Far from voting such a thing down, the US is such a thing.
Exactly. Why would the sovereign state of West Virginia, to take one example, be willing to surrender any of its sovereignty to Washington? What benefits does West Virginia from surrendering its sovereignty like it has?
Innnnteresting. Also a Murrican, I was 63% Remain, 50% Approval of the Government’s deal, 56% Canada Plus, 56% Norway Deal, and 38% No Deal.
Very nice. I guess I understand, but it seems different. In the US, the states were small and subject to attack from larger outside forces…like the UK.
However England/UK dominated the world for centuries and has been independent for a long time. I could see how it could agree that a free trade zone of some type was beneficial to them, but such a surrender of sovereignty seems, well, foreign to me.
For example, I read somewhere (no cite) that the EU requires member-states to ban the death penalty. Without debating that subject, why would the EU becoming so demanding on a such a subject that seems to me to be one wholly internal to the member-states. Even if you were a harsh DP abolitionist, wouldn’t you still like to make that decision in London, thank you very much?
Because the countries have agreed that the subject of fundamental human rights, which they have decided includes non-use of capital punishment, is not a wholly internal matter.
And other parts of the union wouldn’t work very well if that hadn’t happened. For instance, the member states have agreed to mandatory extradition of criminal suspects, exchanges of intelligence between law enforcement agencies, etc. That wouldn’t work very well if there were no guarantees about what the other party could do.
Your second paragraph works well in the United States even though some have the DP and others do not.
But again, not to debate the DP, however I think that is what started down the road to Brexit. The DP is a human rights issue, so no member-state can have it. Then the next issue is very important so all member-states must do it. And so forth with the next issue, the next, and the next.
If the EU would have stayed simple, I don’t believe there would have been such a backlash against it in the UK.
A Spanish veto may not be a legal right, but it is a clear political right which was granted to Spain by the EU.
The EU guidelines were leaked in March this year:
The EU gives Spain a Brexit deal veto over Gibraltar in leaked guidelines
Germany and France also don’t have a legal veto, but as a political reality, no deal will go through unless Germany and France approve it. The EU wants above all to show unity over Brexit. They don’t want an agreement forced through against the will of countries with a stake in the outcome.
You’re right that this is one of the main issues with the EU, and one of the main objections to it (the bloody foreigners steiling are jerbs one is a minor one overall). But regardless of what you or I might want, countries are not economically or socially isolated these days, and what happens in other countries massively affects what happens in yours. So some level of cooperation and compromise is necessary, as is some level of similarity. Giving up a huge part of our economy just to take human rights laws in house, and make a few minor changes, seems to me to be massively unbalanced.
I’d like a stronger economic and weaker political union, but that’s not an option right now, and is unlikely to ever be one. Of the options available, it’s clear that leaving the EU, under whatever circumstances, will cause great harm to the UK. It’s my opinion that nothing we could gain could outweigh that harm. It’s possible that someone could believe that the gains could be worth it, but since the leavers have spent all their time lying about the harm that will be done, it’s hard to say whether anyone actually does believe that.
Capital punishment, etc. is certainly an issue, but it is not the foundation of the EU, or even particularly important compared to other matters.
The basis of the EU is the four freedoms:
- Free movement of people and workers among countries
- Free movement of goods
- Free movement of capital
- Freedom to establish and provide services
This means that there must be overall standards, regulations, and legal procedures that apply across all member countries.
There can’t be different standards if you want a level playing field for goods and services. e.g. If a product can only be manufactured with high safety standards in one country, and can be manufactured more cheaply with lower standards in another country and freely imported without customs checks, this is obviously not going to work.
There are many complex issues that are regulated centrally, and the advantage is the free flow of goods, services, labour, and capital within the EU.
A similar provision really didn’t work well, though. It was in the same section of the Constitution, and similar in structure, but it referred to slaves rather than criminal suspects, and it caused an actual war.
But the death penalty stuff is actually very minor. It was easy to include because everyone was already doing it. Other human rights stuff does cause occasional aggravation, though.
I think the death penalty is quite a bad example of something members states could decide for themselves. They probably could decide for themselves and the union would still function, although it is necessary for human rights to be respected similarly for reasons of labour laws and competitive advantages for countries more willing to exploit people and extradition and such.
