My opposition to the EU is essentially down to the fact that it works badly. Everything that the UK government does not do well at, the EU does even worse. Let me list some prominent examples…
Single currency (Eurozone):
Normally, an ailing economy’s currency depreciates, which encourages inward investment and domestic spending. The aggregate nature of the Eurozone means that it is difficult to appreciate or depreciate in value.
This makes it harder for ailing economies to recover from recessions.
It also prevents the citizens of more successful economies from enjoying the fruits of their prosperity by having a strong currency to spend on imports.
Common Fisheries Policy (CFP):
Supposed to encourage sustainable fishing, but fails badly: fishermen discarded catch that exceeded their quota. Then they banned discards, worsening the problem – fish that exceed quotas have to be landed and turned into fertiliser/landfill.
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP):
Supposed to centralise farm subsidies to ensure food security, but the different output of different countries meant that it is unfairly distributed – productive economies with low proportion of agrarian land like the UK gets short-changed.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):
Intended to protect individuals’ data, it is not only contradictory – individuals have a right to have their data removed, but businesses need to retain individuals’ data for compliance with regulatory authorities such as the FCA.
GDPR is not even enforceable – the EU does not have authority to compel compliance on businesses outside the EU. Furthermore, it has grown into such a cumbersome beast that you now require (very) expensive certified consultants to ensure you properly meet their criteria.
Copyright Directive:
Meant to protect the intellectual property of creators, but it is impractical and unenforceable. Technology does not exist for online platforms to monitor all copyright breaches, so enforcement has to be an expensive manual process, prone to error/abuse.
Common external tariff:
High taxes are imposed on imports on imports from outside the EU in order to protect domestic industry. But the outcome is that consumers face higher costs of imports and developing countries with weak economies suffer lower demand from the EU.
VAT:
It is bad enough that the UK taxes its citizens for consumption – the EU forces ALL its member states to apply VAT – a tax for simply buying and selling. This kind of tax hits the poor the hardest, those who have to spend more of their income than they invest.
Approach to legislation:
The UK’s approach to legislation is reactive – laws are made only when the need arises. The EU’s approach to legislation is to make laws on everything that is not already legislated over – even if there is not a need; even if it creates cost without bringing about any benefit.
Democratic deficit:
In the EU, most laws are instigated and drafted by the Commission, who is appointed, not elected. In the EU, the only elected body is the European Parliament, whose legislative power amounts to little more than rubber-stamping.
The fundamental problem:
These problems fundamentally stem from the nature of the EU as a political project of uniting Europe into a single political entity, necessarily centralising power into the hands of the few.
The European super-state project is doomed to failure because:
1) Europeans do not have a cohesive demographic – it doesn’t even share the same language;
2) centralised governments are very poor at management.
In contrast to the EU, the USA only manages to be successful because of its 1) high level of governmental devolvement, 2) great emphasis on liberty, 3) shared history of European emancipation and abolishment of slavery, 4) shared language.
The EU shares none of these qualities. It has ambitions of rivalling the USA but its approach emulates the USSR and other failed political super-state projects.
This post was originally published by the author on his personal blog:
https://hoongwai1984.wordpress.com/2019/04/04/the-reasons-for-my-opposition-to-the-eu/
Magnificent and succinct list. Thank you.,
90% conjectural and 10% bullshit (or just plain wrong as we should put it politely)
The EU has also failed in terms of government financing. 19 nations share a common currency, the Euro, but each nation must issue its own bonds to finance government deficits. There is no common EU bond, no consolidated debt, no banking union. Some individual countries like Greece and Italy have debts more than 130% the size of their economies. This is unsustainable and will inevitably lead to a crash. But try telling the voters in Germany and Holland that they have to be on the hook for Greek and Italian debt. Good luck with that.
I object to the EU because it is a vehicle for strife in Europe.
Good fences make good neighbours, and good neighbours can co-operate on matters of mutual interest. That’s why the EEC was so remarkably successful.
However, the EU is knocking down the fences. Far from creating a Europe of sweetness and light, far from bringing the peoples of Europe into an ever closer union, by bringing the governments of Europe together, the EU is driving the peoples of Europe apart.
The peoples of Europe want to be able to live in accordance with their idiosyncratic customs and traditions in their own lands. The EU imposes on this. Harmonization and common regulation prevents them from doing so. This is why there is more dissatisfaction with the EU in every member state than was ever the case with the EEC when it was in existence.
During the days of the EEC, one never saw demonstrators in Athens carrying placards equating the German Chancellor to Herr Hitler. During the days of the EEC, when Audi adopted its (very successful) advertising strap-line “Vorsprung durch Technik”, there was no dark muttering about a “Fourth Reich”.
The EEC allowed the peoples of Europe to keep their fences, and as a result, if one nation did better than another, those who lost out accepted that, for whatever reason, they’d done things their way, but someone else doing things another way had done better. Today, with the EU imposing harmonization on nation states, when one country does less well, the people blame it on the nation states which did better, declaring that they must have rigged the game in some way. That’s just human nature. However, it demonstrates one of the mechanisms by which the EU, by knocking down fences, is driving the peoples of Europe apart.