EPTUK Politics Mega-thread - Page 324
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Zaros
United Kingdom3692 Posts
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bardtown
England2313 Posts
1. The UK has no reason to pay the sum we are demanding 2. The UK wants a free trade deal 3. There are only two years to negotiate a deal 4. We will refuse to negotiate a trade deal to pressure the UK into rushing to agree to our cash demands (1, 2, 3) I hope we call their bluff, although in some way it makes no difference. If we tentatively agree to pay, say, £10b and then move onto negotiating a free trade deal, it will be plain that if the deal isn't good enough then the EU won't be getting the money. | ||
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BurningSera
Ireland19621 Posts
On April 28 2017 20:27 bardtown wrote: The logic is this: 1. The UK has no reason to pay the sum we are demanding 2. The UK wants a free trade deal 3. There are only two years to negotiate a deal 4. We will refuse to negotiate a trade deal to pressure the UK into rushing to agree to our cash demands (1, 2, 3) I hope we call their bluff, although in some way it makes no difference. If we tentatively agree to pay, say, £10b and then move onto negotiating a free trade deal, it will be plain that if the deal isn't good enough then the EU won't be getting the money. again, is more like UK tries to bully the way out of it AND THEN not want to pay a thing; guess what, this is 2017 and the world wouldn't allow you to do that. Germany did the perfect response, you want to get to actual talk, pay to get into the room first, that's what you should have paid for it anyway since that's the rule that's every member agreed (that's including UK when they joined EU). Your attitude there once again is the typical crap of 'you can do X to others, but when others do X to you, suddenly it is not ok'. | ||
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Zaros
United Kingdom3692 Posts
On April 28 2017 21:17 BurningSera wrote: again, is more like UK tries to bully the way out of it AND THEN not want to pay a thing; guess what, this is 2017 and the world wouldn't allow you to do that. Germany did the perfect response, you want to get to actual talk, pay to get into the room first, that's what you should have paid for it anyway since everyone pays the membership fee. Your attitude there once again is the typical crap of 'you can do X to others, but when others do X to you, suddenly it is not ok'. Why would we pay to leave its nonsenese, we are still paying our membership fees we havent stopped and we wont stop until we leave the EU. There is no contracted/treaty reason to pay some ridiculous exit fee. If the EU doesn't want to negotiate a trade deal then fine, it hurts them more than the UK with the UK trade deficit. | ||
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BurningSera
Ireland19621 Posts
On April 28 2017 21:25 Zaros wrote: Why would we pay to leave its nonsenese, we are still paying our membership fees we havent stopped and we wont stop until we leave the EU. There is no contracted/treaty reason to pay some ridiculous exit fee. If the EU doesn't want to negotiate a trade deal then fine, it hurts them more than the UK with the UK trade deficit. I edited my post right after, because I should have mentioned that that's the rule every member agreed to pay (well, whether it has been outlined clearly or not is another topic). the bottom line is, you took benefit from joining EU, and now that you want a divorce, to me it is just common sense that EU asked for the compensation for the shit that they invested in UK and some of the benefits you took in the past 40years. Imagine that, right, you spent renovation £50000 to this council house, because you would assume that you are going to keep living here etc, and obviously you pay a discounted rate of house price for this council house. If government suddenly take away this house from you, will you go chase that £50000 that you take from your own pocket? will you just be quiet and let the government take your own house + your £50000? see, like I said, if you were EU, you would do the same (and you know how much shit of EU is in UK lol, the gigantic EMA as a starter, that bloody thing is sitting in the middle of London lol). | ||
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mahrgell
Germany3943 Posts
On April 28 2017 21:25 Zaros wrote: Why would we pay to leave its nonsenese, we are still paying our membership fees we havent stopped and we wont stop until we leave the EU. There is no contracted/treaty reason to pay some ridiculous exit fee. If the EU doesn't want to negotiate a trade deal then fine, it hurts them more than the UK with the UK trade deficit. There is no exit fee... Only the EU demanding the UK to pay exactly what the UK agreed to pay fur the current budget period. | ||
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bardtown
England2313 Posts
On April 28 2017 21:36 mahrgell wrote: There is no exit fee... Only the EU demanding the UK to pay exactly what the UK agreed to pay fur the current budget period. If this was true they would be much more transparent about it. The numbers do not add up. | ||
