A Proposed Union of the United Kingdom and the United Netherlands

Day 743, 12:09 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Aelar Vardamir Anari Eneibari

Some time ago, our governments began discussing the possibility of uniting our two countries. After finding that the idea was promising, the Parliaments were informed a few days ago. The idea has been met with great enthusiasm, but also a few practical concerns. In the last few days, intense and detailed discussions have been going on about this idea, and we have developed a detailed plan.

This is a very big decision, so we both need to discuss it as a country before deciding whether to do it or not.

Why?
Why should we Unite?

We'll be joined by more people, varied and interesting. It'll be fun. We'll also benefit economically by having a bigger job market, goods market, and currency market. Our united military would be a greater force on the world stage. Together, we'd be worth more as an MPP ally, and would therefore likely get to participate in more wars. This Union would work well as just about everybody in it can speak English, although we probably wish to support those who would not.

What are some worries?
We are worried that potentially this would allow our enemies to use resistance wars against us. I believe that our pooled strength and the help we can get from our allies should be enough to deal with this particular problem. Indeed, resistance wars in small regions would potentially give us a fairly cheap way to get training wars.

Practically speaking, the unification would involve destroying the UNL's current hospitals: however we hold several hospitals in stock, enough for our immediate needs. The monetary loss would be about 700-1000 gold collectively, in Hospitals not sold.

Some have worried that with an influx of more people, it will be harder to achieve a seat in Parliament. I believe that would actually be good for the Country, however, as we would have a higher quality of legislator.

Details
To merge, we would have to fight a "fake" or "Training" war. In order not to leave the new Union without an MPP alliance with Russia, we would begin by having the United Netherlands ("Netherlands" in game) attack East of England, activating our MPPs and cancelling theirs. We would then be able to counter-attack. Since this would be a merger, if the battles were to go poorly for the UK side, the President of the Netherlands could retreat. The exact plan would depend on the circumstances at the time. The whole process is likely to cost about one to one and a half thousand gold, in Declaration of War cost and attack costs.

Our political system would change significantly from this. It is most likely that our parties would merge with theirs based on ideology. This would change the relative sizes and adjust the ideological inclinations of our parties.

The draft constitution (below) names the Union as the "United Kingdom of Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Northern Ireland". If desired, we could change the name to a better one, should a better idea come along, by amending it. If we unite, we will assemble a list of suggested flags for the Union and ask the Citizens to vote on them. Hopefully this will result in a good flag.

The merger of our government's Ministries would be a complex process, but we are confident that our Ministers will do it well.

A particularly complex detail of this proposal is the currency. The Ministries of Finance estimate that there are 240 thousand NLG in private hands: it would be unfair not to replace those guilders (they would become unusable after a merger). The Ministers have, however, come to an agreement of how they would do it: They would make 4 separate offers at gradually cheaper rates, selling Pounds (which we'd have to print) for guilders. The idea would be to make those in a hurry to get GBP have to pay a little more, and avoid too sudden a shock to the pound currency market. I am given to understand that the rates at which the currencies would be traded have been decided, based on the current exchange rates.

The eUK forum would become the official forum, and the enetherlands.nl forum would become an archive as well as possibly a local governance forum.

We might want to legislate a Local Government for the United Netherlands, to avoid alienating some more patriotic citizens: I would listen to the opinion of the UNL citizens on this question, although I worry that it would get in the way of unity.

Constitution
As the Dutch and Belgians learned, when entering into a union, we need to know what the terms of the union are. Therefore, we have to agree to a Constitution that sets down how the Government and Parliament will work, and sets down the rights of the Union's members. One of the rights is the right to read important documents and announcements in your own language, so below our proposed constitution is in three languages:

* English
* Dutch
* French