Other European countries do enjoy a better relationship with the EU

 

Jeremy Warner writes for the Telegraph this morning, arguing that Britain is unlikely to get impressive results out of any renegotiation associated with the EU treaty. He is right that a lot of the minor changes we’ve heard rumours about would be welcome but, in the grand scheme of things, “don’t add up to more than a hill of beans”, but if the Government is more aggressive there is a real opportunity here. As our Chief Executive Matthew Elliott wrote for his blog at the Daily Mail recently, there is a “a golden opportunity to claw back powers from Europe” if the Prime Minister is willing to seize it.

Matthew gave a list of demands that we should be making, not an exhaustive platform but a very good start:

• Rejecting the European credo of ‘ever closer union’
• Providing for UK law to take precedence over EU law
• UK withdrawal from the atrocious and costly Common Agriculture Policy and Common Fisheries Policy
• A cut to the UK contribution to the EU budget – which has increased by some billions of pounds since the last Government threw away the rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher
• A UK opt-out from the Social Chapter which suffocates business with red tape and restricts the prospects for job creation
• Ending British contributions to the EU’s International Development aid budget – so much of which is unaccounted for
• Pursuing multinational defence ventures through NATO and only multilaterally via Brussels on an ad hoc basis
• Allowing the UK to taking full control over Justice, Home Affairs, Asylum and Immigration policy once again
• Restoring full UK control over taxation, particularly VAT

Jeremy writes that such proposals would be “red-line issues” for both Germany and France, and as a result our “position in the internal market would become marginalised. We’d end up like Norway, forced to adopt most of the foibles of the eurozone to keep trading with it, but with no say in its constitution.”

It is actually a a myth that Norway, and the other countries in a similar position like Iceland or Switzerland, are really in that unfortunate position. Lee Rotherham wrote about this for the publication Controversies: From Brussels and Closer to Home:

The content of the [European Economic Area] Agreement is updated very regularly, but – and it is a huge ‘but’ – it can be blocked if either side does not want to include any single element of the acquis. Each individual EFTA state has a veto on the entire agreement, since it is shared between the EEA and the EU acting as two parties. This also means that national parliaments have a veto too.

He went on to cite a number of cases which show that the resulting regulatory burden is far greater than that felt by EU member states:

Firstly, according to a report by the EFTA Secretariat in Brussels for the Icelandic Foreign Ministry that was published in May 2005, only some 6.5% of EU regulations, directives and decisions had fallen under the EEA Agreement over the first eleven years of its existence, a total of 2,527 pieces of legislation. Of those only 101 required a change to Icelandic laws already in place.

[...]

There was a similar question raised in the Norwegian parliament in 2004 about how much EU legislation had been implemented under EEA terms. The then-government replied that over the period 199702993 there had been 11,511 pieces of legislation adopted by the EU. Of those 2,129 fell under the EEA agreement, or about 18.5 per cent.

[...]

From its cost-benefit analysis, Berne assessed that the cost [to Switzerland] of continuing bilaterally with the EU would run at 557 milion Swiss Francs; gaining EEA terms would cost 737 million CHF; and joining the EU would come with a net annual billion of 3.4 billion CHF, and a gross bill of 4.94 billion Francs.

Britain’s position is far stronger than Jeremy suggests. We don’t have to fear Norway or Switzerland’s fate. It wouldn’t be so bad. So the Prime Minister should be able to go and demand the repatriation of powers, that should never have gone to Brussels in the first place, with confidence.

http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/home/2011/11/european-countries-enjoy-relationship-eu.html