The Student Room Group

EU

what are the benefits of leaving the EU?
Reply 1
Original post by abdul gorim
what are the benefits of leaving the EU?


We no longer have Farage as an MEP.
Depends on what you value, and indeed how we handle our exit. Some stated possible benefits are:

- Controlling immigration
- No longer contributing to the EU budget
- Reaffirming parliamentary sovereignty
- No longer being subject to the ECJ
- Less regulation
- Freedom to create one's own trade agreements, rather than having the EU do so which can be slow and cumbersome

The above are fiercely contested, but I daresay everyone who voted to leave was motivated by things like this
Conversely, while we could control immigration, business and agriculture depend on cheap foreign labour, so we would be crippling our economy by doing so...reference the ferocious backpedaling by dozens of leading Leave supporters shortly after their Pyrrhic victory.

We may not have to contribute to the EU budget (depending on our future EU relationship), but the loss of Single Market access may mean any money saved disappears into the aether that is economic recession.

Parliament may become more sovereign, but that depends on your definition of sovereign - after all, in this whole Brexit debate, Parliament's role has been rather ignored. If anything, Parliament's sovereignty has been undermined by the referendum. Also, we make deals with foreign entities all the time that restrain what Parliament can and can't do regularly - witness WTO and WHO rules and regulations, for example.

Regarding regulation, many of the EU's regulations will continue in existence but on a UK level, as oftentimes it is the UK that demands such high standards from its European neighbours and gets them enacted in Brussels. Outside the EU, we will be obliged to continue with them in order to keep our products and services compatible with the trade arrangements of our nearest and greatest trading partner. Furthermore, many of the EU-level regulations served to ensure a level playing ground for the entire EU, meaning in practice that regulatory burden fell - better one big enormous document to fill in than 28 of them, after all.

As for the speed of signing trade deals, there's no real evidence that the EU is any slower than any other country in terms of making them. We'll have to see, but smaller countries tend to get messed around with more by larger ones, so an advantage of EU membership will be cut away.
Reply 4
Original post by gladders
loss of Single Market access




Won't happen
Original post by OllieMc
Won't happen


So you think the UK will accept freedom of movement?
Reply 6
Original post by gladders
So you think the UK will accept freedom of movement?


Nope.

Access to the single market does not depend on accepting free movement. Being a member of the single market does.
Original post by OllieMc
Nope.

Access to the single market does not depend on accepting free movement. Being a member of the single market does.


Access to the Single Market means membership. If you simply mean getting the ability to trade with those countries that are Single Market members, that would still be a huge drawback for the UK.

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