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

[Chindie]

11 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

A another step towards the Federal Europe then.

I still don't think it will come to that (and the article itself states the are still areas individual parliaments have a say in) but it's not doing the democratic deficit any favours.

[TrentVilla]

10 minutes ago, Chindie said:

I still don't think it will come to that (and the article itself states the are still areas individual parliaments have a say in) but it's not doing the democratic deficit any favours.

One step at a time.

[Chindie]

Just now, TrentVilla said:

One step at a time.

Oh sure. Boiling the frog.

I just don't see the steps getting there. There's too many disperate interests for it to happen - people fundamentally against the structure itself, people against federalisation, people happy with it as is, etc etc etc. And ultimately countries can leave if it goes to places they dislike. If enough do they either roll it back or it collapses. And that's before the national issues - Parliaments and senates would have to vote to 'dissolve' themselves entirely forever for instance (which, I believe certainly in the UK, they can't do).

So imo, it'll never happen. Despite undoubtedly some wanting it to.

[TrentVilla]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

Oh sure. Boiling the frog.

I just don't see the steps getting there. There's too many disperate interests for it to happen - people fundamentally against the structure itself, people against federalisation, people happy with it as is, etc etc etc. And ultimately countries can leave if it goes to places they dislike. If enough do they either roll it back or it collapses. And that's before the national issues - Parliaments and senates would have to vote to 'dissolve' themselves entirely forever for instance (which, I believe certainly in the UK, they can't do).

So imo, it'll never happen. Despite undoubtedly some wanting it to.

I'm not saying it will happen, simply that is the direction of travel. I actually think the EU is fundamentally flawed and will eventually fail, in part because of the desire to Federalise which seems to underpin so much of the current thinking.

So I agree it won't happen we just differ on why. Doesnt mean the desire isn't there and the steps in that direction aren't happening.

As for nations leaving, I think as soon as another nation gets a referendum that may very well happen.

 

[blandy]

20 hours ago, snowychap said:

Grauniad:

The exact same story is written with the opposite slant elsewhere.

Quote

Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans for a swift post-Brexit trade deal were dealt a setback on Tuesday when the European Union’s top court ruled that all the national and regional parliaments in the bloc must sign off on future agreements.

The Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice ruled that EU’s 2014 trade deal with Singapore could not be ratified by only EU ministers and the European Parliament. The judges said that the pact’s trade provisions relating to non-direct foreign investment and investor-state dispute settlement fall under national competences and need the approval of the 38 national and regional assemblies. “The free trade agreement with Singapore cannot, in its current form, be concluded by the European Union alone,” the court said. “It follows that the free trade agreement can, as it stands, only be concluded by the European Union and the member states jointly.”

The ruling raises the spectre of a repeat scenario of last year’s deadlock over the EU’s trade pact with Canada, which was almost scuttled by the Belgium’s regional parliament in Wallonia. The deal was only finally agreed after concessions were offered by EU and Belgian government officials.

While the EU has plans for similar trade deals with Japan, Mexico and Australia, it is Mrs May who is likely feel the impact most. She has talked of a “bold and ambitious” post-Brexit free trade deal that she hopes to strike with the EU, covering sectors like financial services.

 

Yet the more elements she wants to cram into the deal, then the more scope it gives for any of the parliaments to block the deal. As the judges pointed out, the EU’s new generation of free trade agreements go beyond classical measures like reducing customs duties and non-tariff barriers, and move into the field of trade in services, copyright protection, investment, public procurement, competition and environmental standards.

 

[snowychap]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

The exact same story is written with the opposite slant elsewhere.

 

I think that reinforces the view that it ain't going to be a walk in the park.

Edited May 17, 2017 by snowychap

[magnkarl]

My hope is that the EU will splinter into smaller groups again. Countries like Norway (not an EU member but has to follow their rules to be in the single market), Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Austria and the UK will eventually have had enough. These are generally liberal capitalistic countries that have made a good life for themselves without much help from the EU and would do well without them. A good old fashioned Hanseatic trading bloc with Scandinavia, the low countries and the UK would probably be a much stronger proposition for the UK than what we are currently getting.

The funny thing is that when I recently traveled to Hungary I realised how negative this country is towards the EU. Many people were very vocal about wanting a trade deal with the UK before we disengage from the union and said they'd rather trade with us than with Germany. Sadly a lot of us only get the picture from the media with very vaguely nuanced points of view (for or against, no middle ground). Last time I checked we are at a great trading point with most of the Scandinavian countries - maybe it's time to focus on helping Norway end their EU affiliation?

