British Prime Minister David Cameron knows that at some point, the democratic will of the British people with regards to Europe will have to be heard. Even though he has insisted that Britain should remain in the EU for now, Foreign Secretary William Hague told BBC journalist Andrew Marr on Sunday that there may well be a €powerful case€ for a referendum on Europe at a later date.
The costs for Britain to remain in the EU are staggering. Overall it costs the UK around 65bn a year (US$102bn) to remain in the EU, or put another way, 1,000 for every person in Britain each year. Broken down further, it costs the UK 28bn a year to comply with business regulations; 17bn a year from additional food costs associated with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP); 3.3bn a year from fish stocks lost thanks to the Common Fisheries Policy, and 14.6bn a year paid into the EU budget and other miscellaneous funds.
The Working Time Directive, which is designed to limit the number of hours which people work, costs the UK 11.9bn a year in lost productivity. Should Britain leave the EU, the net contribution saved would be around 6.7bn a year. That could pay for 22 new hospitals AND 134 new schools every year.
The argument is always made that too many British jobs depend on continued membership of the EU. But this conflates access to the European market (which Britain needs) with membership of the EU (which Britain does not necessarily need). Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Lichtenstein (the European Free Trade Association of EFTA countries) have access to the European market, without being burdened by the associated costs of EU membership.
Britain has been running a deficit with Europe for years, well into the billions. In other words, the likes of Germany and France have way too much to lose by penalising the UK, especially now with all the economic woes in the Eurozone. In fact Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear that the EU must negotiate a trade deal with any EU state which leaves the union.
Should Britain just have a free trade deal with Brussels, and not be in a customs union as it currently is, it is estimated that the UK would save around 20bn in payments to the EU budget annually, as well as yearly net costs of 65bn. Without the Common Fisheries Policy, Britain would not be forced to throw half of all fish which have been caught back into the sea, after they have died. Without the Common Agricultural Policy, British farmers could grow the food which the country needs, with direct benefits for the poorest in the land.
Of course there are two whopping great counter-arguments which any Eurosceptic must address when the issue of leaving the EU and joining EFTA is put on the table. The first is the so-called €fax diplomacy€ issue. That is, British bureaucrats would, like their Norwegian and Icelandic counterparts, be sitting by the fax machine waiting for the latest diktat to come in from Brussels, without having had any input on its particulars.
But the vast majority of single market regulations which the EFTA countries have to implement tend to be technical in nature and are limited to very specific aspects of their economies. Since 1992, Norway and Iceland have only adopted around 3,000 European acts. But most of these acts are so inconsequential they have only required Norway and Iceland to pass around 50 statutes. They never refer to things such as tax rates, fishing policy or budgetary matters.
There are formal consultation mechanisms built into the European Economic Accord which allows the EFTA countries to have an input into the acts which they must adhere to. It should not be forgotten that since 1992, the UK has received over 18,000 acts from Brussels, most of which refer to bread and butter issues such as employment, immigration and agriculture. In any event Britain could, like the Swiss, just negotiate bilateral treaties with the EU, synchronising regulations only when it wishes to.
The second issue is geopolitical. Britain, the theory goes, is way too small to go it alone in the context of a declining West and rising East. Well Europe is a demographically dying continent. Across the continent fertility rates are in the 1.3-1.5 per woman range. Germany alone will need at least 7 and possibly 16 million people in the coming decades to plug the gap in its labour market. There has never yet been a case in recorded history of demographic decline going hand-in-hand with economic prosperity.
While the EU made up around 36 per cent of global GDP in 1980, it will make up only around 15 per cent in 2020. At the very time Britain needs more trade outside of the old white man's club in Brussels, as an EU (but not an EFTA) state, it is restricted from negotiating free trade deals with non-EEA countries on its own, even with countries which the UK is in a personal union with: Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The last point is especially salient. Just as the rise of the East is a little over-done (China will almost certainly overtake the U.S. economically in nominal GDP terms, but Japan and Korea are demographically dying, while corruption in India seems to be sabotaging economic potential there), Europe's fall could possibly only be matched by America's decline. While the U.S. could fix its problems more readily than Europe can, the U.S. has incalculable levels of debt which, at the rate of US$1 a second, would take half a million years to pay off in full.
When one considers America's debt levels and certain other factors in the country, as well as Europe's political and economic backslide, it is Australia, Canada and New Zealand which emerge as just about the healthiest Western countries in terms of economics, demographics, finances and resources. Unlike the Nordic countries, which are constrained by space and liveable space at that, Australia and Canada could feasibly triple or even quadruple their populations without seriously compromising living standards.