But the death penalty seems to me like a nice, quick test on if there is any point at all in joining our club. If you want to join badly enough to change that, then come on in. If you want to cling to this barbaric practice then we’re just never going to see eye to eye on other important stuff. We’re too different. That’s fine, we’ll do regular trade and we can all be in the Olympics but you can’t be in our union.
It’s a good test precisely because the member states, by and large, don’t disagree on this fundamental issue. It seems like exactly the sort of thing an American would object to, but then you don’t want to be in our union so that’s fine. It’s a nice and easy deal breaker. Like not dating smokers or people who have dogs or something - if that’s not what you want then be up front and clear about it!
I don’t think Brexit is happening because people want the death penalty (except for some fringe nutters). I think (one reason) Brexit is happening because politicians have lied about being forced by Brussels to pass certain unpopular measures, when it was their own decision.
“Domination”?
The UK has benefitted - and continues to benefit - from EU membership economically, politically and culturally. When one strips away the emotive language and looks at the reality of it, the UK will lose far more from Brexit than it gains.
48.1% of us recognise we are no longer an empire, aren’t as great as we seem to think we are, and that being part of a larger community is ultimately for the greater good.
When the UK dominated the world, we weren’t exactly the good guys.
The EU started as a treaty organisation focusing on trade between European countries. It started as a deal between France, West Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg to co-ordinate Coal and Steel production. The general idea was that countries bound by trade links have a vested interest in compromise and negotiation rather than military conflict. It made a lot of sense after WW2. All these countries had been invaded by Germany and this was a good way of keeping an eye on its industrial production.
The UK tried to join on several occasions, but its application was vetoed by that towering figure of French politics, General DeGaulle. Who regarded the UK, with its imperial trade links and its close relationship with the US as being politically and economically incompatible with European integration. British policy had traditionally been to oppose the domination of Europe by any one power and in the post war years it was busy trying to hold on to its empire.
DeGaulle died in 1970 and the UK joined what was then called the ‘Common Market’ in 1973 and so began a difficult relationship. The political trajectory of the European Union is towards ‘ever closer integration’. Sometimes they would use, what in the UK politics was called the ‘F’ word. Federalism.
The European Union has adopted several of the features of super state. Single currency, Free mobility of labour, Free Trade between members. The extends to agreeing conditions for membership that reference the democracy and human rights. These become elements of a constitution. Indeed, there was a move to replace the complex set of interstate treaties with a written constitution. That failed because some states required such a change to their laws to be endorsed by referendum. Interestingly it was an Irish Referendum stopped it. The intention was to make the EU more of a democracy. It remains a contradiction that the EU probably would not accept itself as a new member.
Nonetheless European integration continues, mainly at an economic level. It has enabled Europe wide supply chains to develop for manufacturing and many pan Europeans collaborations: Airbus in aviation, ESA for rocket launchers. It has enabled pan european Big Science projects. Common standards and tariffs for for important businesses like Telecoms, Pharma, etc. Politically, and of particular interest to Germany was the economic support and stabilisation of the former Soviet Satellite states. This is something like a Marshal Plan following the fall of the Soviet Union. The single market is now about 500million people in 28 countries. It negotiates trade treaties with the many other countries and economic blocks.
Membership costs approximately 1% of GDP. This is not much to pay for access to huge trading market.
Despite these positives, in the UK the impression of the EU has generally been wholly negative. While in Europe the general attitude is that the EU is a good thing. In the UK it has always been the target for attack, especially from the Conservative party and right wing press. Each member state can elect members of the European Parliament according to its population size. In the UK there was a great lack of interest in this an it was used as an anti-authority protest vote. Electing characters like Nigel Farage and the UKIP party or others further to the Alt-Right who did little more than collect their expenses and make the odd speech in which they expressed contempt for the European institution to which they were elected.
UK politicians of all parties took the position that they ‘will be tough on Europe’ and they try to appease emotional concerns about uncontrolled immigration. The Brexit vote to leave did not come as any sort of surprise to many observers.
The US is a super state with Federal system of government that has been developed over a couple of centuries. Its economy has an enviable flexibility, it has free mobility of labour, a single currency, national standards, free mobility of capital. The EU is simply trying to achieve the same thing and finding it difficult. In the US finding the balance between States rights and the authority of the Federal government has not been easy and it remains a bone of contention.
