Merged Now What?

[CapelDodger]

Of course we've still no idea what trade organisations, if any, the UK will be seeking to join, nor a clue as to its initial negotiating position. Brexit means Brexit, we got that, but since then nothing.

 

[Andy_Ross]

I fear rhododendron would conquer all.

You are very probably right, that and Japanese Knot Weed,

 

[Klimax]

Ah yes, MEPs, people who we elect to do the same sort of job Lords in this country do. Yet the people who aren't elected write the policies they vote on.

It's the reverse of the system we use in Westminster and the system we use in Westminster isn't brilliant, but at least we can kick out people who make policies we don't like.
If Commissioners were elected I'd be a lot less hostile towards the EU, but they're not.

There is an EU military policy and a military staff which works under the direct authority of High Representative / Vice President, (HRVP) Federica Mogherini, who leads the EEAS and chairs the Foreign Affairs Council and Defence.
http://eeas.europa.eu/csdp/structures-instruments-agencies/eu-military-staff/index_en.htm
This has no relation to free movement of goods labour capital or services.

The EU does not need a foreign policy chief or a military staff, it isn't a country.

You writer big words, but no understanding. Masive ignorance.

Your first sentence is massively wrong. EP has SAME role as your House of Commons not House of Lords. You want to read at least basics before engaging keyboard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament#Powers_and_functions

You are wrong even in your Comparison to Westminster. It is very similar to EU model. You showcase your ignorance, by trying to assert your model of government is different.
And another display of ignorance in your post is about commissioners, because you assert you would be less hostile if Commissioners were elected, yet they are direct equivalent of your Ministers and you don't elect ministers in GB.

Bloody hell, stop displaying your ignorance and start really studying WTF you are talking ab out. Currently, your posts are close to 95% being wrong and idiocies and those 5% are just accidents.

 

[McHrozni]

Do you REALLY think that the only way to have peace in Europe is by surrendering democratic powers to an unelected body of Commissioners?

Because frankly, I see the tensions which that body is causing.

The Commissioners are duly elected by the European parliament. Anyone who told you they aren't elected is lying to you.

In the light of this fact, do you want to change your argument or maybe withdraw from it completely?

That went 'well' didn't it, she played her part in causing a civil war.

I know Putin is also at fault here, but let's not excuse the behaviour of the EU in this. It's been disgraceful and people died.

You have an unprecedented ability to divert blame away from the culprit. Without Putler, there would be no war in Ukraine. Without Russian volunteers, mercenaries and regular army units there would be no war in Ukraine. You have quite the nerve to blame the EU for it, and then state "Putin is also at fault here". Yeah, he is. His share is exactly 100.0%.

McHrozni

 

[Lothian]

Seems Airfux's solutions are simply to replace all the existing EU benefits with new agreements. Basically replacing everything apart from representation.

 

[ddt]

There are 5,051,275 people in Norway.
12,001,787 CHF is paid into the EFTA budget by Norway every year.
EFTA's budget pays out for the EEA agreement.

12,001,787 CHF / 5,051,275 people = a cost of 2.375991606079653 CHF per person per year.

Assuming we were to pay 12,001,787 CHF per year into the EFTA budget ourselves;
12,001,787 CHF / 63,181,775 people = 0.1899564708335592 CHF per person per year.

However, we are in the EU, after rebate we pay £8,473bn going by this: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa..._finances_2015_final_web_09122015.pdf#page=44

8,473,000,000 / 63,181,775 people = £134.1051276258067 per person per year.

You're still harping on about only the budget of EFTA? There's more to it than just paying for the stationery and the paperclips of its secretariat to be able to participate in the EEA.

EFTA's FAQ:

How do the EEA EFTA States contribute financially to the EU?

The financial contributions of the EEA EFTA States to the EU related to the EEA Agreement are twofold.

First, the EEA EFTA States contribute towards reducing economic and social disparities in the EEA through the EEA Grants. Currently the beneficiary states include Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. In addition to the EEA Grants, Norway has funded a parallel scheme since 2004 – the Norway Grants. The funding period covering 2014-2021 has a total financial envelope of approximately EUR 400 million per year. These contributions are not managed by the EU, but by the EFTA Financial Mechanism Office in collaboration with the beneficiary countries.

Second, the EEA EFTA States contribute towards the EU programmes and agencies that they participate in on the basis of the EEA Agreement. These contributions are added to the EU budget, increasing the total financial envelopes of the programmes and agencies in question. For the current 2014-2020 EU multiannual budget period, the total EEA EFTA contribution to EU programmes and agencies is approximately EUR 460 million per year.

