which European nation was at war in any given year between 1500 and 2000.
You will see that United Kingdom was hardly ever at peace, nor France or Germany. And that it has gotten a lot better lately, with remaining conflicts mainly in the Balkans (Ex Yugoslavia, an ethnic civil war).
The economic focus of the public view of this union is leading to new jealousies. Those who pay more than they receive (e.g. Germany) feel bad, and those who receive subsidies are afraid of any new members or others who might need subsidies more than they do (Hence the negative attitude of Eastern European nations towards refugees).
All over Europe, I observe that the richer don't want to share with the poorer. That can be a question of nations (UK being one where it is easy to persuade citizens that you don't get out of the EU what you put into it). Or within one country. Look at the Catalans trying to break away from Spain. They use historical and ethnic arguments to hide the main motive as good as they can, which is purely economical: Catalunya pays more to the Spanish state than it receives. Of course, they would not want to say "we do not feel solidarity towards the rest of the Spanish people". But that's the core of it today. Before, their fight was to be allowed to keep their cultural differences, but that fight has been won a long time ago (about 40 years). Northern Italy is the exact same pattern.
What they are all missing, in my mind, are 2 things:
So what happened in the UK?
As stated above, it was a more economic vote than anything else. Please note that the UK isn't even part of the EURO €.
Some conservative politicians (only a part of the ruling Tory party) was working against UKs membership. Most of those (e.g. Boris Johnson), as well as some 3rd party politicians (Notably Nigel Farage of UKIP, the UK independence party), didn't truly think this initiative had a chance. It gave them a topic to talk about, to gain support and importance, without actually having to DO anything. They did not believe they ever had to actually face the consequences, as it would never happen.
To silence these voices, the then Prime Minister of the same Tory party, David Cameron, decided to have the referendum. He was certain that the outcome would be "stay in", and with that vote behind him, he could better rule without distractions in his own party.
For a while, the used the possibility of a referendum to make pressure in Brussels (EU), and when he thought the moment was right, he set the date.
Ahead of the vote, those in favor of Brexit made all kinds of false promises. Most famous of which that a Brexit would free up 350 million Great Britain Pounds per week, which would then be spent on the National Health Service instead.
That was a huge attraction to voters.
Nigel Farage has admitted that it was a "mistake" to promise that £350million a week would be spent on the NHS if the UK backed a Brexit vote. Speaking just an hour after the Leave vote was confirmed the Ukip leader said the money could not be guaranteed and claimed he would never have made the promise in the first place.
Boris Johnson with the pledge
The pledge was central to the official Vote Leave campaign and was controversially emblazoned on the side of the bus which shuttled Boris Johnson and Michael Gove around the country. Campaigners promised to use the money the UK reportedly sends to the EU to fund the health service instead.Asked by ITV's Good Morning Britain whether he could guarantee that the £350m that was sent to the EU would now go the NHS, Mr Farage said: “No I can’t, I would never have made that claim."That was one of the mistakes made by the Leave campaign.”
Nigel Farage
Here is one problem with democracy: Election lies: One or several parties and candidates makes false promises. Typically, the economic realities are different from what they promise (e.g. lower taxes while increase spending on many things, and at the same time lower debt: It can't work, unless growth is gigantic, which they claim it will).
Voters are only too happy to fall for those promises, as they would love them to be true. Who wants to hear the harsh reality? People play lotto out of unreasonable hope, not because they are calculating rationally.
Next problem:
Voter turnout. We in the West have a tendency to ask of everybody else in the world to be democratic. At the same time, many of us don't make use of this right. It is always shocking to me how few people go to vote for our Chancellor (< 85%) or in other important elections like state elections (~50%). For EU elections, it is even less than 50%.
The Brexit vote to me was probably the most important vote a UK citizen will ever cast in his life, and one he will have to live with for the rest of his life.
Guess what? ~30% didn't think it was necessary to get up from the couch and vote.
The end result was narrow, so a few more voters could have swung the entire vote.
I also always find it scary to see how many people don't know yet in the votes, days ahead of an election. Typically, this is 1/3 or so. Enough to swing any election. If they don't know, what are they basing their decision on? Do I want to be ruled by somebody who got elected by voters who were "tossing a coin"?
And who did not vote? Those who will have to live with the decision the longest: 2/3 of the young people, 18-24, did not show up !
Yet they are the ones who grew up with the EU and see the benefits. Those of them who voted, voted 2/3 in favor of remaining.
The old folks, those who remember the past glory of Great Britain (some even before WW II) were the most negative about Europe, and voted in the biggest numbers.
I could imagine that they also were the most interested in better public health care funding (see the election lie above), as they have more health problems.
I saw young people surprised in interviews, saying "Had I known that it could be "leave", I would have voted differently!".
Here is another problem in democracy:
Not everybody votes according to their true feelings, but "tactically". Many just wanted to send a "strong" signal to the government to defend their rights better in Europe, but not honestly to leave.
This has to do with the problem of polls: Polls done ahead of elections suggest a certain outcome with a small error margin. But polls have been wrong many times in recent history.
The election of Trump over Clinton is an example, such as is Brexit: The people THOUGHT the result was already certain, and they could vote for "leave" just as a symbol, but not because they truly want it.
With that in mind, its maybe no surprise that the new prime minister (after David Cameron resigned over his failed gamble), Theresa May, was actually AGAINST Brexit. Now it is she who has to negotiate the Brexit which she herself did not want. But in order to grab power, she was willing to let go of her convictions. Another trait of many of our politicians, unfortunately, even though this is an extreme case.
But voters also change their mind. We have had now 2 years of negotiations with the EU, in which it became clear that the EU would not allow UK to do cherry picking: keep all privileges that are nice, and get out of the obligations towards EU (something like this had been promised, see election lies above).
So today, it is more likely that a new referendum would end in a "remain" vote. But most politicians feel that they "must obey the vote of the people", no matter if those people were betrayed or changed their mind since. They feel that "voting until you like the result" would undermine democracy.
So EU and UK will now most likely have to live with the results of that imperfect process.
A "hard" Brexit is the most likely, so one without a treaty, going back to WTO rules for trade, no more integration beyond that.
This is not good for EU or UK either. But it is still better for EU than for UK, and it is good that EU stayed tough, not giving in to "cherry picking", which would have enticed other nations to try the same.
We will all see now how UK fairs with their policy, and my prediction is that it will not be pretty. Yes, they will be freed from some bureaucracy etc. But overall, I think it will be quite bad for UK, and other EU members will have a front row seat to see how it unfolds.
Maybe that will be the good part about Brexit: Remind us all that a norm for the size of eggs or curve of bananas is not the only EU accomplishment.
P.S. the curve of bananas was introduced by EU in response to trading companies who wanted to stack the bananas more efficiently. When EU was criticized for this ridiculous over-bureaucracy, EU dropped the norm. Guess what? The trading companies revived it, not as a law, but as a trade standard to do business with them.
