David Cameron has announced his intention to renegotiate Britain’s membership of the European Union ahead of an ‘in/out’ referendum in 2017. Hugo Brady writes that rather than attempting to negotiate the re-nationalisation of EU powers to Westminster, he and other European leaders should consider some practical, feasible reforms that the Union can begin to implement immediately. Outlining a series of reforms based on a major report by the Centre for European Reform, he argues that the expected rise of far-right political forces in next year’s European elections means the time for change is now.
The Centre for European Reform – the London-based think-tank that I work for, and represent in Brussels – published a major report last week outlining 35 reform ideas that, if properly implemented, would make a better EU. Obviously, we are influenced to some degree by the debate raging all around our offices in Westminster and the intense pressure on British prime minister, David Cameron, to wring special concessions from Brussels before a UK referendum pledged for 2017.
But we are more concerned that the EU is about to reach a political crossroads in 2014 as voters make their voices heard in the European elections after long years of economic hardship. According to Eurobarometer figures, a majority no longer feel they live in a fully democratic Europe. Populist politicians in France, the Netherlands and the UK continue to record some unsettling support. Marine Le Pen’s National Front topped a poll for Le Nouvel Observateur published last Wednesday, two places ahead of François Hollande’s socialists. And countries like Austria, the Czech Republic and Denmark are even more Eurosceptic today than they were before 2010. Some – though not all – of this is due to the horribly awkward questions that the Eurozone crisis has asked of the Union about democratic accountability, the political destination of the Eurozone, and future relations with those countries that do not use the single currency.
EU reform is far from a British obsession: In France, senior officials complain about excessive EU red tape. The Dutch government published a paper in June 2013 listing 54 policy areas where it wants no further EU involvement. In Germany, ministers demand that the EU pay more attention to ‘subsidiarity’ – the principle that the Union should act only when strictly necessary, and that member-states should act where possible – and criticise the Commission for wanting too many powers. There has probably never been a moment more propitious for reforming the EU. Hence we felt the time was right to suggest a set of practical, feasible reforms that would win widespread support across the member-states and should be pursued.
We start with the European Commission, which despite the popular canard of the Brussels ‘hyper-regulator’ has actually repealed 5,590 legal acts since 2005 and exempted small businesses completely from many EU rules. The Commission has gained considerable technical powers over national economies since 2008, but it continues to lose political authority. We think an unhealthily imbalanced relationship with the European Parliament is to blame, where the Commission increasingly takes its lead from the as yet immature parliamentary assembly. (We are not convinced that the EP currently has the political wherewithal to represent the public.) We recommend that leaders in the European Council should have the power to sack the Commission – just as the EP does – and that all three together should agree a new legislative programme for the EU at the start of the new Commission’s mandate in 2014. This should encourage the Commission to remain the independent referee the EU needs, not be an increasingly partisan political actor.
Unsurprisingly, we are also very unsure about the current plans to select the next Commission president from the ranks of MEPs as the nominees of the big European political parties. We fear that this well-meaning initiative would only further alienate voters from the EU by boosting the chances of relatively unknown Brussels insiders who may have never hitherto headed a major national, or even regional, administration. Instead, we propose bringing national parliaments more fully into the EU policy sphere by giving them greater powers to block, repeal or request European legislation. We think the time is right to establish a formal assembly of national parliaments in Brussels where their nominees could monitor deals made by EU leaders and hold them to account in areas where the EP has little power, such as foreign policy. This would improve the transparency of deal-making at EU summits, while helping national parliaments to think more in the European interest.
In addition, we think that MEPs should submit major amendments to legislation to impact assessment boards so that their likely consequences can be made plain before negotiations with the governments begin. The Commission already does this with its own draft legislation, with the result that some laws are indeed dropped. But it does not publicise this for fear of embarrassing the Commissioner concerned. In our view, if the public knew about such instances, it would boost the credibility of the Commission’s impact assessment process, which has already been praised as a gold standard by bodies such as the OECD.
Institutions matter. But trust in the EU will not return to its former level until voters once again perceive it as the economic motor of the future. In that respect, we recommend expanding the single market into business services, IT, telecoms, construction and railways, and re-focusing the EU budget so that more money is spent on projects that boost growth, such as cross-border transport and energy links. It is quite incredible in today’s Europe that cross-border e-commerce has yet to take off: it is after all one of the few areas we can look to for internal growth in the present economic climate.