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BurningSera
Ireland19621 Posts
On April 28 2017 21:39 bardtown wrote: We are a net contributor. We pay twice as much into the EU as they then invest in the UK. Any money spent by the EU in the UK is UK taxpayer money - and so is a lot of the 'EU money' spent in Poland, France, Hungary, etc. If you want to pay us back for that we won't complain, I'm sure. net contributor that based on EU making you the Europe finance hub and the link to the rest of the world? I seriously don't care if you brought out the historical linkage there etc etc, but the simple fact is that, a tonne of companies and agencies are based in UK was because of it is a EU member, you cannot just ignore all that and call yourself net contributor lol. that's ignorant and the most arrogant thinking, and such typical one as well. there is no 'exit fee', EU simply asks for the money that they shouldn't pay in the first place (like moving that bloody EMA out of UK for example). why would they spend billions to do that because UK pissed off leaving EU. | ||
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RvB
Netherlands6214 Posts
On April 28 2017 21:25 Zaros wrote: Why would we pay to leave its nonsenese, we are still paying our membership fees we havent stopped and we wont stop until we leave the EU. There is no contracted/treaty reason to pay some ridiculous exit fee. If the EU doesn't want to negotiate a trade deal then fine, it hurts them more than the UK with the UK trade deficit. That's not how trade works. It's not trade surplus = good and trade deficit = bad. A trade deficit is a surplus on the capital account which means that a trade deficit is investment by foreign entities into the British economy. | ||
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Zaros
United Kingdom3692 Posts
On April 28 2017 21:48 BurningSera wrote: net contributor that based on EU making you the Europe finance hub and the link to the rest of the world? I seriously don't care if you brought out the historical linkage there etc etc, but the simple fact is that, a tonne of companies and agencies are based in UK was because of it is a EU member, you cannot just ignore all that and call yourself net contributor lol. that's ignorant and the most arrogant thinking, and such typical one as well. there is no 'exit fee', EU simply asks for the money that they shouldn't pay in the first place (like moving that bloody EMA out of UK for example). why would they spend billions to do that because UK pissed off leaving EU. Leave it where it is if you don't want to pay. | ||
KwarK
United States42731 Posts
On April 28 2017 21:48 BurningSera wrote: net contributor that based on EU making you the Europe finance hub and the link to the rest of the world? I seriously don't care if you brought out the historical linkage there etc etc, but the simple fact is that, a tonne of companies and agencies are based in UK was because of it is a EU member, you cannot just ignore all that and call yourself net contributor lol. that's ignorant and the most arrogant thinking, and such typical one as well. there is no 'exit fee', EU simply asks for the money that they shouldn't pay in the first place (like moving that bloody EMA out of UK for example). why would they spend billions to do that because UK pissed off leaving EU. If you think London only became a financial hub after joining the EU then you've lost the fucking plot mate. London became a financial hub around the time it became the centre of a global empire built on trade and finance. Finance attracts more finance. The institutions, infrastructure, legal framework and so forth creates a feedback loop where finance comes to London because London can offer them what they need and London has what they need because finance comes to London. The EU didn't make London London, the last four hundred years of an English dominated globe did. It's not something you can simply create, any more than you could make an ecosystem top down. It's something that grows over time. | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On April 28 2017 20:27 bardtown wrote: The logic is this: 1. The UK has no reason to pay the sum we are demanding 2. The UK wants a free trade deal 3. There are only two years to negotiate a deal 4. We will refuse to negotiate a trade deal to pressure the UK into rushing to agree to our cash demands (1, 2, 3) I hope we call their bluff, although in some way it makes no difference. If we tentatively agree to pay, say, £10b and then move onto negotiating a free trade deal, it will be plain that if the deal isn't good enough then the EU won't be getting the money. I really hope it at least gets negotiated down to some token amount. EU budget has a hole, here's something to smooth things over, peace. May's holding some good cards on this one and she's shown capabilities in standing firm and getting the job done. | ||
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KwarK
