In the not-crazy part of the Eurosceptic Blogosphere one often finds the idea that the EU should be converted (or converted back) to a pure Free Trade Zone, or alternatively (because most Eurosceptics I can read are British) that Great Britain should leave the political EU and just keep the Free Trade part. On first sight, this looks like a great idea. Free Trade, free movement, essentially everything beneficial about the EU, but without the quarrelsome Brussels Bureaucracy.
But establishing a Free Trade Zone does not simply mean cutting duties on imports. One needs to establish common standards, common copyright and patent laws, common competition laws
and so on.
To control and administer those rules it is than helpful to establish a neutral agency administering all that. Well and now we are back where we started from: you need some EU bureaucracy.
If Britain would "simply" leave the EU but would still stay part of some free trade agreement, this would essentially mean that Britain would still have to abide to all the rules without having any say about it. I fail to see the advantage of that to the current situation.
Friday, 9 November 2007
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3 comments:
These Free Trade Zoners often talk about 'mutual recognition' of standards. That will never work, though. But it just occurred to me that the English don't actually make anything anymore. So it will just be our standards that they will have to deal with.
«If Britain would "simply" leave the EU but would still stay part of some free trade agreement, this would essentially mean that Britain would still have to abide to all the rules without having any say about it. I fail to see the advantage of that to the current situation.»
This is exactly what Norway and the other remains of EFTA have today. I chuckle a bit every time I read suggestions about the UK (or another member state, although I've never come across that, maybe because of language barriers) doing the same. It's a perfect example of "taxation without representation" and not sustainable in the long term.
Good post.
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