The CER report has lots of other suggestions, including on how to improve the oversight of the EU by strengthening its Court of Auditors and by having the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International rank it alongside national administrations. We want non-euro countries to have observer rights in the meetings of the Eurogroup. And we have ideas on energy security, the fight to mitigate climate change and how to introduce more flexibility into EU rules on working time. We do not rule out treaty change to achieve some of the above, but think it should be avoided if possible, or at least kept to small surgical amendments.
All political communities must adapt if they are to survive. The rise and fall of political systems is the tale of history and the EU is no special exception. That leaves the Union with two choices: evolve into something better, or be replaced by something worse.
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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
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Hugo Brady – Centre for European Reform
Hugo Brady is a Senior Research Fellow and Brussels representative for the Centre for European Reform, specialising in EU institutions, justice and home affairs, and Britain’s European debate. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the LSE’s European Institute.
It will be a few generations before the EU is able to con people the way has done over the past 50 years.
The EU was created to reduce the chances of another post WW1 “Lost Generation” and of the next generation similarly wiped out less than a quarter of a century later.
The current economic situation bares remarkable similarities with that of 1930’s. It has given rise to an almost identical surge in political extremism, with emerging signs of similar violence. The major difference this time is the lesser growth of Communism, leaving the growth almost exclusively to the other political extreme.
Nationalism was and still is the biggest threat to peace and democracy.
As Churchill said “To jaw jaw is better than to warwar”. The public should beware nationalistic politicians selling simplistic solutions.
Caveat votor in 2014!
it should be called the “National British Center for European Reform”
if some ideas are interesting, most of them just pander to a purely Westminster-centric political agenda.
and they are supposedly the most Europhiles amongst British think tanks !!
looking forward to Brexit.
a few decades in the wild should provide a new perspective to Brits 😉
This is a surprising piece from the usually well-informed Hugo O’Brady.
He mentions national governments complaining about too much EU legislation, but without pointing out that it is governments themselves who adopt or reject proposals for European legislation – and adoption requires the support of a hefty majority of them: an absolute minimum of 74% of the votes in the EU Council. Of course, legislation should be adopted only when needed, and reviewed regularly, but the insinuation that EU legislation is inflicted on hapless Member States against their will should be taken with a pinch of salt!
After saying that one of the biggest problems facing the EU is that people do not feel that it is sufficiently democratic, he then goes out of his way to rubbish the European Parliament – the one directly elected European institution – as an “immature assembly”, but without offering any justification for this view. If true, it would surely merit explanation!
The one specific criticism of the EP is to say that MEPs should “submit major amendments to legislation to impact assessment”, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this already happens.
Hugo opposes plans for the next Commission President to be selected “from the ranks of MEPs” – yet no-one serious has suggested that this should be a requirement. What IS in the treaty (approved by all countries) is that MEPs should vote on and elect the Commission President, but there is no requirement that he or she should be an MEP. Five European political parties (note: parties, not EP Groups) have announced their intention to designate their candidate for Commission President in advance of the elections. For instance, the EPP (Merkel, Rajoy, Kenny, etc) would say so-and-so is our candidate. The Socialists, Liberals, Greens etc would each designate their candidate. There is no requirement that this should be “an unknown Brussels insider”. The majority of names mentioned so far are sitting or former Prime Ministers (as the last 3 Presidents have been). Putting forward names for the head of the executive before the elections, as happens in national elections, might work and might not work at European level, we’ll see. But dismissing it out of hand in a brief sentence, when most of Europe’s political parties say they want to try it out, and on the ground that it “would only further alienate voters from the EU”, without offering any argument as to why it would be such a certain disaster, is somewhat trite.
Hugo then raises the tired old idea of creating yet another EU institution, this one a “formal assembly of national parliaments” with powers to block or repeal European legislation. Now, there are already several informal assemblies with members of national parliamentarians, from COSAC to the inter-parliamentary conferences on foreign & security policy and on economic & financial governance. They are useful forums and networking opportunities, and permit useful exchanges of views, but they are not suitable for actually taking legislative decisions, nor do most national parliaments want that. After all, if national parliaments do their job and ensure that the Minister representing their country in Brussels is reflecting their views, then sending their own members to another institution to vote the same way is not necessary. Nor is it what most of them want, according to the discussions in these existing bodies. Where there IS certainly room for improvements and greater democratic accountability is in those countries where the national parliament does not hold its ministers to account for their European actions. I can think of some.