Europe's demographic crisis is now compounded by net emigration of some of the brightest and best, with these Commonwealth countries, as well as Latin America, benefitting from the outflow. Far from a relic of colonialism, the constitutional and cultural ties with the likes of Australasia and Canada could prove to be the lifeline for Britain in an age where Europe and the United States are both set on a course of secular terminal decline. As Britain's renewed ties with Sierra Leone demonstrate, Britain still carries enormous clout in the Commonwealth. Britain, the global seafaring nation, could however die if it remains tied to the dying European continent
The costs for Britain to remain in the EU are staggering. Overall it costs the UK around 65bn a year (US$102bn) to remain in the EU, or put another way, 1,000 for every person in Britain each year. Broken down further, it costs the UK 28bn a year to comply with business regulations; 17bn a year from additional food costs associated with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP); 3.3bn a year from fish stocks lost thanks to the Common Fisheries Policy, and 14.6bn a year paid into the EU budget and other miscellaneous funds.
The Working Time Directive, which is designed to limit the number of hours which people work, costs the UK 11.9bn a year in lost productivity. Should Britain leave the EU, the net contribution saved would be around 6.7bn a year. That could pay for 22 new hospitals AND 134 new schools every year.
The argument is always made that too many British jobs depend on continued membership of the EU. But this conflates access to the European market (which Britain needs) with membership of the EU (which Britain does not necessarily need). Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Lichtenstein (the European Free Trade Association of EFTA countries) have access to the European market, without being burdened by the associated costs of EU membership.
Britain has been running a deficit with Europe for years, well into the billions. In other words, the likes of Germany and France have way too much to lose by penalising the UK, especially now with all the economic woes in the Eurozone. In fact Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear that the EU must negotiate a trade deal with any EU state which leaves the union.
Should Britain just have a free trade deal with Brussels, and not be in a customs union as it currently is, it is estimated that the UK would save around 20bn in payments to the EU budget annually, as well as yearly net costs of 65bn. Without the Common Fisheries Policy, Britain would not be forced to throw half of all fish which have been caught back into the sea, after they have died. Without the Common Agricultural Policy, British farmers could grow the food which the country needs, with direct benefits for the poorest in the land.
Of course there are two whopping great counter-arguments which any Eurosceptic must address when the issue of leaving the EU and joining EFTA is put on the table. The first is the so-called €fax diplomacy€ issue. That is, British bureaucrats would, like their Norwegian and Icelandic counterparts, be sitting by the fax machine waiting for the latest diktat to come in from Brussels, without having had any input on its particulars.
But the vast majority of single market regulations which the EFTA countries have to implement tend to be technical in nature and are limited to very specific aspects of their economies. Since 1992, Norway and Iceland have only adopted around 3,000 European acts. But most of these acts are so inconsequential they have only required Norway and Iceland to pass around 50 statutes. They never refer to things such as tax rates, fishing policy or budgetary matters.
There are formal consultation mechanisms built into the European Economic Accord which allows the EFTA countries to have an input into the acts which they must adhere to. It should not be forgotten that since 1992, the UK has received over 18,000 acts from Brussels, most of which refer to bread and butter issues such as employment, immigration and agriculture. In any event Britain could, like the Swiss, just negotiate bilateral treaties with the EU, synchronising regulations only when it wishes to.
The second issue is geopolitical. Britain, the theory goes, is way too small to go it alone in the context of a declining West and rising East. Well Europe is a demographically dying continent. Across the continent fertility rates are in the 1.3-1.5 per woman range. Germany alone will need at least 7 and possibly 16 million people in the coming decades to plug the gap in its labour market. There has never yet been a case in recorded history of demographic decline going hand-in-hand with economic prosperity.
While the EU made up around 36 per cent of global GDP in 1980, it will make up only around 15 per cent in 2020. At the very time Britain needs more trade outside of the old white man's club in Brussels, as an EU (but not an EFTA) state, it is restricted from negotiating free trade deals with non-EEA countries on its own, even with countries which the UK is in a personal union with: Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The last point is especially salient. Just as the rise of the East is a little over-done (China will almost certainly overtake the U.S. economically in nominal GDP terms, but Japan and Korea are demographically dying, while corruption in India seems to be sabotaging economic potential there), Europe's fall could possibly only be matched by America's decline. While the U.S. could fix its problems more readily than Europe can, the U.S. has incalculable levels of debt which, at the rate of US$1 a second, would take half a million years to pay off in full.
When one considers America's debt levels and certain other factors in the country, as well as Europe's political and economic backslide, it is Australia, Canada and New Zealand which emerge as just about the healthiest Western countries in terms of economics, demographics, finances and resources. Unlike the Nordic countries, which are constrained by space and liveable space at that, Australia and Canada could feasibly triple or even quadruple their populations without seriously compromising living standards.
Europe's demographic crisis is now compounded by net emigration of some of the brightest and best, with these Commonwealth countries, as well as Latin America, benefitting from the outflow. Far from a relic of colonialism, the constitutional and cultural ties with the likes of Australasia and Canada could prove to be the lifeline for Britain in an age where Europe and the United States are both set on a course of secular terminal decline. As Britain's renewed ties with Sierra Leone demonstrate, Britain still carries enormous clout in the Commonwealth. Britain, the global seafaring nation, could however die if it remains tied to the dying European continent
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