11 ms·

So then it IS apparently possible to have a free trade zone without freedom of movement.

• pavlov 8y ago
  Of course it is. The EU isn’t that, though. The withdrawal agreement negotiated by May does fulfill those criteria, but Brexiters still don’t like it — fancy that.
  • blibble 8y ago
    let's be accurate here: the reason the brexiteers (i.e. the ERG) don't like the withdrawal agreement is that it gives the EU effective control of the UK economy without any mechanism for the UK to leave that arrangement without the EU's permission which is the sort of term a victor of war forces on a defeated party the ERG agreed earlier this week that if this part of the agreement is dropped they will vote for it, otherwise it will never be accepted
    • kingkawn 8y ago
      Except the U.K. was an equal member of the EU and participated in the development of its rules
      • AnaniasAnanas 8y ago
        More than equal as far as I know.
    • jmanderley 8y ago
      Tough luck, the UK gave up its voice in the EU willingly. No one forced Brexit on you.
      • arethuza 8y ago
        Perhaps worth reminding everyone that a lot of people in the UK (probably the majority by this point) are actually pro EU.
        • isostatic 8y ago
          And more people in the US voted for Clinton than Trump, yet here we are.
      • smcl 8y ago
        Well Brexit kind of is being forced upon the people Scotland and Northern Ireland who voted to remain (and, as Arethuza correctly noted, it's now likely that a majority of the UK population overall are against it anyway).
        • asnrk 8y ago
          That the narrow result of a single vote is seen as sufficient justification to wildly swing a government's policy in a new direction with huge effects over decades is... baffling to me. Watching it happen is like seeing something announced by someone pretending to be a US President in a Saturday Night Live sketch and then, the next day, everyone treating it like a real thing that had happened and the whole state's policy shifting to reflect those statements, and no-one acting like that's extremely weird and insane.
          • smcl 8y ago
            You’ve put my feeling into words far better than I could have
      • dalore 8y ago
        Actually it kind of is. The majority don't want it. People got tricked into voting for it (heck no one knew what they were voting for). A slim majority hold everyone hostage by saying will of the people, everyone who voted knew they were voting for no deal. Lot's of deception and big money on the leave side with possible Russian troll bots trolling away on facebook riling up English pride etc. A major change like that should not have been decided by a slim majority. Normally changes in parliament that are big require some super majority. It was a dubious narrow win, and according to polls the old people who voted leave are dead and it's a clear majority to remain. You got a small group of hardliners in the majority government holding them hostage. The government who lost most of their seats in the vote after the referendum (kind of showing that people didn't really want it) but only held on due to a sneaky pairing up with a small Irish party called the DUP. No one wants the deal offered, no one (but a few hardliners) wants no deal. Most want to remain but it's being forced on us because "will of the people". It's madness.
    • Tomte 8y ago
      Well, it's the UK's obligation to preserve the Good Friday Agreement. You can't blame the EU for that obligation. I'm pretty sure that fifteen years ago, nobody would have thought that "let's keep the bombings" would be a coherent and respectable opinion. Things have changed.
      • blibble 8y ago
        this is a constant talking point amongst politicians trying to push a narrative without having read the treaty if you'd take the time to read the good friday agreement you'd realise there's nothing about customs controls or a border anywhere in it
      • Silhouette 8y ago
        Well, it's the UK's obligation to preserve the Good Friday Agreement. The legal technicalities of that are debatable, but let's assume for this discussion that there exists a clear legal obligation to do so. Which specific obligation(s) under the GFA do you think would or would not be satisfied by which specific proposal(s) that have been made in relation to the NI/Ireland border?
        • barrkel 8y ago
          We're not talking about law; we're talking about hearts and minds, identity, nationalism, the stuff that causes wars and keeps peace.
          • Silhouette 8y ago
            The same question applies either way: Which specific obligation(s) under the GFA do you think would or would not be satisfied by which specific proposal(s) that have been made in relation to the NI/Ireland border? A lot of rather non-specific claims seem to get made in debates around Brexit, of the form "someone must do something to avoid violating the GFA", but without any supporting argument about why. The Agreement is publicly available and not a long document, so anyone can read it. I think it would further useful and interesting debate if more people did, because it doesn't actually say what quite a lot of people seem to think it does.