That's EUR 860mn/year in total, for Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

The UK's population is something like 12 times that of those countries, so the UK's contribution, by simple multiplication, would be something like EUR 10bn/year.

 

[McHrozni]

The UK's population is something like 12 times that of those countries, so the UK's contribution, by simple multiplication, would be something like EUR 10bn/year.

According to todays' rate, this would be approximately £8.7bn/year, which is actually somewhat more than his purported saving. The number is not going to be smaller by any amount that's worthy of mentioning, but UK would still sacrifice the ability to make the rules for it.

It would seem Lothian had it exactly right. Airfix's 'plan' would only replace everything, except representation.

McHrozni

 

[ddt]

And Tony was wrong.
We can remove them by voting out our own government.

The Commission, which is what he was complaining about, is representative of the member states governments.

This has been explained in this thread more than once...

Moreover, the European Parliament has two powers:
1) it must agree with every appointment of a single Commissioner
2) it can send the whole Commission home

The only gripe I could have with that is that (2) does not apply to single Commissioners.

Now if only European citizens would go to the polls at European elections, and not have these shamble turnouts of 30-40% - because the MEPs have real power, and the EP has evolved into a real parliament. The biggest democratic deficit here is the poor backup by popular vote.

 

[ddt]

Seems Airfux's solutions are simply to replace all the existing EU benefits with new agreements. Basically replacing everything apart from representation.

And he's forgetting one little problem.

Whitehall has no people skilled in negotiating trade deals. The Brits with those skills work in Brussels.

 

[The Don]

The administration of tariff free trade itself is very cheap. It is merely the abolition of customs tariffs across a bloc.

The EEA is heavily subsidised by the rest of the EU.

It's like claiming that it costs me pennies to drive the mile to and from the village. Whilst it may cost a few pence worth in fuel, it ignores the considerable costs of owning the car in the first place.

It's very likely that the price of the UK joining the EEA will be similar to the per capita costs of the existing EEA members who are not in the EU. That works out to be in the same ballpark as the existing EU membership.

Of course post-Brexit we will have the temporary (for a couple of decades) cost of running the Brexit department and the permanent cost of running the international trade department - and probably additional costs in other departments of doing things that our EU membership covers us for.

 

[ddt]

It is likely there would be another referendum.
I suppose there would need to be one, to decide how Brexit would be achieved. The option of how we leave the EU stated in the last polling card, was left wide open.

If such a referendum were to occur and the options were as follows:

*WTO MFN rules.
*EFTA - EEA agreement (pre existing free trade agreement).
*Seek new free trade agreement.

I would go EFTA EEA. It's the option of least disruption.

We've already established that we're leaving the EU, so yeah, we need to decide what the next step should be.

If the options were those three, plus "Stay in, because it's better than any of the above," and #4 won, what then?

Dave

Obviously it would have to be ignored, because 51.89% of the votes in a referendum were for the option he liked, so any future referendums who show a result he dislikes are undemocratic and to be ignored.

That's the standard, anyway. He might be an exception, but I doubt it.

McHrozni

The problem with the outcome of the referendum (and actually with the way it was set up) is that those 51.89% were split among those three options Airfix mentioned, and then some - most Leavers had no concrete idea what they then wanted in place in EU membership, least of all Nigel and Boris.

When you look properly at the options, there was a plurality for "Remain".

 

[The Don]

And he's forgetting one little problem.

Whitehall has no people skilled in negotiating trade deals. The Brits with those skills work in Brussels.

According to the latest edition of Private Eye, the department in charge of Brexit has managed to recruit 30 people with the word "Director" in their job title but exactly zero of the 300 or so skilled negotiators that they need.

Of course as comedian Dara O'Briain pointed out, skilled negotiators don't come cheap because they are exceptionally good negotiators, especially on their own behalf .

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

The problem with the outcome of the referendum (and actually with the way it was set up) is that those 51.89% were split among those three options Airfix mentioned, and then some - most Leavers had no concrete idea what they then wanted in place in EU membership, least of all Nigel and Boris.

When you look properly at the options, there was a plurality for "Remain".

And the blame for that one lies squarely with Cameron.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

According to the latest edition of Private Eye, the department in charge of Brexit has managed to recruit 30 people with the word "Director" in their job title but exactly zero of the 300 or so skilled negotiators that they need.

Of course as comedian Dara O'Briain pointed out, skilled negotiators don't come cheap because they are exceptionally good negotiators, especially on their own behalf .

The line I heard was that they've found 100 of the 1000 people thy are looking for. I haven't heard what the budget for the department will b but it must be hundreds of millions.