There are some potentially good ideas in this article, sadly all confined to the penultimate paragraph where they are listed in bulk without elaboration. Several of them would deserve further explanation.
All in all, the piece shows how far Eurosceptic claims are taken as read in Britain, even by a supposedly moderately pro-European think tank like the Centre for European Reform, and how out of touch with the facts they can sometimes be.
Richard C
All very good points well made. Its the way nationalism is dressed up in the cloak of Euroscepticism referred to in the last paragraph that is the greatest concern.
The history of the C20th ought to be enough of a lesson to us all on the dangers of rampant nationalism.
It seems that too many need to be reminded now of this lesson, as well as of those who made the ultimate sacrifices inresponding to the consequences of unchecked nationalism in the run up to Remembrance Day.
I cant see how we can be accused of rampant nationalism during the past 100 years resulting in wars in Europe. We have been dragged into other peoples wars to bring them to an end. We are better alone than having ourselves diluted to the point of an insignificant mute by the EU
@Joe I get the principle here, but we live in a globalised world. The extent to which Eurosceptics like to ignore that fact is truly baffling. They want us to believe we can roll everything back 100 years to a time when there was little or no overspill between different economies.
Like it or not, we don’t live in that world anymore. We live in a world where any regulation the EU comes up with has a tangible impact on British businesses, regardless of whether we’re members of the EU. We live in a world where a crisis in the Eurozone, and reckless lending in the United States, can all but destroy our economy – despite us neither being a member of the Eurozone, nor a US state.
So what we’re really advocating here isn’t handling our own affairs, it’s giving up. It’s allowing the rest of the EU to dictate how the bulk of our economy is regulated without having any capacity to protect our interests. It’s about diminishing our global influence at a time when we need to protect our interests on the global stage more than ever before. All we get as an alternative from UKIP is some sound bite about negotiating a “free trade agreement”, or vague nonsense about doing more trade with China (which has terrible domestic demand and no appetite for European imports).
There’s nothing wrong with arguing against EU membership, but let’s base it on some actual evidence, not empty rhetoric, tabloid myths, and pig-headed traditionalism.
our biggest industry isn’t allowed to trade in the EU, even after 40 years the UK finds trade in the services sector almost totally restricted, is it any wonder we have a negative trade balance with the rest of the EU & a surplus with the rest of the world. Blair even handed back a large chunk of our rebate to the EU to grease the wheels but that too failed. If we were outside of the EU we could introduce tariffs against countries that restrict our trade. Can you imagine if we said Car companies across Europe couldn’t trade in the UK? or Beverage & Food companies couldn’t trade in the UK?
We have been banging the utilities & services Drum for 40 years & a net contributor to the EU budget even when the country was a basket case in the 1970’s so there is no earthly reason why every country in the EU shouldn’t be a net contributor. If they cant contribute to the game without leeching of others they shouldn’t be on the field of play.
We are being dictated to by people that are taking our money & living off the drip feed of subsidies, they are junkies. Poland finds its economy growing for one reason its a junkie economy sponging off others & the same can be said for farmers across Europe. They squeal about the threat to their incomes if CAP is scrapped. Well if they cant make a profit they should charge more & it would be our choice of where we buy our food.
We would have more money in our pockets if we weren’t paying so much tax to fund CAP & people would be able to afford more expensive food or else buy from other markets like the Americas, Australia, China, India, Africa or the Caribbean to name just a few places.
Its not being Ultra right wing or a Ukiper to see what is so obvious, the EU doesn’t work for us. We don’t want to run Europe, we don’t want to lead Europe only 10% of the UK’s entire GDP is taken up with exports so the world wont come tumbling down if we became a closed shop not that I’m advocating that. I believe in Free Trade & Open economies. We do not need people we don’t relate to in other countries lecturing us about how we do or don’t do things.
The only way to pay the EU’s bills is to make those that profit the most, pay the most. Those with the biggest trade surplus in EU trade should pay the most, they might be inclined to spread their wealth around the Union a bit more & the UK which gets very limited access to the single market will pay very little.
