The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[ml1dch]

30 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

I am asking hypothetical question - the entire debate is hypothetical.

Nothing has been agreed, nothing is confirmed, we don't even know that the UK will definitely leave the EU. For all we know we might have a government crisis looking at how things are going, a general election, different leaders and a new referendum.

I just don't like panic before we know any facts and there seems to be a lot of it at the minute.

It's hypothetical panic, like your hypothetical questions.

We know for a fact that aircraft currently leave and land at UK airports as a result of an EU treaty.

We also know for a fact, that if that treaty ceases and something isn't put in its place, aircraft will not leave and land as there will be no legal basis for them to do so.

Now, the thing that allays the panic is the "something put in its place" bit. If it's sorted, no drama.

The thing that exacerbates the panic is that Chris Grayling is dealing with it by trying to liaise directly with individual countries, who can't arrange a bilateral treaty with the UK.

So it could all be fine, but on the evidence there is good reason for the hypothetical panic.

Edited September 18, 2018 by ml1dch

[blandy]

14 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

Well, then we would have to see how much impact each one of these had. For all we know the 56 might have been much more important than 2592.
I guess I'm discussing ideas, not individual policies.

This implication that we're obliged to follow rules, as a member of a (in this case) Union being potentially a bad thing, or a loss of sovereignty, is possibly valid, to a degree. It's also true that in the world of aviation, for example, as it was just mentioned, we have to follow the rules of the ICAO. As a member of NATO we have to follow rules on how much we spend on defence and on various other matters. We have to follow the Geneva convention. We have to follow WTO rules....

In essence, any modern nation benefits from membership of various legal and collective groups for trade, for co-operation, for defence, for employment, for import and export and...

It may be that a nation might not always, wholeheartedly want to adopt the "club" rules, and then either their complaints get adapted to, or they put up with it for the wider benefit they gain. It's not some kind of horror show, it's not anything to fear or rail against. It's beneficial, and the theoretical loss of some mythical "sovereignty" because the EU or NATO or ICAO requires plugs to be fused, or mobile phones to work abroad at reasonable fees...

These Brexit campaign people sowed an "idea" that we are all being shafted, and it's bollex. Get to an yspecifics and all they can do is bluster generalities. An argument built on falsehoods and sand. (And I don't much like the EU).

[NurembergVillan]

In terms of the trading benefits, a corporate / high street example would be Intersport.

Not so prevalent in the UK now (ironically - thanks Mike Ashley!) but still the biggest sports "retailer" in the world.

They are all independent retailers, and they have opted to become part of Intersport in order to gain the collective buying power and other associated benefits.  There are things that they all have to stock and marketing campaigns they all have to run - it's compulsory as part of being in the group.  They also have freedom to choose from other products that Intersport's head office have sourced as "options" for them.

But if they weren't part of the group, then what?  What would Adidas charge a single retailer ordering 5 Man Utd shirts compared to Intersport ordering 5 million?  Would the independent retailer be able to put a marketing campaign together featuring Ronaldo and Neymar out of his own marketing budget?

Now this retailer may prefer to see a campaign with Messi and Mbappe, so he's got a choice.  Take it on the chin because the benefits are greater in, or cut himself off and try to pay his mortgage through selling over priced squash balls and shuttlecocks.

[VILLAMARV]

 

2 hours ago, Mic09 said:

It's a very interesting discussion because when you talk about the above, you have to take into consideration that each member state has it's own independent political/economic interests.

If Italy wants to agree a specific deal with the UK, great, as long as Germany, France and Sweden agree. If the EU as a majority objects, no deal can be done. This is due to the primacy of the EU law above any local member state laws. This means that independent interests of member states can be stopped by other members.

So, coming back to the beginning, Italy cannot agree anything with anyone without a permission (or a lack of objection) from Brussels. Surely this is a major issue and should be considered within this discussion?

Like others have said no one has to go asking permission from Brussels. They have to abide by the existing rules. We are not only giving up being part of the group that benefits from the deals themselves but indeed our seat at the deal making table, and our veto. In the future, any deals we make with EU member states are automatically dictated on some/most/all levels by the legislature they are signed to. So we will have to abide by those rules anyway in order to trade with them.

3 hours ago, blandy said:

From a trade perspective (whatever the other arguments about the EU) we're miles better off inside than outside. Humungously so. 

This. I have many issues with the EU. Trade is not one of them.

 

[bickster]

15 minutes ago, VILLAMARV said:

 

Trade is not one of them.

 

 

The ghost of TTIP says hello

[VILLAMARV]

6 minutes ago, bickster said:

The ghost of TTIP says hello

 

[bickster]

Check out Dickhead Bridgen on the NI Border as interviewed by Irish Radio

Stumped!