    • mpweiher 8y ago
      Actually: no. Not even close. 1) The backstop is just that: a backstop. It applies only if and as long as the "frictionless" arrangements for the NI border, which everyone wants and everyone has very publicly said they want, doesn't happen. So as soon as that happens, no more backstop. 2) UKGov claimed that this frictionless trade technology/mechanism exists and can be made to work, but in the months (or years) couldn't actually come up with a single bit of evidence that this is actually so. So the EU said, hey, we believe you can come up with this, and we will do our best, but in the meantime we have to have some sort of guarantee in place for the off-chance that it doesn't work. So now parts of UKGov and the press are screaming bloody murder that the backstop will keep the UK in shackles "forever". Huh? You told us that you have this way of making the border frictionless. If that's actually true, why is the backstop a problem? So were you lying to us? 3) The only requirement is for the frictionless arrangements/backstop to apply to Northern Ireland, in order not to endanger the Good Friday Agreement, which, incidentally, is a binding agreement voluntarily entered into by the UK (so effectively part of the UK constitution). Extending this to the whole of the UK was something UKGov demanded.
      • Reason077 8y ago
        "UKGov claimed that this frictionless trade technology/mechanism exists and can be made to work, but in the months (or years) couldn't actually come up with a single bit of evidence that this is actually so." The Norway-Sweden border would be one example. Just like Ireland-Northern Ireland, they are not in a customs union but allow free movement of people.
        • Tomte 8y ago
          You need to distinguish freedom of movement (people) and a customs agreement (goods). Sweden and Norway are both Schengen members, so they have explicitly agreed on freedom of movement for people. That does not say anything about goods. But I don't know why such an arrangement could not work with the UK (both the UK and Norway are members of the European Economic Area) – presumably because the UK wants to leave that as well, because they want to go it alone and not align their trade policies with the European partners?
    • barrkel 8y ago
      There are people who identify as Irish and hold Irish passports who live in Northern Ireland and would be cut off from the Republic without the backstop. It's precisely the making of national identity a non-distinguishing factor that underlies the peace process. The backstop is publicly popular in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland voted by a substantial majority to Remain. The DUP is the only party that voted against the peace agreement. It was the UK who wanted the backstop to be extended to Great Britain, not the EU.
      • oaiey 8y ago
        I am so confused why a nuclear power is so worried about a line in a contract. Breaching a contract always happens and as long as something good comes out of it no one cares. AND everyone wants to have a good outcome here. No one wants an explosive Northern Ireland again.
        • AndrewDucker 8y ago
          Are you suggesting that the UK makes the EU trade with it by threatening to nuke it if it doesn't? Because that's horrifying, and I can't see how else to read your comment.
          • oaiey 8y ago
            No not at all. They negotiate like two normal entities. But I think it is funny to have a nuclear power being scared about a line in a contract it signs. It can just declare: I ignore that line and then wait what the other side will do. The worst case is that the EU is also breaking the contract - maybe completely - which is then ... the same as no-deal.
            • barrkel 8y ago
              I don't really see what relevance nuclear weapons have on trade agreements. Trade is an iterated cooperation game. Nuclear weapons have no second turn.
            • 8y ago
    • notahacker 8y ago
      If you're going to open a post with "let's be accurate here" then it helps to post something which is remotely close to the truth. The withdrawal agreement ensures that the UK will leave the EU entirely within a fixed period with the exception of a tiny, economically isolated region which actually voted to remain, which would continue to be subject to some Single Market rules (to its immense economic benefit) under a temporary provision unless and until it was replaced by a subsequent agreement or an arbitration committee was persuaded that the UK had devised a customs regime which didn't conflict with the UK's separate legal obligations to uphold the GFA and WTO trading rules. Which is the sort of term that people claiming to want to launch a new era of trade agreements with the whole world and claiming that the Irish border could be adequately solved with technology wouldn't be particularly bothered by if they believed what they were saying. (Irish Unionists have more obvious reasons to oppose the deal due to the symbolic importance of an Irish Sea border and their own interpretations of the GFA)
      • chimeracoder 8y ago
        > Irish Unionists have more obvious reasons to oppose the deal due to the symbolic importance of an Irish Sea border and their own interpretations of the GFA I'm not super caught up on the deal and the various takes. What is this referring to and what interpretation of the Good Friday Agreement is unfavorable to the deal?
        • notahacker 8y ago
          The thrust of the GFA is that changes to the constitutional status of NI and other devolved decisions should be agreed between representatives of the respective unionist and republican communities (or in the case of NI choosing to leave the UK, by referendum). A customs border down the Irish Sea might not pose as many practical problems as a land border but is a pretty dramatic change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland which unionists who consider NI to be an integral part of the UK naturally oppose. (the DUP don't talk up the GFA angle, not least because they actually originally opposed the GFA and aren't exactly upholding the spirit of it themselves, but there's a legitimate argument that the spirit of the agreement was also intended to protect unionists from having major constitutional changes imposed upon them without their consent or a public vote)
  • nicoburns 8y ago
    nobody likes the withdrawal agreement.