[chrisp65]

8 hours ago, magnkarl said:

My hope is that the EU will splinter into smaller groups again. Countries like Norway (not an EU member but has to follow their rules to be in the single market), Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Austria and the UK will eventually have had enough. These are generally liberal capitalistic countries that have made a good life for themselves without much help from the EU and would do well without them. A good old fashioned Hanseatic trading bloc with Scandinavia, the low countries and the UK would probably be a much stronger proposition for the UK than what we are currently getting.

The funny thing is that when I recently traveled to Hungary I realised how negative this country is towards the EU. Many people were very vocal about wanting a trade deal with the UK before we disengage from the union and said they'd rather trade with us than with Germany. Sadly a lot of us only get the picture from the media with very vaguely nuanced points of view (for or against, no middle ground). Last time I checked we are at a great trading point with most of the Scandinavian countries - maybe it's time to focus on helping Norway end their EU affiliation?

Would you not want to trade with Italy, Spain, Portugal, Malta, France, Belgium, Poland, Ireland, Germany?

Or would you include them in the list of ok european trade partners?

It's just, we're asking quite a lot for a handful like Austria to pick up the slack. You've excluded 5 of the countries in our list of 10 best export destinations, including Italy and Spain. But once we extend that group to include Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Netherlands, Ireland, Austria, Poland, Germany, Belgium, Italy, France, Spain, Poland, well it's kinda beginning to look like the EU but without Greece and Malta.

Which would be a shame because we have a trade surplus with Greece and Malta. Whereas we have a deficit against the Scandinavians.

I could be wrong, I only did about a minute's googling.

[Enda]

On 5/16/2017 at 12:47, HanoiVillan said:

Seems like good news for us, but pretty disappointing for citizens of EU nations. Whole new level of 'democratic deficit' there. 

1. How on earth is it democratic for a Belgian province to veto a trade deal the majority of the 500m people in the EU want? People bandy the term "democratic deficit" around a lot, but it does not mean Swindon gets a veto on everything London decides. An actually democratic EU would give the likes of Ireland no veto powers at all.

2. The ECJ ruled that the EU has exclusive competence on issues like tariffs, but not issues like judicial enforcement of trade deals or anything not directly related to buying and selling. That's not a controversial decision, and a good example of the ECJ ensuring the rights of member states are respected. But as the Brexit deal is a lot more than the customs union (rights of people to stay etc) the relevance of this case to Brexit is very limited.

[Enda]

13 hours ago, magnkarl said:

The funny thing is that when I recently traveled to Hungary I realised how negative this country is towards the EU.

I think you got a bad bunch. As of six months ago, only 18% of people in Hungary have a negative view of the EU, which is better than average, and less angry than even Germany.

[ml1dch]

21 hours ago, snowychap said:

I think that reinforces the view that it ain't going to be a walk in the park.

The excellent (and to my eyes, pretty non-partisan) eureferendum.com blog seems to push through the bullshit and ignorance (in the literal, "not understanding" sense) of most commentators

(tl,dr - the bold bit in the middle)

Quote

We get a bizarre "take" from at least two newspapers on the ECJ's Singapore "opinion" – the Guardian and the Telegraph - an odd couple if ever there was one.

Both argue that, although it has found that the EU-Singapore trade deal is a mixed agreement and must therefore be ratified by all Member States, the Court has made it easier for the UK to conclude a trade agreement with the EU. 

The logic is that, in delivering its opinion, the Court has reaffirmed the point that the Commission has exclusive competence when it comes to agreeing trade deals. This means that, if the UK concludes a post-Brexit trade deal with the EU, it will not require ratification by individual Member States. 

But this was never in dispute. The only matter before the Court was whether it was valid for Commission to conclude the Singapore agreement. In the event, it was the opinion of the Court that this was a mixed agreement, so it would require ratification. The full opinion is here.

It was the Commission itself which, in 2013, had asked the Court for its opinion, and it is said to have hoped to avoid the potentially gruelling process of getting ratification from all Member States. This hope was effectively dashed in December 2016 when Advocate General Sharpston delivered her opinion, which has been largely confirmed by the final ruling. 

Nevertheless, some take heart from the fact that the treaty was found to be "mixed" only on a very limited number of grounds – two to be precise – the field of non-direct foreign investment ("portfolio" investments made without any intention to influence the management and control of an undertaking) and the regime governing dispute settlement between investors and States. 

But the other "take home" point is that even when only a very small part of a treaty is not exclusive competence, the whole treaty has to be ratified by Member States. This is, effectively, an all-or-nothing situation. 

Another view comes from Euractiv, which suggests that, in terms of its effect on the Brexit negotiations, the opinion has not worsened the UK's chances of securing a trade deal once it has left the EU. 