[VILLAMARV]

8 minutes ago, bickster said:

The ghost of TTIP says hello

Fair Cop Guv (Though not actually an EU policy). For those championing the internal workings of the EU it had years of negotiating to go through. What Trump has devised in it's place we'll wait and see. I wonder if that can only be viewed 2x2 at the American embassy?

Good example of how the battleground has changed over the course of the last couple of years though - especially in those 'key' or at least most-often-recycled topics in the news. Some of the things relevant at the time are simply not the same now.

[Enda]

3 hours ago, blandy said:

The EU is stopping it, through the single market which the UK played a big part in setting up.

Not quite. This is pedantic but important as Mic has some decent questions but needs a bit of information.

Post-Brexit UK cannot strike a trade deal with Germany or Italy or any other EU member because the EU is a customs union. This means tariffs are the same no matter what the port of entry is, so if you're importing a specific product (e.g. brown shoes from China) you might as well bring it into your nearest port. If the EU tariff on brown shoes from China is 20% and Italy strikes a deal to cut that to 15%, then all brown shoes will come through Milan and we're in a race to the bottom. So Italy can't strike its own trade deals. There's more to it than taxes though, there's also standards. For a silly example, the shoes can't be made from radioactive materials. A little bit more realistically, shoes can't be made with slave labour, and beef can't come from cows pumped with hormones. These are rules all customs union members can debate and negotiate but have to accept. If you want a trade deal with China, you'll have to haggle with them about slave labour laws. Currently the EU negotiating team does this centrally for all of us. There are thousands and thousands of these regulations, but the vast majority of them are sensible.

The EU also has the single market. This means if anything is legally produced in the EU, it can be sold anywhere in the EU. So if a chicken sandwich is legally made in Poland, or if a dentist is legally trained in Estonia, the sandwich can be sold in Berlin and the dentist can work in Paris. This is where more rules come in. We don't want rancid chicken sandwiches and we definitely don't want dodgy dentists so the EU sets minimum standards on all goods and services. Thousands of them, but the vast majority of these will be replicated by the UK (food safety and dentistry exams) outside of the EU. A few (56, apparently) annoyed the UK but they have to accept it anyway. Or they can leave the single market. But you can't be in the single market and not stick to the rules, because the EU doesn't want your dodgy chicken sandwiches.

The UK currently wants to have its cake and eat it. It wants to leave the customs union (fine in theory) and also strike a sort of single market deal (fine in theory). The problem is the Irish border. If you can import dodgy Chinese shoes into Belfast, they can sneak down into Dublin (and then anywhere in Europe, via the single market) unless there's a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. (Friendly reminder than NI strongly voted Remain.) The Irish government have made it clear we won't stand for a hard border. A hard border is a blatant violation of the Good Friday Agreement you agreed with us in 1998. So your choice is "stay in the customs union" or "violate existing treaties and threaten the political stability of Northern Ireland." That's your call, but you lot seem to be leaning strongly on leaving the customs union. Cool, you're entitled to revoke the GFA and strike a trade deal with China. But for that you lose market access. It's not even spite -- we can't pretend we're in a single unified market if your actions result in border checks.

So, no, it's not the EU undemocratically restricting Italy's trading options. It's the basics of international trade.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

The ghost of TTIP says hello

Yeah, TTIP was an abomination and (due to people power) got canned by the EU. It was a close run thing, but "we" (people) won. Which is not the case with the UK and say Fracking, or trade deals we might have done or do in the future. TTIP was a massive reason for me to see the flaws with the EU, the secrecy, the lobbyists, the sneaky dealings...and it got stopped. All those problems are even more apparent in the UK.

[blandy]

4 hours ago, Mic09 said:

It's a very interesting discussion because when you talk about the above, you have to take into consideration that each member state has it's own independent political/economic interests.

If Italy wants to agree a specific deal with the UK, great, as long as Germany, France and Sweden agree

Yes, this is true. FI Italy (hypothetically) could do something that would give them a leg up and knock back the others, they'd not be able to. But equally, if the next week Germany wanted to do a deal which would knock back Italy, then they'd not be able to - so no one can individually gain at the expense of everyone else - they all get protected, and on top of that, by persuading others they all get, ultimately a stronger hand. It's like now with the brexit thing - Ireland desperately wants no border with the UK. All the other EU nations are firmly supporting them, even though it doesn't really benefit, say Hungary, if there's a border or not. Stronger together.

[blandy]

16 minutes ago, Enda said:

If you can import dodgy Chinese shoes into Belfast, they can sneak down into Dublin (and then anywhere in Europe, via the single market)

Thanks . That was exactly my point. The single market wouldn't work if we did individual deals.