What have you read about the causes of both World Wars?
So, what was the whole period about the British Empire in C19th? Would we not have just opted for creating the Commonwealth if it was all about spreading democracy, peace, equality, religious harmony and light? The fact that a number of countries campaigned violently in some cases for independence suggests that not all viewed British Empire rule with total benevolence, but with a hint of arrogance and nationalism about it. We weren’t alone or the first, but C19th was the height of the Nation State and overseas imperialist design to support it.
When you have read up on the causes of both World Wars, please remind me what they were and how the nation state defensive military alliances, financial reparations, trade protectionism and political extremism (assasination of an Archduke, by a Serb Nationalist, National Socialism) played no part in those causes.
@Joe There’s no formal restriction on services in the single market (in fact it’s enshrined in the treaties) the issue is that we have technical barriers to trade. The only way to solve that is through harmonising regulations across the EU. That’s what the bulk of EU legislation is aimed at doing and it’s the only feasible way to create a single market for services across Europe – which would be of huge benefit to the UK’s economy. We certainly don’t increase our chances of removing technical barriers to trade in services by leaving the EU altogether.
Saying “if we were outside of the EU we could introduce tariffs against countries that restrict our trade” is a bit besides the point. You don’t remove technical barriers by threatening trade wars. Most technical barriers are simply a result of different regulatory systems operating in different countries. You solve that problem by negotiating joint EU regulations across Europe, which is precisely what the EU is there to do.
That’s why the argument that we can substitute our EU membership with a free trade agreement doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense – to have genuine free trade you have to eliminate technical barriers, not simply sign a piece of paper and eliminate tariffs. You seem to see the benefit in that with your comment about the services market, but also view it as “other countries lecturing us about how we do or don’t do things”. We can’t have it both ways – either we harmonise regulations across Europe (by negotiating, not simply dictating, EU legislation) or we have barriers to trade that affect our exports, such as services.
It should also be said that 10% of GDP is a colossal amount. For context, the entire UK education budget is about 5% of GDP. The entire health budget is roughly 8% of GDP. You seem to be implying in your comment here that exports aren’t particularly important, and the trivial (in comparison) sum we send to the EU budget is more significant. For comparison, taking the percentage EU budget figure for CAP and comparing it with our gross contributions would amount to a UK contribution to CAP spending of about 0.22% of our total GDP. That’s a gross figure which doesn’t include any of the money we get back from CAP, and completely ignores that we’d also still pay agricultural subsidies to our farmers as a non-EU member state (which are currently paid through CAP).
If 10% of GDP doesn’t matter very much, then why are we putting such significance on the paltry sum of money going towards CAP? It’s barely a drop in the ocean.
I’m saying we are better at spending our own money than the EU is. They waste it bailing out other countries & rebuilding their infrastructure while we do it all with our own money. Even when we were broke in the 70’s we paid into the EU & I know you will say we get structural funds from the EU but it was our money in the first place, they are just telling us how we must spend our own money.
Access to the UK market is far more vital to the EU than is our access to their market. A significant portion of our exports to the EU don’t go to the EU they merely pass through via Rotterdam or Antwerp. Another significant export is Aeroplane Engines & Wings, well lets face it they have to have these regardless of whether we are in the EU or not or Airbus will have no engines to get off the ground or wings for that matter.
How long will it be before British companies can buy French or German utilities? & you say services are a part of the single market? in the real world they aren’t. We have been negotiating for 40 years to get Insurance & other financial services included in the single market, Blair gave away a large chunk of our rebate & still we don’t have EU wide access, how much longer should we wait? We lost our motor manufacturing base we stopped subsidising it indeed it’s illegal to subsidise industry with state money but no one has told the Italians or the French & the EU do nothing about it.
How does the EU benefit the UK? We run a £65 billion annual trade deficit with it, we pay a net donation to the EU budget of around £11 billion (enough to pay for the two aircraft carriers & put planes on them) & we implement so may EU laws that the average joe can’t afford to put the heating on as we have to pay 3 times over the odds for wind farm generated electricity that is so unreliable we have to have huge diesel generating farms sitting idle waiting for the wind to stop.
