[Tagging] Should admin_level=1 tag be applied to EU?

Alan Mackie aamackie at gmail.com
Thu Jul 30 12:39:49 UTC 2020


On Thu, 30 Jul 2020 at 13:05, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 30.07.20 13:32, Colin Smale wrote:
> > The EU is «composed-of» whole member states. It has all the attributes
> > of a governmental administrative body - with the executive, parliament
> > and justicial branches impacting citizens directly.
>
> To me as a citizen of a EU country it does not feel like the EU is a
> higher-level administrative body than the country. Yes, countries have
> decided to contractually transfer some rights and responsibilities to
> the EU but that doesn't (in my mind) mean the EU is some form of
> super-state. Quitting the EU if you don't like it is much easier than
> seceding from a country.
>

To me pooling resources does not generate a higher level entity, it
rearranges existing ones. If the EU does become the "final decider" across
all branches of government, then to me it becomes the admin_level=2 entity
and the states that form it become "lower level" entities. In practical
terms it would probably be easier at that point to give them admin_level=1
and automatically retag all non-EU admin_level=2 entities as admin_level=1
(~250?) rather than running through every admin boundary within the EU and
adding 1 to it (thousands?). After all, in many countries, the admin_levels
are already rather sparse so having a gap between 1 and 3 shouldn't be too
much of an issue.  This doesn't seem like a thing that will need to happen
for another couple of decades if it happens at all.


> I would prefer to map the EU as a contract than as an administrative
> boundary. There are many such contracts around the world, where smaller
> countries pool their defense or other typically national capabilities,
> and I would not be surprised if there were situations where countries
> pool their defense with one group, and their currency with another.
> Mapping these things as "areas on the map" is old-style cartographic
> thinking. We can do better than that.
>
> Even *if* a boundary was mapped, it would probably more pragmatic to map
> the outer boundary of the Schengen region than the outer boundary of the
> EU states.
>

I think it would be useful to have distinct tagging for these types of
agreements, I know of at least one other currency union, and I can imagine
a map of what you need in your wallet might come in handy for travellers.
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