• ousta 8y ago
  Yes ofc it is possible. the freedom of movement is just a way to dump bluecollar workforce into richer economies so that wages don't go up. educated workforce most of the time has legal ways to get a visa and has freedom of movement regardless of europe "freedom of movement"
  • jashmatthews 8y ago
    Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands were all fairly evenly developed when they formed the original EEC in 1957.
    • edhelas 8y ago
      Is that really true? Are we still fairly evenly developed and having the same economy now?
      • close04 8y ago
        Same, no. But in a reasonable reference frame, "evenly developed", probably. I think the point made is that obviously the whole "freedom of movement" concept didn't come as a trick to "dump bluecollar workforce into richer economies so that wages don't go up". Even assuming this was the sole purpose of it today (an extremely ignorant opinion if you ask me, and one that I don't see being backed by OP with evidence) it still doesn't prove that that's what "freedom of movement" is for. At best it would show that that's what it became. It's more or less like saying that cars are for polluting the environment. They may or may not pollute but certainly that's not their defining trait, rather just a side-effect. Unfortunately much of the population commenting here was born in a "freedom of movement" environment as such they have very little personal experience with its benefits for anyone. They did however read an article in the Sun once.
• NLips 8y ago
  See here for a brief description and comparison of: - the EU single market - an EU customs union - a free trade area https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36083664 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36083664
• afrisch 8y ago
  Of course. As a matter of fact, UK was never part of the Schengen Area.
  • skrause 8y ago
    Freedom of movement and Schengen Area are not the same thing.
  • tomp 8y ago
    It still benefitted from freedom of movement (which is defined as the ability to live, work and study abroad, and lack of discrimination between EU citizens and locals).
    • growlist 8y ago
      'benefitted'
      • ionised 8y ago
        Yes, the UK benefitted greatly from the massive net positive contribtuions that immigration had on its economy.
        • smcl 8y ago
          I mean when you look at it purely from a "are we all demonstrably better off in the EU" perspective then sure the UK has benefitted from membership. If however you look at it from the point of view of "I hate people who look or speak different" the it's a different and frankly more miserable situation. I think the person you were replying to was of the latter persuasion.
          • growlist 8y ago
            The lazy racism smear.
        • growlist 8y ago
• entity345 8y ago
  No-one ever claimed otherwise. The EU is not a "free trade zone".
• matt4077 8y ago
  Nobody ever said it wasn’t. See the famous Barnier Diagram from the very start of negotiations: https://goo.gl/images/AqyD7w https://goo.gl/images/AqyD7w Note the Canadian flag on the far right (pun imtended). It was one of the options on offer.
  • repolfx 8y ago
    No, it wasn't. The EU is not insisting that parts of Canada obey EU law automatically and are effectively different countries as a result, which is what it's currently demanding of the UK. Nor did the EU demand tends of billions of euros from Canada in return for nothing in particular. The EU has actually never been willing to discuss trade deals with the UK, let alone "let's be like Canada". So far it's refused entirely to even start such discussions. Barnier says a lot of things, as do others involved in the EU, but those things aren't consistent.
    • matt4077 8y ago
      The billions are not arbitrary, but to settle obligations arising from the UKs past membership, such as pensions for their EU personell. You obviously know that and are pretending to be ignorant, considering it was all over the news at the times.
      • jayalpha 8y ago
        "The billions are not arbitrary, but to settle obligations arising from the UKs past membership, such as pensions for their EU personell." No UK monkey was ever able to understand this. "Just walking away will make this obligations disappear". And "paying them is the fee that we get all the EU rights with no obligations".
      • repolfx 8y ago
        No, there are no such obligations at all. Every lawyer who has looked at this reached the same conclusion. The treaties are very clear. Two years after invoking Article 50 all rights and obligations terminate. Pensions are obligations of the EU itself, not the UK. The fact that the EU has failed to invest properly into a pension fund and is structuring its pensions as a ponzi scheme is not the problem of former members.
• nnq 8y ago
  ...but why would anyone ever want that?! If people are able to move freely, then each country should be able to apply tariffs to extract benefits from the economic gradients. If people can move freely, then that's the ideal. Institutions, governments, "nations" and companies that collapse because of the free movement of people deserve to collapse and should be left to due so. The should even be "helped" to collapse faster and harder, making sure they never rise again!
  • nnq 8y ago
    Edit typo 2nd para: "If people are NOT able to..."