We don’t control our own utilities because we allowed EU countries to buy them in the spirit of the EU single market we have don’t our bit for the EU more than our bit & all we get in return is abuse & further misery inducing diktats.
The implication of what you’re suggesting here is that because we have a trade deficit with certain EU countries we would actively benefit from redirecting our trade to other parts of the world. That’s an often quoted argument, but it doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense when you break it down.
A trade deficit isn’t simply “lost revenue”. Some of the UK’s most valuable trading relationships are actually with countries who we have a large trade deficit with. A clear (non-EU) example is Norway, who we have a large trade deficit with because we import a great deal of Norwegian oil. Almost 50% of our entire total for oil imports comes from Norway – over three times what we import from anyone else.
Yet this trading relationship provides us with an extremely useful resource (oil) at a cheap price and from a stable provider. The idea that we would benefit from directing our trade away from a country like Norway on account of our trade deficit is clearly ridiculous. I’m sure you can accept that, so why would we use the same argument about our trade with the EU?
The other often quoted line here is the “access to the UK market is far more vital to the EU than our access is to their market” argument. This is again based on the strange notion that because we have a trade deficit with the rest of the EU (although by no means every individual EU country) we have less to lose than they do.
This is completely misleading because we’re not accounting for volume of trade. If the UK were to cease to trade with the EU it would wipe out a far larger chunk of our total trade. We’d lose access to 27 markets, while the EU would lose access to one market. We’d lose access to a market that accounts for 40-50% (if you want to quibble about the Rotterdam effect) of our exports, they’d lose access to a market that accounts for a much smaller percentage of their exports.
The problem with services is that we have technical barriers to trade and the best way to change that is by harmonising regulations through the EU. Open Europe have a good report out about how this might be achieved: http://www.openeurope.org.uk/Content/Documents/Pdfs/APPGreportservices2013.pdf
Incidentally, Germany has a larger share of the global services market than we do, so it’s not simply a case of the EU somehow intentionally excluding services just to undermine our economy. Creating a single market for services would largely benefit everyone.
we have been talking about this for 40 years & getting nowhere. We can buy what we buy from the EU cheaper from outside the EU. The cost of the daily shopping basket would fall dramatically if we weren’t forced by the EU to impose VAT & Duty on the import of food from outside of the EU. We are a captive audience with our options for trading controlled by the EU.
We will never get access to utilities & services because it requires unanimity to progress these changes & that’s not going to happen with countries like Germany & France pulling the strings.
You sidestepped essential exports that EU countries cant avoid buying from the UK. Rolls Royce have a semi monopoly on plane engines as that is what the customer that is taking delivery pf the plane insists that the plane will be powered with & as I said even if they had other engines they still need the wings & they are made in the UK.
Cars such as the VW golf are substantially cheaper in countries like South Africa, Beef is cheaper from Brazil or Argentina as it is also from the US or Australia or Canada. Lamb is cheaper from New Zealand or Australia. Cereal is cheaper from Canada, the US, Latin America & Australia even garlic is cheaper from china but we are locked into the EU.
We should be able to take our trade deficit & spend it where we want keeping our citizens weekly shopping basket cheaper & helping to control internal inflationary pressures rather than feathering the nests of farmers who’s practices are medieval by comparison.
Now to make things worse the EU wants to interfere in our national security & wants to force us to open our defense procurement up to continentals that we don’t trust & worse our allies don’t trust which would mean that we would lose access to the best intelligence & equipment for our armed services.
I accept European countries are our neighbours but we should be as neighbourly towards them as they are to us. They are not our friends, they have never stood along side us when it has mattered they have always seized the opportunity to damage our status in the world & if nothing else, outside of the EU we would get back our WTO seat.
Our biggest trading partner in the EU is Ireland & we have a free trade agreement from 1965 that covers that base which is valid as it predates the EU but everyone conveniently forgets to mention this.
@Joe The point about unanimity is somewhat outdated. When the Lisbon Treaty reforms become active in 2014 and beyond the number of unanimous voting areas will be at a historical low and the threshold for qualified majority votes will be further reduced.
