[quote=“Gain”][quote=“OrangeOrganics”]
Not true, many hate the EU in France.thelocal.fr/20160330/france- … han-the-uk
Of course Germany are doing well, the EU has gifted them a cheap currency to benefit their exports.[/quote]
I said young people. The middle-aged and older population are usually more Euro-skeptic as they tend to blame all their problems on the easiest target, aka the Union.
The arguments of how the UK would just be like Norway upon Brexit are all extremely simple-minded.
Norway is a part of the European single market, it follows almost all the EU rules and also pays the EU a ton of money annually. The only reason why they did not join the EU is that they wanted to keep their fishing rights, which is subjected to the Common Fisheries Policies of the EU and the EU’s exclusive economic zone. By bypassing the EU, Norway and Iceland retain their fishing rights, but they do comply with pretty much everything else. It is the same deal with Switzerland. If they don’t, then there will be negative consequences coming from the side of the EU. For example, after the Swiss referendum on limitation of access of EU immigrants, the EU suspended Switzerland’s membership on the Erasmus programme, which is why there are so few Swiss exchange students in other European countries as the free grant was cancelled.
By leaving the European Union, the UK would also leave the single market (well Cameron himself said so), which essentially puts the UK in the same position as any other non-EU states, and all the tariffs will come back.
The background of this is WTO’s MFN (most favoured nation) principle. All the WTO member states agreed to apply a minimal standard on reducing tariffs and trade barriers so that the flow of trade would be a lot smoother back in the days, and the MFN principle was come up with in order to prevent discrimination, and it requires all member states to treat all nations equally. However, exceptions are allowed, which is called preferential trade agreement, the European single market is one of them. Other examples include North American Free Trade Agreement, Southern Common Market, ASEAN, and all the FTAs.
So if the UK leaves the EU, it would pull out from this preferential trade agreement, then it would have to impose all the tariffs on the imported goods and services from the EU, and vice versa (which means the EU would have to impose all the tariffs on the imported goods and services from the UK).If both the UK and the EU decide that they will eliminate the tariffs between them, they will have to do the same to all other countries due to the MFN principle, including manufacturing power houses like America, Japan, Korea, China etc.
The EU takes up about half of the UK’s trade, if the UK leaves… well I guess the result is pretty evident. The UK is not really a manufacturing power like Germany is, the brightest sector is easily its finance, and that is largely based on its status as the gateway to the largest and richest single market in the world. If the UK leaves that market, it loses that gateway status, then it’d not be a stretch to say that the whole thing would go down in the toilet.
Sure, it wouldn’t be easy on the EU but they could manage as there are 27 other member states, and quite a number of them are pretty healthy and competitive economically, however, it would be absolutely catastrophic for the British economy.
And that’s just the economic part of the reasoning of why the UK should remain.[/quote]
Are you British? Have you lived in the UK?
You are talking in generalist terms that mean little to the majority of people. The country is unfair. Everything you are talking about affects the metropolitan elites and the haves. People in the North feel that their party was stolen from them by the the Blairites and now they are reacting.
I would rather have a poorer, fairer country, than a richer one where half the population are written off as collateral damage.
) it comes across as. They simply don’t understand the social and political context. I’m staying off it so I don’t tell my boss to fuck off. 