The issue is that establishments across Europe are thoroughly rotten

Kicking the EU to break into pieces will just give you rotting pieces

I think if Southern Europe and Eastern Europe were in their own versions of the EU they'd do better, but they all become economic vassals to Germany, who needs to prop them up to perpetuate their massive trade surplus

Britain will probably demonstrate this best once out

We had our trade surplus for a while before the EU

Since we're competing on quality, not price having the weaker Euro is pretty much incosequential

In fact it makes things more expensive for us

Anyway overall it was a net benefit for everyone

The EU reinforces bad things in the economy of Europe, of course neoliberals and internationalists would reinforce them anyway, its still an inherent problem with Germany's economic position that it is causing most of the other European economies to decline to barely keep its own going.

There's a reason why even the most ardent euroskeptic parties outside Britain don't actually want to leave

They like the common market at the very least

Afaik eastern Europe's economy is doing more than fine

It's only the countries that overspent consistently which fucked up

And even those are beginning to recover

define eastern Europe

Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland and the Baltics

Lithuania is dying

Actually the emigration trend is declining

Some are starting to return

And even without Schengen I doubt they wouldn't leave

You keep saying that but i just disagree, there would be an incentive not to without free movement, so less would

The incentive would still be there just with more paperwork

Arguably some of the unskilled workers might have stayed

But those aren't the ones which are critical for developing a country

Their remittances probably also did a lot to grow Lithuania into the position where now people are startign to return

Arguably the EU should've done more to grow their economy so there's less reason to move though

so to the east of Germany and Austria

I think there should be an industrial policy of tariffs and less primary sector subsidies to turn the more low waage areas of Europe into the workshop of Europe so to speak

But they're not going to do that

Instead of the whole importing cheap stuff from China shtick

The EU actually supported steel tariffs at some point

But Britain vetoed it

And then complained about not having steel tariffs later

the eternal strikes again

50% of Germany's GDP is exports, they cannot allow the other countries to have their own high skill industries or they run out of places to send German produce

Yes but we don't need to be very concerned about that
Germany focuses on medium sized quality manufacturers mainly, not lowering costs

It's not Germany holding Europe back but free trade

Which Germany requires

If we did away with free trade German capital would actually be forced to buy slightly more expensive (but still cheaper than German stuff) things from eastern Europe fueling their growth instead of that of China

Germany doesn't need free trade

Quality exports don't depend on cheap imports