It should be emphasised here that what we’re talking about isn’t some grand treaty establishing a single market for services (the treaties already state that there’s a single market for services – Article 56 in TFEU prohibits any “restrictions on freedom to provide services within the Union”). What we’re talking about are piecemeal items of EU legislation that eliminate barriers to trade by harmonising regulations. It’s entirely achievable to eliminate most (if not all) of the barriers to trade in services within the single market. This isn’t some fantasy that Germany or anyone else is capable of blocking (and why would they – Germany has a larger share of global services than we do). It’s just more difficult to achieve than the market for other areas – e.g. trading in cars doesn’t entail the same kind of regulatory, cultural, or language barriers that trading in services does.
As for the point about Rolls Royce, I can’t disagree, but the whole thrust of that argument – the “we matter more to them than they do to us” line – is just completely wide of the mark. It doesn’t really enter into the equation unless we’re talking in extremely primitive terms about tariffs – i.e. the EU wouldn’t impose a tariff on UK imports because they’d be worried about our retaliation. It really has to be said here that nobody – not the UK, the EU, not even UKIP – would advocate putting tariffs on exports between the UK and the EU (or vice versa).
When we’re talking about free trade here we’re talking about eliminating technical barriers, not tariffs. That’s something that you can’t do with a free trade agreement – a free trade agreement is just a piece of paper. If it were that easy we’d have established the single market for services years ago because we already have a treaty (TFEU) which explicitly prohibits restrictions on the provision of services. Saying things like “our biggest trading partner in the EU is Ireland & we have a free trade agreement from 1965” is just completely missing the point – a free trade agreement isn’t the same thing as eliminating barriers to trade. The only way to eliminate all barriers to trade is to harmonise regulations, which is what most of the EU legislation we love complaining about is actually there to do.
It comes down to this fact, we cant do trade deals because we are inside the Single Market but the UK’s largest industries still after 40 years no access to that single market & no matter what facts & figures we throw about between us is going to change that fact. We have a trade surplus with the rest of the world & we don’t have one with the EU. If the EU wants the UK in the EU we have to have access to the single market & the markets of every other member state just as they do to ours & to say we need to negotiate is not the answer you cant negotiate forever & expect to arrive at a different answer with you are dealing with such intransience. Dealing with the EU is like dealing with Argentina over the Falklands or Spain over Gibraltar, they will only negotiate if the result of those efforts leads to a verdict that suits their agenda.
“If the EU wants the UK in the EU we have to have access to the single market & the markets of every other member state just as they do to ours”
We have the same access to the single market as any other EU state. I think we’re confusing two completely different issues here. On the one hand every EU state has equal access to the single market, there are no tariffs, and most technical barriers to trade (not all, but most) have been eliminated. Every EU state agrees this is a good idea, that’s why it’s enshrined in the treaties.
However in certain cases there are largely unintentional barriers such as incompatible regulatory systems or other issues that still need to be eliminated. That doesn’t in any way mean we don’t benefit from the single market, what it means is that we need to produce more EU legislation and harmonisation to make the single market even more beneficial than it already is.
What you’re trying to imply is that somehow the single market is intentionally skewed in such a way that it benefits other countries, but not the UK. That’s just the wrong way to view the issue. It’s beneficial for us to remove barriers to trade in Europe full stop – we can’t argue that somehow we lose out from free trade when goods are concerned, but not when it involves services. Removing trade barriers is beneficial to our economy whether it’s for goods, services, or anything else. We might gain a great deal more if the EU could continue to eliminate barriers to trade in the services sector, but that’s precisely why we should be a part of the EU – to keep pushing that process forward rather than leaving and giving up on it altogether.
As for not being able to enter into trade agreements with other states, that’s presented here as being a simple negative, but it’s actually more complex than that. With EU external trade discussions we’re really weighing up the costs of being tied to a common policy against the benefits of having greater clout in negotiations by speaking with a single voice. China is an obvious example of where the EU has negotiated agreements that would have been beyond the UK acting as a solitary actor. Pakistan is an issue of where the UK has arguably lost out. Nobody is saying there aren’t costs and benefits here, but to use this example to argue against the benefits of the single market isn’t very convincing. There are as many benefits as there are costs when it comes to being tied to EU external trade policy.