The European Council, it says, can provisionally apply FTAs with shared competences, which it has done with CETA. There is, theoretically, no legal limit on how long this interim period can go on for. The WTO's predecessor, the GATT, was applied this way for decades. 

However, the site then goes on to point out that any eventual EU-UK deal could also be split into exclusive and shared competences, keeping the elements separate. This could speed up the process for the trade elements, leaving only the shared competences to be ratified by Member States. 

That, though, is hardly a practical solution as it is very hard to see how there could be a workable trade agreement without a dispute settlement mechanism. And it is precisely that (one of two) that took the Singapore deal outside the competence of the Commission. As the ECJ affirms, any regime, which removes disputes from the jurisdiction of the courts of the Member States, cannot be established without Member State consent. 

One way or another, therefore, the ECJ's opinion changes very little. There are work-arounds but, at some time, a complete deal is going to require Member State ratification for all or part of the provisions before the whole agreement can take effect. 

In short, therefore, there is nothing particular to get excited about – especially as there is not going to be an immediate trade deal. Any question of ratification is way down the line. In the interim, we will be relying on an transitional agreement to keep trade going. 

About this most of the pundits are entirely silent. Yet, in all probability, a transitional agreement will require modifications to the EU treaties, taking the form of a secession treaty. This will most definitely need the unanimous approval of all 27 Member States and the UK, and then ratification by all 28 countries. In the UK, there will have to be Parliamentary approval. 

Since there has been next to no discussion about a secession treaty – it not yet having been "discovered" by bubble denizens – there is also no talk of the possibility of one or more Member States holding a referendum on it. But it would be hugely ironic if our own Government, having refused a referendum had to wait, say, for the results of a French poll before it could implement Brexit. 

That aside, this episode is entirely typical of the way the Brexit debate is being skewed. We have the legacy media obsessing over this ECJ opinion, when the actual impact on Brexit will be minimal. Yet, on the other hand, it fails completely to appreciate that there are bigger, more immediate issues to deal with. 

Basically, no one in government has yet publicly disclosed how a transitional agreement will apply, how long it will take to negotiate or even what precise form it will take. It is only a matter of surmise that a secession treaty will be needed. There may be other ways of achieving a stop-gap solution, not least a variation on the EEA Agreement. 

But, for as long as the UK is looking for a bespoke trade deal and it is accepted that this cannot be concluded until Brexit has taken effect, some form of transitional agreement will have to be in place to coincide with our leaving the EU. It will be the only thing standing between us and chaos.

 

Edited May 18, 2017 by ml1dch

[itdoesntmatterwhatthissay]

On 4/25/2017 at 06:09, blandy said:

We build more cars here than we've ever done and the factories are efficient. We have unfettered access, for the moment, to the single market. We are good at making and selling cars. As we know, Nissan and the rest very much regard the single market as key to business and so to the jobs of all the workers at their factories and those of their suppliers etc.

I'm going to post what I posted a few weeks back but perhaps you missed....or you're taking a Labour approach to facts

Efficiency is definitely one important factor in why they are staying however I am going to question where you got your stats from. To me it seems 2000 was the glory year; with car ownership also in the 25m mark. We have a lot more cars on our and foreign roads, so perhaps the stats aren't actually all that great?

As with San Fran and the EV car fiasco, Japanese companies are already moving design/production to Britain to try and realise a marketplace post-Brexit. 

Edited May 18, 2017 by itdoesntmatterwhatthissay

[snowychap]

20 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

The excellent (and to my eyes, pretty non-partisan) eureferendum.com blog seems to push through the bullshit and ignorance (in the literal, "not understanding" sense) of most commentators

(tl,dr - the bold bit in the middle)

 

Cheers for posting.

I admit that I was guilty of taking the Grauniad (and Torygraph) articles at face value without looking at it a bit more deeply.

Having read the pieces posted by @blandy and by you, it does lend support, in my mind, to the view that the whole process is likely to be not only more complicated than the average muggins like me might think but also probably a lot more complicated than the people involved in the process seem to think (ar at least what they tell us).

Interestingly, I thought the bit just above the section you made bold was probably most relevant to the Brexit debate here (as I expect people to be making just the same point about provisional introduction of FTAs with shared competence and splitting deals without considering the third para of the section I've quoted.

Quote

The European Council, it says, can provisionally apply FTAs with shared competences, which it has done with CETA. There is, theoretically, no legal limit on how long this interim period can go on for. The WTO's predecessor, the GATT, was applied this way for decades. 

