Re: EU Launches First Legal Case Against the UK.
Originally Posted by
Bread
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Ofcourse the EU is to blame. They have free movement or we would do what the swiss do and turn them round at the border.
Now you mention the swiss, thought about this? I bet not.
In theory, the transition period could end in late 2020. Will it then finally take back control from the Brussels bureaucrats? Not quite.
Start with regulation. The EU forged 28 different nations (including the UK) into a single market by unifying regulations across countries, allowing businesses to sell easily in all countries. This has created a market as vast and as integrated as any except for the domestic markets of the United States and China.
Roughly half of the UK’s trade is with the EU. The figure is slightly higher if countries such as turkey, which is not in the EU but is in a customs union with Europe, are included. If britain wants to trade with the EU—and it does, given the vast trade flows—it will have to agree on a set of rules governing product safety, food standards, and other regulatory measures.
For decades, british media have condemned the EU for imposing unneeded regulations, covering topics as banal as the shape of bananas. Brexiteers have promised a “bonfire of the EU laws,” as the Daily Mail put it. But british firms looking to trade with the EU are unlikely to see regulations going up in smoke. Any product that is jointly assembled in the UK and EU is still likely to follow EU laws. So, too, are many foreign products sold across Europe. It will be easier to follow the rules of the bigger market. (The EU’s economy is more than five times bigger than britain’s, depending on how you calculate.) And if british firms want to sell in the EU, they will still follow brussels’s rulebook. There are so many regulatory battles on the horizon that it may seem like brexit never actually happened.
The same is true for trade deals. It has been three years since the british government began negotiating its own trade deals with other countries. Thus far, london has signed deals with partners, including georgia and jordan, that constitute only 8 percent of british trade. These deals have proved not that the UK is an independent trading nation but rather that it continues to accept EU rules. Indeed, its biggest new trade deals, including with south korea and norway, are openly*advertised*as changing nothing.
The swiss, with whom the UK has also signed a trade deal, provide a template for what will come. Switzerland also stands outside the EU, but many swiss firms choose to implement EU laws because it makes cross-border trade easier. Switzerland’s government, meanwhile, finds itself in nearly constant battles with the bossy brussels bureaucrats over whether it must implement new EU rules governing the two countries’ trade. The swiss usually put up a weak fight and then surrender. Access to EU markets is worth the humiliation of having laws dictated from brussels.
In the three and half years since the brexit referendum, the UK has found itself in a position of swiss subservience but has not yet come to terms with the new reality. It is no longer a member of the EU, but it has not really left. The flag has been hauled down, but the detested regulations remain. Sovereignty will be circumscribed so long as britain wants access to EU markets. Brexiteers will describe this as betrayal, but it is especially good news for them. They can keep blaming everything that goes wrong on brussels. It will feel almost as if britain never actually left. Chriss Miller.