As a final point, we’re ignoring the overall influence of the UK in Europe. The single market itself is something that the UK pushed for. It wouldn’t exist in its present form if it weren’t for the strong influence exerted by the UK over the last 30-40 years. Europe is our largest export market and single market legislation will still have an effect on our economy even if we leave the EU. If we’re going to give up that influence it has to be based on clear and unambiguous evidence. The regulation of the single market is of crucial importance to our economy – I really don’t see why we’re so eager to abandon our negotiating power and leave it to the rest of Europe.
EU countries have full access to our services & utilities sectors which are our biggest industry yet we don’t have full unfettered access to theirs how is that full access to a single market. We should pick the biggest industry from each of the other 27 EU countries & block them & then we have a level playing field. I know that’s barmy but that’s the only way the rest of the EU would open up their markets. Maybe we should close our borders to the further movement of EU citizens within the UK until we get a change? We wouldn’t be running up a colossal trade deficit with the rest of the EU if we had full access to their markets just as they do to ours.
There is only one sector that should truly remain outside of the EU & that is security & defense. Its not practical to give anyone outside of our trusted allies any more knowledge of our capabilities on matters of defense than is out in the open
The single market was a mistake, all countries need nothing more than a free trade agreement amongst natons not just in Europe but world wide. Why should Korea or Singapore have a better trading arrangement with the EU than we do?
@Joe “The single market was a mistake, all countries need nothing more than a free trade agreement amongst natons not just in Europe but world wide”
I agree that world-wide free trade would be the best of all worlds, but I think what you’ve said here illustrates one of the main problems in this debate. Your statement here implies that you believe a free trade agreement and the single market are essentially capable of providing the same benefits – i.e. all we need is a free trade agreement, we don’t need any of the other legislation that goes along with the EU and the single market.
In reality you can’t establish genuine free trade with a simple treaty. To give a concrete example: imagine that we created this world-wide free trade agreement, but that every individual country has different regulations in terms of the products which can and can’t be sold. In the UK, for instance, we might deem certain food products sold in other parts of the world unfit for sale (e.g. certain additives, and so on). In other countries, items that we sell might be deemed illegal (e.g. pork products in Saudi Arabia). If all you have is a “free trade agreement” then how do you solve these incompatibilities? How do you get to a situation in which any company, located anywhere in the world, can sell its product in any other country (without breaking any local regulations)?
The answer is that short of asking companies to manufacture hundreds of different variations on its product for sale in different markets (generating huge costs and therefore defeating the purpose of free trade) you need to have compatible regulations. You need to have a situation in which any product produced in the UK is able to be sold in any other country. That’s what the single market is there to do – to eliminate all of these “barriers” which still exist between European countries, even after they’ve agreed to the principle of free trade. A lot of these barriers are completely unintentional, it’s simply what happens when different countries have different rules.
So what you’re saying here (we don’t need the single market, we just need a free trade agreement) is basically saying that we should reduce the benefits from free trade and settle for a lesser option. If that’s what you believe then you’re entitled to that opinion, but we can’t pretend that the two things provide the same benefits. We’re talking at the end of the day about money – the single market provides more for our economy than a simple free trade agreement would. It’s complicated, it involves adopting countless items of EU legislation, and it’s difficult to achieve, but that’s the price we pay for increasing free trade.
Free trade means you aren’t restricted from the market place to long as your electric kettle has the right plug. we don’t want the whole world to be the same that creates a bureaucracy of meddlers. If someone’s good comply with our standards we should be able to buy them, its for them to make sure their wares comply just as we do now when we sell to Japan which as you know has totally different standards in their right hand drive cars to the ones we have in the UK. The US has different standards also & our manufacturers comply with their legislation to have access to that market. We don’t want a world of clones. Why should legislation of products sold in Singapore or Brisbane be the same as those sold in Iceland or Siberia? You get the point?
We either believe in free trade or we don’t. Your argument seems to be that you want a minimal version of free trade, but for some reason (a hatred of bureaucracy, a fear of meddling) anything else beyond that is a step too far. If you believe that then you don’t really believe in free trade at all – you’re happy for there to be barriers to free trade across the entire world, that have a tangible impact on our GDP, and just want some limited agreement about tariffs and other simple barriers.