 

[McHrozni]

The line I heard was that they've found 100 of the 1000 people thy are looking for. I haven't heard what the budget for the department will b but it must be hundreds of millions.

Well, they still have a couple of months to find the rest. I'm sure they will be able to, but will probably be somewhat lacking in the quality of required skills.

McHrozni

 

[ddt]

Ah yes, MEPs, people who we elect to do the same sort of job Lords in this country do. Yet the people who aren't elected write the policies they vote on.

MEPs are wholly unlike the Lords. The Lords can only hold up legislation, not veto it, since 1909. MEPs can vote proposed legislation down, they can amend it, and if I'm not mistaken also introduce it. Of course, most legislation is introduced by the Commission, but so is most UK legislation introduced by the cabinet.

It's the reverse of the system we use in Westminster and the system we use in Westminster isn't brilliant, but at least we can kick out people who make policies we don't like.
If Commissioners were elected I'd be a lot less hostile towards the EU, but they're not.

The EP votes on approving individual Commissioners and can kick the Commission out.

There is an EU military policy and a military staff which works under the direct authority of High Representative / Vice President, (HRVP) Federica Mogherini, who leads the EEAS and chairs the Foreign Affairs Council and Defence.
http://eeas.europa.eu/csdp/structures-instruments-agencies/eu-military-staff/index_en.htm
This has no relation to free movement of goods labour capital or services.

The EU does not need a foreign policy chief or a military staff, it isn't a country.

You may not be aware of the lesser known Western European Union, which was a defence treaty and was subsumed into the EU in 2009.

 

[Craig B]

There are 5,051,275 people in Norway.
12,001,787 CHF is paid into the EFTA budget by Norway every year.
EFTA's budget pays out for the EEA agreement.

12,001,787 CHF / 5,051,275 people = a cost of 2.375991606079653 CHF per person per year.

Assuming we were to pay 12,001,787 CHF per year into the EFTA budget ourselves;
12,001,787 CHF / 63,181,775 people = 0.1899564708335592 CHF per person per year.

I'm confused. Should the UK with 63 million people pay the same as Norway with 5 million? Is that a reasonable expectation?

However, we are in the EU, after rebate we pay £8,473bn

Thousands of billions? Is that correct?

 

[MCel58]

The problem with the outcome of the referendum (and actually with the way it was set up) is that those 51.89% were split among those three options Airfix mentioned, and then some - most Leavers had no concrete idea what they then wanted in place in EU membership, least of all Nigel and Boris.

When you look properly at the options, there was a plurality for "Remain".

The problem with the referendum was that the leave campaign used any populist argument to convince people to vote leave. So we had
1. Migration and the fear of the U.K. being over run by migrants.
2. Protecting the NHS
3. Sovereignty which is mainly an English argument because most Scots and Northern Irish do not feel sovereign in their own lands. This is perhaps why remain did so well in Scotland and Northern Ireland and of course in Gibralter.
4. The general EU bad,UK good argument
5. Better trade deals and more jobs
6. Security and borders
It is almost impossible to come up with a deal that will deliver all of this or in fact any of it in a way that anyone will be happy with the outcome. So I actually would like Theresa May to stop saying Brexit means Brexit (which is basically an empty slogan) and to say actually what Brexit will mean.

 

[ddt]

Cheaper food ? No. this is the organisation which dreamed up CAP subsidies to farmers including a fallow land subsidy, food mountains and tariffs on agricultural products from outside the EU.

Maybe a bit of history is in order. Not to seek an excuse for the excesses of the CAP, but to explain its motivations, at least the motivations of its main designer, Dutch Commissioner Sicco Mansholt.

During the winter of 1944/1945, there was a famine in the Netherlands, the "hunger winter", notably in the western urbanized area around the big cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague. The Dutch railways were on strike since Market Garden to support the war effort and the Nazis refused to run trains, so there was little transport of food from rural areas to the cities. Many city folk, like my mom and her siblings, went out on bikes on "hunger trips" for tens or even 100 miles to procure basic food like beans and potatoes from farmers. The famine cost approximately 22,000 people their lives, an unequaled occurrence in a rich, first-world country.

Mansholt was himself a rather well-to-do farmer and a social-democrat. He was active in organizing food supply to the starving city folk. And this famine has made a lasting impression on him and given him his main motivation, both in his job as Dutch Minster for Agriculture and later in his job as European Commissioner for Agriculture: never again hunger.

 

[ddt]

I'm confused. Should the UK with 63 million people pay the same as Norway with 5 million? Is that a reasonable expectation?

My guess is that Airfix has built himself all the airplanes he's mentioned upthread.

His error in Brexit solutions is that he there also applies a scale of 1:72.