United States42731 Posts
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Acrofales
Spain18000 Posts
On April 28 2017 22:56 KwarK wrote: It will partly depend on how the election goes. If Theresa May gets a serious majority then she'll go in balls swinging. Atm it looks like: Dutch government will be formed of mostly pro-EU parties: strong EU above all else Theresa May will get a strong majority: balls swinging Brexit Macron will get a majority: strong EU above all else Merkel will get a majority: strong EU above all else Not a recipe for an easy negotiation process. Next elections after that are Italy, I think? Spain currently has a neoliberal government that benefits from a stable EU, but I'm sure they'll take some halfhearted stabs at Gibraltar, lol. | ||
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Zaros
United Kingdom3692 Posts
On April 28 2017 23:42 Acrofales wrote: Atm it looks like: Dutch government will be formed of mostly pro-EU parties: strong EU above all else Theresa May will get a strong majority: balls swinging Brexit Macron will get a majority: strong EU above all else Merkel will get a majority: strong EU above all else Not a recipe for an easy negotiation process. Next elections after that are Italy, I think? Spain currently has a neoliberal government that benefits from a stable EU, but I'm sure they'll take some halfhearted stabs at Gibraltar, lol. Macron may well win the presidential easily but he wont have a majority in the french parliament. Merkel isn't going to get a majority she will more than likely have to create another coalition. | ||
TheNewEra
Germany3128 Posts
On April 29 2017 00:16 Zaros wrote: Macron may well win the presidential easily but he wont have a majority in the french parliament. Merkel isn't going to get a majority she will more than likely have to create another coalition. Yeah but Merkel's party will most likely create a coalition with a party which is even more pro EU | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On April 28 2017 09:13 Unentschieden wrote: Thats not an answer thats just foaming at the mouth at the audacity of the EU existing (again). I´d like to hear from you what a to you reasonable position for the EU would be. And I don´t mean somehow undoing itself or removing the concept of european states cooperating. The continent simply isn´t going to go back to preWW2 in this reality. A reasonable position would be to start with acknowledging the limits of how and where European states can cooperate, and the reality of where the project is headed at this rate. The UK should be the canary in the coal mine; things got to this point by way of the EU being unwilling to negotiate on its "core principles" - most famously of course freedom of movement - without realizing that they all come with dangerous flaws and, much less arguably, deep resentment. The Brexit could have been prevented if the prevailing mood wasn't basically "fuck the Brits, they take it or leave it." The EU shouldn't of course advocate for its own dissolution - even if that is the best option at this point. Though it's important to realize why that became the best option. I don't think there are many people who think that a closer cooperation between European states in some form is desirable and good. But the EU has proven to be nothing of the sort. It's an inflexible bureaucracy seeking to become a national government of a United States of Europe, even if its member nations have to be dragged kicking and screaming into it. Any problems? The remedy is of course always "all the problems come from Europe not being Europe enough, we need more!" Before Brexit no one would even really acknowledge that the EU needed reform at all - there needed to be a concrete blow to its integrity to even make clear what was so very obvious to anyone who isn't a blind integrationist. And it does tire me to hear about all these comparisons to "pre WWII" as if the EU has existed for 70 years and that every European integration project has been building up to this point. It should be telling that the best the EU can reference to justify its existence is events that happened over 70 years ago. It's like the 50-year old who was a high school sports star continuing to reminisce on his glory days even though his life hasn't amounted to much since then. The EU came far later than any post-WWII peace and it's disingenuous to pretend that they are inseparable. It's just a laughable talking point. What would I want the EU to do under ideal circumstances? Well ideally it would have recognized the importance of acknowledging the extent of British disdain with the current state of things such that it would choose to vote to leave the union. There was a pre-Brexit negotiation that resulted in the most non-compromise of non-compromises ever. If I were a Brit who were also a Eurosceptic I would be pretty offended by that so-called compromise that Cameron managed to win. And Britain was one of the first nations that opened its borders to foreign migration, including from East Europe. One might wonder how it came to be that they