"EEC is the original part of EU, so they are the same today. You most likely mean EEA which is EU countries, except Croatia, plus some additional countries forming internal market."
I respond with:
This is partially true and accurate. What happened was some of the museums actually had EEC on their menu of tariffs, so I had to come home and research it. Later on, I did find other museums who use EEA. Then I thought maybe, just maybe there was a problem with alphabetic transposing of letters, but I do write my notes carefully when I am in museums for the very fact that I don't want to return immediately. My notes are clearly EEC and EEA.
That said, the reason I don't use Internet research and DO go to every single museum, restaurant, etc, is because I have found websites that clearly show they have not been updated since 2004 or earlier. This may be true with the admission rate cards they are still using. Who knows? Either way, it was educational for me and hopefully for readers too.
Thank you for commenting so I could clarify.
Another realization: After writing this, I went to another museum. Their discount is for anyone from an EU country, but excludes EEA or EEC. They are all claim this is due to being state funded, yet the differences from one set of museum regulations to another is totally perplexing.
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2 comments:
It is complicated, isn't it? :-) To add more dimension, part of EU is not participating Schengen agreement, however, there are countries that are not part of EU nor EEA that are part of Schengen agreement (e.g. Switzerland) and we still have EFTA (European Free Trade Association) that have again different members.
EEC itself has disappeared already (merged as part of EU in Lisbon agreement).
It sounds that the museums themselves are not exactly aware of the legal aspects of all this, nor updated the wording for EEC to be the same as EU. In principle, however, EU is the only one that has (kind of virtual) citizenship, that could in principle justify treating all EU citizens alike- although especially between Nordic countries there are other agreements giving similar legal position.
EEA or EFTA are (mainly) trade arrangements.
I was not exactly clear: EEA is close to EU as members of EEA also participate in legal structure of EU although without voting rights and are obliged to comply with large part of EU legislation.
EFTA is pure free trade agreement.
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