"Using the pool" is not a good analogy here. The EU has been trying to force airlines to become majority EU owned. That's not a "pool" that's being "used". It'

"Using the pool" is not a good analogy here. The EU has been trying to force airlines to become majority EU owned. That's not a "pool" that's being "used". It's a simple economic attack in retaliation for leaving. The EU also tried to force euro clearing out of London again, although it appears they just gave up on that and ESMA decided the EU would allow it to continue in the UK. Which is odd because losing the financial passport was supposed to spell certain doom for the Euro clearing market, but apparently it wasn't that easy for the EU to forcibly relocate all that business. Being able to sell services to people in Europe is not a pool - it's the absence of artificial blockades. The EU is doing or threatening to do lots of things that aren't comparable to a sports club. In fact it would appear that most of the "benefits" of EU membership appear to merely be the absence of various forms of economic attack. There's no technical reason why the EU has to implement these policies after all. It's just that if they didn't impose artificial penalties on non-members, membership would be even less attractive than it already is.