[VILLAMARV]

6 hours ago, blandy said:

Yeah, TTIP was an abomination and (due to people power) got canned by the EU. It was a close run thing, but "we" (people) won. Which is not the case with the UK and say Fracking, or trade deals we might have done or do in the future. TTIP was a massive reason for me to see the flaws with the EU, the secrecy, the lobbyists, the sneaky dealings...and it got stopped. All those problems are even more apparent in the UK.

Genuinely thought Trump stopped the negotiations.

[VILLAMARV]

Also on TTIP I didn't think it was dead, just being re-drafted. Trump's very public attack on it was mostly around it not going far enough (Especially on currency manipulation IIRC).

CETA is almost ratified though IIRC. Many of the non-trade issues most of us had with TTIP are in that. Most notably the whole "Corporate courts" thing where the companies can sue governments if Laws change that affect their profits negatively.

[Xann]

The poisoners in chief of TTIP were the Tories - Also the Germans and French got off their arses to protest, so who knows if it would of actually happened?

Europe will make better deals without us, whilst Fox castrates the NHS and empowers private US health companies to hold us to ransom for our lives - Kerching!

[blandy]

10 hours ago, VILLAMARV said:

Genuinely thought Trump stopped the negotiations.

Wasn't it initially part of Belgium that blocked it , and then the weight of the public uproar meant it never got restarted, and then, like you sa,y Trump wanted to enworsen it even more, so it has basically been canned.

[blandy]

10 hours ago, VILLAMARV said:

Many of the non-trade issues most of us had with TTIP are in that. Most notably the whole "Corporate courts" thing where the companies can sue governments if Laws change that affect their profits negatively.

This is another thing where the Brexit people have been masssively hypocritical - wanting a "Canada plus" type deal, in which the ultimate arbiter of disputes is an  unelected, non-national, "Corporate court". With even less answerability or democratic control and oversight than is the case with the ECJ.

"We can't have foreigners dictating what we do" - "Lets have a Canada++  type deal, where a non-UK court has primacy" the absolute prongs.

[VILLAMARV]

11 minutes ago, blandy said:

Wasn't it initially part of Belgium that blocked it , and then the weight of the public uproar meant it never got restarted, and then, like you sa,y Trump wanted to enworsen it even more, so it has basically been canned.

Yeah, I don't know for sure myself, but I think the negotiations continued right up until the end of the Obama Presidency, despite all the protests. Junker and a few others suggested it was not likely to continue when Trump was inaugurated. And then Trump came out with all the "really bad deal" stuff. Cancelled US involvement in TPP, stopped the TTIP negotiations and so on.

Since then tariffs got slapped on various imports, Iran ditched the Petro-Dollar in favour of the Euro. Macron, May and Merkel all visited the White House, CPTPP was signed in the wake of the collapse of TPP minus US involvement. Recently suggesting he would like the US to join CPTPP as long as it was a good/better deal or somesuch. And currently hardballing with Canada over the NAFTA re-negotiations.

As far as TTIP goes though, last I'd caught wind of was when Junker was at the White House in June or July sometime and the impression I got was that negotiations of a rebrand were going to proceed. A 'truce' was allegedly reached and reported. Although we were going to win the World Cup or something so I cared less

[VILLAMARV]

35 minutes ago, blandy said:

This is another thing where the Brexit people have been masssively hypocritical - wanting a "Canada plus" type deal, in which the ultimate arbiter of disputes is an  unelected, non-national, "Corporate court". With even less answerability or democratic control and oversight than is the case with the ECJ.

"We can't have foreigners dictating what we do" - "Lets have a Canada++  type deal, where a non-UK court has primacy" the absolute prongs.

Quite. What role the British Overseas Territories have to play in this whole thing is often over-looked or under-played for *ahem* whatever reasons imo. But in the wake of the Banking Crisis and indeed the Panama Papers we've seen a clamour behind the scenes for widening the net of the corporatocracy (?!? not sure if even a word lol) above the level of current International Law.

Coincidence?

The interesting thing about CETA to me is the idea that those provisions in the TTIP stuff to bring cases against governments would be now legal if your business was registered in Canada. Perhaps (and not meant in a glib way as an anti EU cliche) we will be witnessing the re-birth of the Commonwealth after all.

[bickster]

18 hours ago, VILLAMARV said:

Genuinely thought Trump stopped the negotiations.

Trump officially stopped the negotiations, however the whole shebang was as good as dead in the water. The talks had stalled after many years, supposedly no agreement had been reached on any of the twenty plus sections in the trade agreement. France had threatened to block the whole thing, as Pete said there was definitely something that happened with part of Belgium. A high up in the German Govt came out and said that the whole enterprise had failed but no one was prepared to admit it in public... Trump stopped something and took the credit for it, even though it was already over in real germs.