My opinion is that the entire world gains from eliminating as many of these barriers to trade as possible. That doesn’t create a world of “clones” because most of these barriers are just random circumstance. Think for instance about the A4 sheet of paper – there’s no right or wrong size for a sheet of paper, yet by standardising that across the world it makes things easier for everybody (it fits into a printer, it fits into an envelope, etc.) If we’d followed your “anything more than a simple free trade agreement is unacceptable” line of argument here we would never have done that. We’d maintain pointless diversity (and diversity in the size of a sheet of paper is entirely pointless) for its own sake, and suffer a tangible economic consequence as a result.
If you want to argue for that – i.e. we should write off a certain percentage of GDP every year simply because the idea of having similar standards/regulations across the world touches a raw nerve with you – then fine, but I doubt many people would go along with you on that. Outside of the most controversial of issues (e.g. GM crops, certain additives, and so on) people don’t have a great deal of interest in the kind of technical regulations we’re talking about here. What they do care about is jobs, the cost of living, public services and all the other things which would be directly affected by your “rip it all up and replace it with a free trade agreement” policy. All for the sake of what? An emotional knee-jerk reaction against anything perceived as being overly bureaucratic?
You’re entitled to your opinion, but it’s curiously dismissive of the health of our economy. We should be doing everything possible to generate growth, not randomly slicing a chunk off our GDP for no real reason.
Uniformity does not create jobs & wealth quite the opposite. It reduces the numbers of peoples needed to produce goods as big international conglomerates produce all the goods for everyone at the cheapest price to them. That creates vast leverage for the companies concerned as nations rush to the bottom of the wages pile to secure the jobs.
You talk about Printers, have you ever tried to put a Brother ink cartridge into an HP printer? The trays open in 4 directions to take photo paper A5, A4 A3 or foolscap If there was uniformity the printers would all have one tray & one size of paper.
Paper is like the Ink that goes into the printer but not the cartridge by your way of doing things all mobile phones should be the same so we have one battery fits all, we all have the same screens, we all drive the same cars with the same headlights, tyres & exhausts as it will bring the costs down.
I believe in the free market where you can chose what to buy & where to buy it, If someone in New Zealand wants to be able to buy a Dyson vacuum cleaner & Dyson wish to sell it then a transaction should be allowed to take place just as it should in the United States except it should be set up to work on 220V instead of 240V.
When I buy on-line I specify a 3 Pin UK plug & that’s what I always get & anyone who thinks UK/Irish plugs aren’t the safest in the world is barking mad yet we are the only countries that use sold plugs that I have come across & I have been to a great many countries from Europe, Asia the Americas & Australia/New Zealand so who is to say what the right standard is? Should the Americans change their entire National Grid to come into line with Europe?
What are plainly divisive measures to free trade are media DVD’s, computers, Lap Tops, Games consoles etc that only play media which has been pre set to zones so that a DVD bought in America or Australia cannot be played in Europe which allows multinationals to milk peoples wallets because they think they have more so they should pay more for the same product it’s little wonder people use torrents when they are being fleeced these companies reap what they sow.
@ Joe
I’m not sure why this needs to be said, but the A series of paper is all the same sizing system, it’s simply different variants within that system. Having a standardised system doesn’t mean every single piece of paper in the world has to be an A4 – no more than a standardised system for measuring volume of liquid means we need to carry around water in exactly the same size of bottle at all times. I think you’ve misunderstood the principle.
“Uniformity does not create jobs & wealth quite the opposite. It reduces the numbers of peoples needed to produce goods as big international conglomerates produce all the goods for everyone at the cheapest price to them. That creates vast leverage for the companies concerned as nations rush to the bottom of the wages pile to secure the jobs.”
If you believe this then you don’t believe in free trade at all. What you’re essentially arguing is that making it easier for companies to trade in foreign countries is undesirable because it allows large multinationals to dominate global markets and creates a race to the bottom for wages. You can’t put that forward on the one hand and then claim to be in favour of unrestricted free trade on the other. They’re completely opposing principles. What you’ve written above is an argument for protectionism. There’s nothing wrong with having that opinion, but if that’s what you believe then it’s certainly not an argument for free trade.
I do agree with you about the region system with things like computer games, though. The problem with that is that it’s created by the businesses themselves – Nintendo, for instance, intentionally started producing variants of their games to allow them to stagger releases and charge different prices in different regions. It’s hard to prevent that short of some global solution, but as you say, the internet has given people a route to get around it themselves via torrents and whatever else.