became one of the big skeptics of free movement. Movement of goods, capital, and services are of course little more than the tenets of a free trade agreement which, while problematic in practice, makes sense for a series of economically productive, yet significantly vulnerable, nationlings. Freedom of movement is the most controversial one and not without reason. On the one hand, it's a very valuable tool for giving workers the ability to expand the range of where they can work. If I lived and worked in Europe, as an educated individual with skills that are highly in demand, I'd be quite happy to have free movement. If I were looking out for myself in particular I might even desperately and stubbornly defend it despite its dark side. And that dark side is that while free movement is convenient, it also makes it far more difficult, often almost impossible, to stop the flow of less desirable individuals. That manifests itself in a lot of ways. First of all, terrorism. While it's true that legally, the free movement rules apply to European "nationals" only, the reality is that their existence has made travel across borders much easier no matter who you are. A terrorist in Belgium who got around between France and Italy and Spain and Poland and so on reflects quite badly on the ability of nations to keep their borders safe and makes every terrorist hunt an international one (but if it were all one nation, this wouldn't be a problem, right?). And the least mobile workers (due to a lack of particularly valuable skills desired abroad at first world prices) - the blue collar working class - have to deal with declining quality of life as they are locked in a downward spiral of competing with laborers who make more cleaning toilets in London than they would being a doctor in their home country, so being treated like migrant labor ain't no thing in comparison. It's no surprise that local laborers are displeased with that. And a lot of the "people who can't integrate" are also part of this wave of people taken without much thought as to the consequences of There are of course plenty of issues that every country has with the EU, but this is the UK thread so let's continue to do that. The other most cited factor of Brexit support was sovereignty, the desire to make decisions at a national level rather than at a European level. And that shouldn't be a surprise; nations are nations and we can't pretend that the general cultures that developed that define national identities can be tossed aside because we want them to and because nationalism leads to Hitler and Mussolini and Putin and Erdogan and Orban and Le Pen and fuck knows who else is the next scapegoat for the EU's inability to acknowledge its own weaknesses. The nation-state is a far more important construct than the integrationists give it credit and while national boundaries can change it's not going to happen just because Europe wills it. So what the EU should have done, in short, is to recognize these faults and to learn to deal with them in a useful way. What it actually did was to obtusely deny the existence of any fault and to press forward at full speed, denying any flaws with that approach until it became so pervasive that one simply couldn't ignore it anymore (specifically, when one of its biggest economies voted to leave the union). And it should be unsurprising that it is put in a position where its only course of action that makes political sense is to allow the economic concerns to take second fiddle and to show Britain that the only way it can start to negotiate is to first pay a pound of flesh. I don't blame them for doing it because that's the only possibility of this project surviving: by showing everyone that any deviation from the desired path will not be negotiated with until they surrender. And if they're Greece you will have to demand even more after they surrender until even the IMF says that you're too evil for their tastes. And since that's how the game works, we're quickly reaching the point where the EU will collapse under the weight of its short-sighted ambitions. It grew too fast, both in size and scope, until it rendered itself unviable, and it is proving to be too inflexible to ever deviate from the course of further, deeper integration. Oh well. Maybe the next attempt at a European cooperation project (as that, as an idea, is certainly a more long-term reality) won't exhibit the pattern of behavior that has led me in the past to describe the EU as a cancer. | ||
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Unentschieden
Germany1471 Posts
Well strap in because it´s going to get A LOT worse once the EU actually presents actual demands not just open obligations. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
Soon as Germany pays back the $200 billion it owes the US for decades of protection, maybe we can start talking. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
Plus no one is alive who remembers pre-ww2 times very well, so we are primed to avoid making the same mistakes again. | ||
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