However, the site then goes on to point out that any eventual EU-UK deal could also be split into exclusive and shared competences, keeping the elements separate. This could speed up the process for the trade elements, leaving only the shared competences to be ratified by Member States. 

That, though, is hardly a practical solution as it is very hard to see how there could be a workable trade agreement without a dispute settlement mechanism. And it is precisely that (one of two) that took the Singapore deal outside the competence of the Commission. As the ECJ affirms, any regime, which removes disputes from the jurisdiction of the courts of the Member States, cannot be established without Member State consent.

 

Edited May 18, 2017 by snowychap

[ml1dch]

7 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Cheers for posting.

I admit that I was guilty of taking the Grauniad (and Torygraph) articles at face value without looking at it a bit more deeply.

Having read the pieces posted by @blandy and by you, it does lend support, in my mind, to the view that the whole process is likely to be not only more complicated than the average muggins like me might think but also probably a lot more complicated than the people involved in the process seem to think (ar at least what they tell us).

Undoubtedly. It's s site that is well worth reading (in my unlearned opinion, anyway)

Written by a former UKIP member and prospective MEP candidate - so any pro-EU bias is unlikely. And he seems pretty convinced that nobody involved (on both sides, but obviously more on ours) seems to have any idea of what they're about to come up against.

[blandy]

43 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

nobody involved (on both sides, but obviously more on ours) seems to have any idea of what they're about to come up against.

Exactly. IMO that much is/was obvious all along - (other than Greenland, which is not really comparable) no-one's ever left the EU after 40+ years of membership. Untangling it all and setting up new arrangements is clearly going to be monumentally complicated. It always was. David Davis and the idiots Fox, Farage etc. buls****ing to the contrary were and are deluded. 

[blandy]

1 hour ago, itdoesntmatterwhatthissay said:

I'm going to post what I posted a few weeks back but perhaps you missed

I saw it. I kind of thought it irrelevant to the main point, so didn't bother googling and replying -  I heard what I posted on the radio driving home. Whatever the exact figures the sub-point was that that we're making an awful lot of cars right now...

[itdoesntmatterwhatthissay]

24 minutes ago, blandy said:

I saw it. I kind of thought it irrelevant to the main point, so didn't bother googling and replying -  I heard what I posted on the radio driving home. Whatever the exact figures the sub-point was that that we're making an awful lot of cars right now...

We have more people buying cars worldwide, more people registering them in the UK but we're manufacturing less vehicles than we did 17 years ago........so we're not as productive as we once were despite a resurgence. 

I get we're building more cars but how does that stack up relative to environment change and population increase? I personally feel that's important whatever the main point was.#
What might prove that wrong is the increase in vehicle manufacturing worldwide, that impacts whether relatively we've been even more successful...I haven't checked those stats yet...I'm driving home shortly, perhaps the radio will tell me

Edited May 18, 2017 by itdoesntmatterwhatthissay

[hippo]

If we continue on the road we appear to be on - the kind of Brexit Im seeing is:-

Everything will be open 24/7

• There maybe a few decent jobs for those who can afford to go to university
• The rest of us will have to buy a white a van, and be a self employed delivery driver, plumber, electrical contractor, decorator
• The good news is you will be able drive said white van at any speed, use your mobile whilst driving , and jump red lights as see fit (we know we shouldn't be hey who's checking!)
• The NHS much beyond A+E will be a slow cumbersome system - with dramatic variances in the quality of care

Hong Kong \ Singapore ethos seems what we are heading for to me...

 

 

 

[blandy]

8 hours ago, itdoesntmatterwhatthissay said:

We have more people buying cars worldwide, more people registering them in the UK but we're manufacturing less vehicles than we did 17 years ago........so we're not as productive as we once were despite a resurgence. 

I get we're building more cars but how does that stack up relative to environment change and population increase? I personally feel that's important whatever the main point was.#
What might prove that wrong is the increase in vehicle manufacturing worldwide, that impacts whether relatively we've been even more successful...I haven't checked those stats yet...I'm driving home shortly, perhaps the radio will tell me

My comment about we're building loads of cars was a response to a quote from endangered which suggested we could build cars if we put our minds to it but it would detract from other things

Quote

Nobody denies the UK could produce a decent car (or whatever else) if you set your minds to it.

Rather, it's that nobody can specialize in everything. Shifting resources to start building cars would necessarily detract from something else that you lot are already good at.

As for the effect on the environment and all that, plus it seems basically spending on stuff like cars is what's sort of rebuilt all the consumer debt to recreate the possibility of another crash. Yeah, bad.

[Chindie]

Anyone been reading about the totally, completely unrelated, not links at all, between one of the Leave campaigns and a foreign billionaire?