The EU hasn’t really had an economy the size of the UK leave before. As one of the major contributors to the EU budget, others will have to make up the shortfall. That burden will fall on France and Germany. For the UK, it has the not inconsiderable task of negotiating new trading arrangements with the EU and many other countries.
I am trying to think of an equivalent with the US. Maybe if a contributor the size of the California economy seceded from the Union. It would blow a big hole in the Federal budget and then, there would have to some new deal with the US and lots of other deals with Pacific rim countries.
The UK will be paying the EU for some years to come if it wants access to the single market. But it won’t have any say in the decision making. I am looking forward to our UK politicians reaching out to the rest of the world trying to cut trade deals as best they can. Best of luck with that.
The European Convention of Human Rights and the Council of Europe are separate from the EU (although since the Lisbon Treaty, the Union and all its members are part of it).
As it is on the issue of the Death Penalty, there are two Protocols, Protocol 5 and Protocol 13. The latter is optional and deals with wartime DP use for crimes like treason and sedition.
I think it was only this year that all EU Member States ratified Protocol 13. Before that, several had Capital punishment on the books for treason and wartime offences and were member states in good standing.
While politically of course, executing, Tim, Tomaz or Toni Traitor would be iffy, certainly its not and never beem a bar to membership.
I’ve given up on reading the Brexit agreement.
In process news, it looks like newly reinstated Cabinet Minister Amber Rudd has torpedoed the already slim chances of the WA passing Parliament on its first attempt.
The only prospect for success that the WA had was that MPs who didn’t like it had an even stronger dislike of No Deal, and might therefore grit their teeth and pass the WA purely to avoid No Deal. Specifically, while Tory MPs who don’t like it split between those who would take No Deal and those who want No Brexit, Labour MPs are much more skewed towards “any deal better than no deal”; peeling these off Labour could in theory get the WA over the line. But they’d have to believe that a) No Deal was the likely outcome of derailing the WA and b) that by voting against their party they could save the WA. No point in rebelling just to help May lose by less.
Amber Rudd, interviewed this morning, suggested that there was no Parliamentary majority for No Deal (probably true) and that therefore Parliament could be relied on to stop No Deal in the event the WA failed (how?). This kind of throws a spanner in the works of the government’s plan to get the WA through, because it suggests to MPs afraid of No Deal that they can vote down the WA and still avoid crashing out of the EU in March. In fact ,when challenged on this during PMQs, May said that voting down the deal would lead to uncertainty and could mean “no Brexit at all”.
If this is a plan, it would seem that May and her advisors think they can win Hard Brexit types over to the WA by threatening them with No Brexit - a reverse of the strategy above of winning Soft Brexit types over by threatening them with No Deal. Sadly for her, she can’t brandish both threats at the same time. If it’s a plan, the calculation must have been done that the votes she needs to win are the Hard Brexit ones.
It might not be a plan - in times of stress communications strategies break down and Rudd may have been doing no more than saying what she really thought. In which case, she’s left May scrambling.
Don’t blame you - there’s a reason lawyers need to go through years of extra training to do wha they do. 585 page treaties written in dense legalese are not going to be digestible for a layperson.
(May has had fun scoring off Corbyn with the cheap point that he admitted he hadn’t read it. Of course he hasn’t. Neither has she. But Corbyn makes it easy for her by getting bits wrong - today on Northern Ireland regulations under the backstop - and he should of course have been well-briefed on the bits he’s going to speak about.)
May has also been alluding to the possibility of rejecting the deal leading to Brexit being stymied altogether, so I think this is a communications strategy, not an error on Rudd’s part.
But, you’re right; it will be a difficult strategy to pull off. They have to simultaneously persuade ultra-Brexiters that voting down the deal is likely to lead to losing brexit altogether, and to persuade Remainers that voting down the deal is likely to lead to the hardest of hard crash-out brexits. Both of these things can’t be true, and signals aimed at persuading one group to support the deal may also tend to stiffen the other group’s resolve to oppose it.
Plus, the UK is hugely influential within the EU - something like 97% of EU decisions go the way the UK has voted, so (if you must analyze it in those terms) the UK gets its way over other countries much more often than other countries get their way over the UK.